Georgia Bell

I have written much about my dogs and the great amount of time I invest in naming my dogs. It’s not a haphazard event, as I want the name to suit the dog and be a perfect fit. I have long since adopted the custom of naming my dogs after people. I choose names that are appropriate for the dogs, but also honor the person they are named after. Like everything else I do, I have a method to my madness with the process of naming a dog being no different.

There have been so many people who have affected my life in some way and I am immensely thankful for the influence of them all. Most of us don’t have the opportunity to express our gratitude to the ones that have meant so much at various times throughout our lives. So, when I name a dog after somebody it carries great weight and it is my best effort at honoring that person.

Two years ago this summer, I acquired two little pointer puppies. The process of naming them began. After much thought and deliberation, I settled on what I thought were appropriate names for each one. I named one after Miss Georgia Bell Knight who was my neighbor in the earliest years of my life.

Miss Knight lived next door with her husband in what is known as a project house. My mama has always told me that she was pregnant with me in 1970 and Miss Knight’s husband was a sick man at the time. Mama said that he wanted so badly to see me when I was born, but he feared his life would end before my birth. God’s mercies are never ending and I made my arrival in January of 1971. He was able to see me and hold me. Mama said it made him a very happy man. He died after my birth, but I’m so thankful that he was able to see me before he left this earth.

Although I was not able to spend my youth with him, I was left with his widow who was such a big part of my adolescent years. Miss Knight was such a sweet, loving soul. She was another grandmother to me. Even then I was aware of her importance in my life, but now, fifty-something years later, I see just what an impact she has had on me. She left me with her love and I still carry that love in my heart today.

As a young boy I was “sick” with great frequency. My “sickness” was usually a result of me not wanting to go school. School bored me and at every available opportunity, I would come down with some sort of ailment. Miss Knight was always there to keep me and nurse me back to health. She never tired of keeping me. I’m certain she knew I was never really sick, but she never said otherwise.

Staying at Miss Knight’s house was always pure joy for me. I still remember how her house was laid out, where she kept certain things and of course the undeniable smells that always greeted me when I walked in her door. Miss Knight lived very simply, she never desired any type of glamorous life. She was an old southern woman, intricately linked to days gone by and she lived out her life in the purest of ways.

Miss Knight, like most women of her era, was an extraordinary cook. So, on my sick days, she would feed me. It was not only a means to feed my body, but my soul as well because cooking and sharing food was her greatest expression of love. Miss Knight fried thin, lacy cornbread. It was the kind you could read the newspaper through. It was always cooked to absolute perfection. She used a flat skillet, 10 or 11 inch and the entire “hoecake” was perfectly riddled with the holes that denote the fact it was lacy. She mixed the batter to a very thin consistency and poured it onto that hot skillet ever so slowly to create what I consider perfection. I’m a cook myself, but after many years of frying cornbread, I still cannot replicate exactly what she did. It was art in its finest form.

Even with her modest way of living, she had one indulgence, Coca-Cola. She kept her refrigerator well stocked with Cokes. The ones in the 6-ounce glass bottle. They went well with that lacy cornbread. I wanted to stay on the sick list so I could indulge in cornbread and Cokes. I don’t know how I ever made it through elementary school being sick all the time…..

Miss Knight loved to watch her “stories”, for the ones that don’t know, that was the code word for soap operas. She watched them daily. I’d sit right there with her on that old couch and watch them. I was well versed on “The Days of Our Lives” at a very young age. She did not like anything to interfere with her stories.

On March 30, 1981 I was home from school, sick again. By late morning I was feeling better because my stomach was full of cornbread and Coca-Colas – it was a miraculous recovery! Miss Knight was not all that happy that day. Heaven forbid they were interrupting the regularly scheduled programming on T.V. The regularly scheduled programming was her stories. The President was speaking. It was televised. Miss Knight was not impressed. President Reagan was leaving the speaking engagement and a shot rang out. An assassination attempt on the President had been made. Miss Knight’s stories did not seem very important anymore. I saw it live and in color on that old television sitting right next to Miss Knight. It was a day I’ll never forget.

That memory, along with a myriad of others, invades my conscious train of thought with great regularity. I am so thankful for Miss Knight and her great love for a little boy from next door. I think I’ll go buy a few of those little Cokes, open one ever so carefully and turn it up in memory of a beautiful soul….