George Davis, Rest In Peace

George Lincoln Davis - Rest In Peace - © Kent Fletcher
January 13, 2008

He came into this world over 60 years ago with nothing, naked, wet, screaming his new lungs out. He departed this world today with nothing, at peace with his Maker.

I first met George Davis at a Christmas function in Grandview, Texas, in 2004. At first meeting, I did not know he was blind as a bat, that he was suffering all sorts of maladies, because he sure didn't let on to them. When we were introduced, the first thing out of his mouth was, "Do you owe me some money?" Of course, I was somewhat taken aback, actually speechless for a moment. I soon learned the money thing was always at the forefront of just about every conversation I ever had with him.

I had moved into a mobile home where he and his bride, Leona, had lived some 30+ years ago. I was needing a washing machine in the worst way, so I told Leona when I paid my rent in January, 2005. She said she had a washing machine out at her place that I could use, I just had to go get it. She called George at home and told him I was coming. When I arrived, he was standing in the yard waiting. He said the machine was around back, and I would find a dolly somewhere to move it with. I got it around to the front yard, and he said, "Is it the black one?" Once again I was kind of bumfuzzled, saying the only one I saw was white, was there another one. He chuckled a bit, and said no, just the white one.

The washing machine was shot as I found out later, needing some plumbing work done, at least. So I dealt with still not having a washing machine for a while, and George only said he'd find me another one. Which he did.

Life rocked along for a spell. I noticed George was out and about a lot, hitching rides with his hires, Archie and Jeannette. I offered on several occasions to haul him around so that Archie and Jeannette could do their own thing, like making money, not that George didn't pay them when he was hitch-hiking. The day finally came when he called me, asking me to take him to Meridian, TX, the next day. So I was up and at it early the next morning, getting out to his house around 9. We tootled off in his car to Meridian, but going where, there, I had no idea. It was the meat locker, where he was just pricing sausage.

By that time, lunch time had rolled around, so he directed me to a dive out west of Meridian, can't recall the name now. He ordered chicken and dumplings and a couple of veggies. He finished the veggies, and promptly put the dive on his "list". As I was to find out much later, he categorized places to eat as good and/or bad, thus the "list". Over the years, if a place was on his list, he never went there again. And it was a good topic of conversation between two old men tooling down the road on various adventures.

Thus an inevitable friendship began with a road trip. I hauled him around usually in the mornings near bout every day of the week, until he had to go on blood dialysis, a couple of years ago. He had been on peritoneal dialysis for several years and suddenly he developed an infection around the tubing, thus being the catalyst to move on to hemodialysis. Where he had been "tied" to a machine for some 14 hours per day, every day, he was now "tied" to a machine for only four hours a day, three days a week, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. The three days he was "off", well, that's when he wanted to get out of the house, go wheeling and dealing and visiting.

Let's see, I took him a myriad of places, Glen Rose for lunch at Hammond's; Dallas to the VA; Maypearl just last week to check on some jerky; Meridian a number of times to get summer sausage; Venus to check on his rental property; Fort Worth to pick up liquor for Christmas presents; Joshua to check out a new BBQ place he heard about on Trade Fair; Crowley to check out a Cajun restaurant that wasn't; Cleburne to get his car or his wife's van worked on, or to go to WalMart and get his fix for turnovers and cheese crackers; and any number of places in between, always for a cause, always for a reason. On several occasions I was sent alone, in his car, to purchase odds and ends from someone he spoke to on the phone, like a key machine in Egan, or a lawn tractor part in Burleson.

He took me on these little trips hither and yon, taking me on county roads far and wide, seeing things and going places I never would have seen had I not been driving him for a day. George used to tell me when he and Leona first got married, they would ride the county roads and other offbeat thoroughfares all over the area, looking for wild flower fields, wild game, whatever. He had a mind like a steel clamp, there was rarely anything he forgot once he committed it to his memory. Absolutely amazing.

George was also amazing in that he could recognize voices so well. Folks I'd never seen before would approach him when we were in a restaurant or a pawn shop or a garage and just start talking with him. He would call them by name, asking about something way back when, never miss a beat. I suppose there is a lot to be said about going blind, that the other senses - hearing, for instance - peak out. George also knew so many, many people far and wide around these parts, by name, by phone number, by occupation, by reputation. The do-gooders, the cops, the robbers, the ne'er-do-wells, the whores, the preachers, the back-stabbers, and the beggars, George Davis knew them all, and had them on and in his "lists".

The last day I spent with George Davis was Friday, January 11, 2008. Earlier in the week, he had talked to Johnny Posey in Cleburne about the backup sensors in Leona's van, about getting them repaired. Johnny had told him that most likely the only way to get them fixed was to go to a Chevrolet dealership, that the sensors were not an after-market option, yet. So George called Lynn Smith Chevrolet in Burleson, and got an appointment for 8 a.m. on Friday. The dealership even called him on Thursday night to remind him of the appointment.

I rose early from bed on Friday, took a shower, and was at George's house by 7:15. We boodled off at 7:30, arriving about 7:50 in Burleson. Having pulled up to the garage door and sitting for a few minutes, the door was finally opened and we were motioned to pull on in. A lady technician came over and asked all the perfunctory questions, and then asked for a phone number where George could be reached. Asking why, George was informed that the shop was "backed up" from Tuesday, and just because he had an eight o'clock appointment, he was not going to be taken to the head of the line for repairs. So we did the only thing we could do, we left. George was ticked, putting it mildly.

On the frontage road, I asked where to, and George said to go to Grandview. It was a long, silent ride for the next 15-20 miles. As I turned off the interstate, he said to go to Barry Holmes' house (his son-in-law). This was about 8:30 a.m., and Barry was still home. I backed the van in for Barry to do some brake work. Barry concluded, after removing the first drum, the problem was not the brake shoes nor the drum, but the brake cylinders. He drove uptown and retrieved the cylinders and returned the shoes he had picked up on Thursday. In about an hour he was finished with the installation, having sprayed B-12 brake cleaner all around, saying the thumping would quit as soon as the units dried out.

With nothing else to do, George told me to head on up to Cleburne. By this time he was grumbling a bit about Lynn Smith Chevrolet. I had learned way back when to let him vent, not to offer my input. We rode on up Main Street, not stopping for any lights. That kinda aggravated him, so he told me to turn off by the Dairy Queen and go back down Anglin Street. He was wanting to use the brakes a lot, to get the noise out, as it turned out. Anglin was closed for repairs, so I drove on over to Wilhite Street and proceeded south, stopping every now and then for stop signs. However, at every stop, the brakes were still thumping, bumping, bonking on the drums. By this time it was around 10:30 a.m., and he decided he wanted to go to Alvarado to lunch.

We got to the Daily Special, a small restaurant on the north side of Alvarado right at 11 a.m. We beat the lunch crowd, barely. George had his usual - veggies - and I had a big ole bacon cheeseburger. About the time he was finishing up, one of his old friends, Tommy Thompson, came over and he and George began yakking about any number of things. Of course, Lynn Smith Chevrolet got into the conversation. George decided to pay for all the meals, including Tommy's, which came to about $27. He asked me about this when we left the restaurant, as he was mentally counting his change.

We stopped by David's Supermarket in Alvarado. He wanted some of their apple turnovers, but they were sold out. Which didn't make George a happy camper. First the Lynn Smith Chevrolet episode, then the brakes still making noise, then spending more than he thought on lunch, and David's was sold out of apple turnovers. He said to take him on home, he didn't have anything else lined up for the day.

I dropped him off, asked him if there was anything else I could do for him. He said not, so I ankled on home. About the time I got my computer fired up, the phone rang.

Me: "Hello?"

Him: "What's goin' on?"

Me: "Checking my email."

Him: "C'mon back out, I need to go to Cleburne."

About what he didn't say, and I didn't argue. I had told him on many occasions if there was ever anything he needed to do, to call me, anytime. So I shut down the computer and drove back out. He called Leona right after I walked in, asking the whereabouts of the calendars he'd gotten from Grandview Bank. Finding them, I pulled one from the roll, and we headed out to Cleburne by way of Bud Moon's house, to give Mr. Bud a calendar. Mr. Bud came out to the car to chat with George for a few minutes when Mr. Bud's son, Robert, came up on his motorcycle. When Robert approached George, he was asked for all the money he had. Just idle conversation, that's all, but oh, so typical of George Davis.

Leaving Mr. Bud's house, we drove on over to Cleburne, going to see Johnny Posey once again, but this time about the brakes. I got kicked out of the van so Johnny could drive the van around the block. Johnny gave George the full monty about the brakes, and soon we were headed back to Grandview to see Barry one more time about the brakes. In short order, Barry returned to the auto parts store and retrieved the brake shoes he had returned that morning. PITA for Barry, as he had not ever replaced those shoes before, and they were different from all the rest he had ever worked on. George also had Barry get a can of B-12 cleaner. While Barry was fighting with the shoes, George had me spray down the insides of the drums and he would wipe them out. Twice. When we finally drove off, there was no thumping, bumping, nada coming from the brakes. Success at last!

George told me to drive to Leona's office so he could get some money to pay Barry for his labors. Arriving, he asked Brenda Brown, one of the ladies in the office, to get him to a phone, and to get a phone number for Lynn Smith Chevrolet in Burleson. While Leona was getting a check for Barry, George proceeded to call Lynn Smith Chevrolet and verbally chew out the service manager about the "service" he had been dealt that morning. I had seen George do this on a couple of other occasions, one when a mechanic in Alvarado told him he needed a new a/c compressor on his 1994 Chevrolet Caprice, when in fact he didn't. But that's another story.

Finally satisfied, George said it was time to take him home. Once again we were guffawing down the road, yakking about things unsaid and unspoken about for a while. Once again, I asked him if I could do anything else for him, and his words were, "No, I guess not, Kent. Thanks for putting up with me all day, and it's been a long, long day."

I spoke but once to George after that, early last night. I had just cooked up a batch of venison chili, and I called him to ask him if he wanted some. He said, "Remember that chili recipe I told you about the other day?" I said, "Yes, the one you said you laid back down and never picked it up, again?" He said, "Yep, that's the one." In other words, he didn't like chili, of any kind, and sure didn't want any of mine. After a couple of other noncommittal words, I hung up the phone. Those were the last words I spoke with George Lincoln Davis. The County Medical Examiner gave a rough estimate of 2:30ish Sunday morning that George passed.

I got the call from Barry about 9:18 this morning, Sunday, January 13, 2008. I finally made it out to the Davis residence around 11:00. I spoke for a bit with Leona about the arrangements and about George. She said George was adamant about getting the breaks fixed on Friday, along with the backup sensors, like the brakes were something that "possessed" him at the moment. She was also wondering if George knew his end was near, and that he wanted her to be safe on his last ride to Tennessee. Perhaps so, and I'd also say he loved and honored the woman who took care of him for so many years, that he was willing to do most anything for her, down to his last breath.

In the course of a lifetime, we all cross paths with innumerable people who influence our lives to an indiscernible degree at the time, not knowing the positives nor the negatives until a given person passes on, either on foot or on a deathbed. George Davis was one of those people. I've lost a good friend, a companion who can never be replaced, who can never be duplicated. I'm sure I will miss him sorely in the days and weeks to come, but I am also sure I will see him again when my time comes.