Cheque Please

In 1983 we lived in a house way out Mission Ridge Road in Rossville, Georgia.  The house was on  the way to nowhere.  Nobody ever “dropped by” to see us. It was a twenty minute drive just to get to a starting place toward some distant destination.  This house was in Walker County, Georgia whose county seat is in Lafayette (pronounced luhFAYette).   At the time US Highway 27 between Ft. Oglethorpe and Lafayette was a farm road.  Well, not exactly. The road was a nice paved two-lane US highway, but because of local traffic including farm equipment and people in no particular hurry to get somewhere, the drive to Lafayette was slow and tedious.  I drove there as little as possible. It took me about forty minutes to get there, so I seldom went there.  There was really nothing I needed or wanted to do in  Lafayette, Georgia.

But as I said, Lafayette was the county seat and the courthouse was there.  Every now and then I needed to conduct official business in the courthouse. Once I was called to jury duty there when I ended up the foreman of the jury. The case was sister vs. sister.  As you can imagine, it was a sad case. In spite of what the court records say, neither sister won that trial. But that’s another story.

Needless to say, in 1983 there was no internet; there was no doing something “online.”  But there was US mail and why I couldn’t take care of this in the mail, I don’t recall.  And since I’m not a procrastinator, I don’t know why I waited until the last day. I guess it was because I hated driving to Lafayette. The fact is that it was the last day to renew my license plate and I had to go to the courthouse to do it.  And apparently it was the last day for a lot of people.  I grabbed the only two things I needed, my renewal notice and my checkbook and headed out the door. I got in my car and started my journey.  I drove up Mission Ridge Road through  the north end of the Chickamauga  Civil War Battlefield and turned south on US Highway 27 through the park. This was before there was an  alternate 27 bypass around the  park.  The 30mph speed limit through the park was strictly enforced. Besides the steep fine, a ticket included a trip to Rome, Georgia an hour away so I respected that speed limit.  At the south  terminus I continued on Highway 27 toward Lafayette. The drivers of cars, trucks and equipment weren’t bad drivers, they were just in no particular hurry to get somewhere.  And because of double yellow lines and opposing traffic, the opportunities to pass were few and far between.  It’s was like waiting for water to boil, it just took a certain amount of time to get to Lafayette, Georgia . There was no alternate route.

The parking lot at the courthouse was full. I found a place to park and walked in.  Inside the courthouse, the line to the clerk’s window was out the door.  There were at least 60 to 70 people in line in front of me. There was nothing else to do  but take my place in  line.  Since the smartphone was still years away and I had not taken a book.  I had nothing to do but wait my turn in line. I may have made small talk with those around me, but I don’t remember.  It took me about an hour to get to the window, but I was finally my turn at the clerk’s window.  I handed her the renewal notice and opened my checkbook.  I don’t think my heart stopped, but something important stopped.  To my surprise and consternation, there were several deposit slips in my book, but no check. No not one.

What happened next only took about ten seconds.  The nice court clerk said, “Sorry.”  And I got out of line.

I could write another 1,000 words or so about my return trip home, the act of retrieving a check and my drive back to Lafayette, but I’ll just tell you that that was about an hour and a half round trip. The parking lot was still full, but I found a place to park and walked in. The line was nearly as long as when I had been there earlier. But this time I brought a book to read. I was walking across the floor to get in line when I caught the cashier’s eye and she caught mine.  Then in one of the top ten acts of kindness in my life, she motioned for me to approach her window. I apologized to the person I was breaking in front of and  I again handed her the renewal notice and wrote a check payable to the tax commissioner.  The transaction took less than a minute.

Some life lessons I have had to learn again and again.  This one I only had to learn once. When a payment is involved, have a method of payment.

A few months after that trial was over, the trial that was sister vs. sister, I was getting a cup of coffee in the McDonald's in Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia when I saw the sister we had ruled against in the case standing in  another line. That decision we reached in a week long trial was a rather agonizing process and could have gone either way.  I didn’t make eye contact, but she walked over to speak to me.  She asked, “I know you, don’t it?”   And I said, “Yes, you do.”  I braced myself. She smiled and said, “I thought so” and walked away. A top ten relief. 

A four-lane US Highway 27 from Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia now bypasses Chickamauga Park and is four-lane all the way to Lafayette.  Or so they tell me.