City Limits

By Debbie Knox

Everyone has this one person in his or her life that has made a difference. Sometimes it’s a family member but sometimes it’s someone who just walks in your life unexpectedly. I had seen him at church and knew who he was, but the day he walked in to Garrett Furniture (where I worked at the time) to ask me if I was interested in coming to work for him was the day my life changed forever. It might have had something to do with my childhood. My daddy died in 1967 when I was 13. It was a troubled relationship with him because he was a severe alcoholic. He was never abusive or mean spirited to me and that was part of the problem. I looked up to him and went everywhere with him. He was always dressed to the max even when he went fishing, starched shirt and khakis with a nice everyday hat. He had been to mortuary school and worked for Smith-Bates Funeral Home in Mount Pleasant at the time. Abb Smith was his first cousin. Everyone called him “Speedy” Floyd because during those days he drove the ambulance whenever there was a need for one. Obviously, he earned his nickname by the way he drove. There’s something about mortuary school where they teach you how to dress and how to have manners. That was one good thing he passed on to my sister and to me. But his alcoholism was something I was simply was too young to understand and my mother could not live with it. After they divorced, he died in a wreck in 1967 and I lost my connection with the only true father figure in my life.

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