By Alicia Couch Payne
Anyone that knows me knows that I am a daddy’s girl through and through. Growing up my mother was a nurse who worked at Lanier Park Hospital in Gainesville. She often worked nights, weekends, and holidays leaving me in the care of my father a lot. My daddy, Royce Couch worked a lot too but the difference was he worked for himself and was able to take me with him. This formed a bond that was unbreakable up until the day he died.
There are so many memories of our time together. We were often in his old beat up trucks going back and forth from our home just outside the city limits of Buford to downtown Buford. In between these points were dirt roads. Kids of today will never know the fun to be had when you had a daddy and an old truck like mine.
Daddy loved to do donuts on Austin Garner Road. There was this one sharp turn that he would either drift through or do a complete donut in. He loved to scare my friends by taking them on this wild ride. He never scared me. I thought it was a blast and was even better when my friends couldn’t quite handle it. One day we came through and someone less skilled than my dad had taken out a good chunk of a tree in that curve.
My most vivid dirt road memories came on the road that is now closed where the big dump is, Richland Creek. There was a tiny one-lane wooden bridge on that dirt road. When it rained the road had huge puddles of water on either side of the road. One summer day, it had just rained really hard. None of my dad’s old trucks had air conditioning so the windows were down. My older sister was with us sitting by the passenger door. I was in the middle where I was always in charge of shifting gears.
Daddy leaned over and whispered to me, “Scoot as close to me as you can.” I looked up at him and the mischievous gleam in his eyes had me quickly scooting closer to him. He veered off the road into the largest puddle he could find on the right side of the road. In came a wave of water all over my sister. She let out the loudest shriek. Daddy, who’s laugh was more of a chuckle let loose with laughter. Needless to say, she didn’t find the whole thing as funny as daddy and I did. I was smug and delighted with her dousing. Being four years younger and a good bit smaller in build than she was, I was always being bullied by her. So any bit of karma coming back at her was the best thing in my book.
That day I decided that dirt roads, old trucks with no A/C, rainstorms, and summertime were some of my favorite things. However, none held a candle to my daddy. Forever a daddy’s girl.
