There could not be a mountain back roads run with Doctor Flowers without a fair amount of Toots And The Maytals to play as part of the soundtrack along the way. Frederick Nathaniel Toots Hibbert was a ska and reggae originator that both of us preferred to Bob Marley at the head of our Reggae Pantheon. Doc had most records Toots had released, and several more that were probably released without Toots’ permission, culled from record stores and thrift-shops. Collecting music was hard work in those days, pre-internet. Toots Hibbert enjoyed a long and durable career as singer, songwriter, and force of nature. We played his music at Doc’s Memorial Service. Toots released his final record, Got To Be Tough on August 28, 2020. He died of COVID-19 on September 11. The unspeakable tragedy of his loss is made sharper by the fact that Got To Be Tough kicks ass and is as relevant musically and lyrically as anything he put out, in over a nearly 60 years of recording. However you might listen to music, go search for it and play it all the way through. It will be better time spent than watching the news or liking a funny meme. I listen to it and think of better times for all of us. I know Doc would’ve loved it, and we would’ve mourned Toots’ passing together, either at Ground Zero with a UT Women’s game silently playing out on the TV in the background or riding slowly along some county road in North Georgia, winding through the early morning gloaming, Doc beating rhythm on the steering wheel of the ‘Ho, saying “damn, Toots”. Time is growing short for us all. I just wish Doc and Toots had gotten a little more of it. Doesn’t seem like much to ask, looking back.
I had to burn some leave time so at the end of June I fled home and hearth and my pandemic routine for a long swing through South Georgia, looking to capture a Roy Burke back roads trip vibration to sooth my soul and slow my velocity. We lost Doc five years ago this month. The timing seemed appropriate. I traveled some 900 miles in three days, from the 
Ground Zero was Doc’s home base, his safe place, his patch of land, suburban retreat. He bought the house on Brasac Drive in Stone Mountain in the late 1980s when the neighborhood was still under construction, choosing the house and lot because it overlooked the wetlands on the fringe of Hairston Park. He could look out the back of the house and see woods and swamp, not other suburban houses. After he moved in he made a grand landscaping plan(seen above) called Loco-Motion/The Three Year Plan. Thanks to Paul Lamarre for unearthing this drawing to be seen here. Much of the plan Doc created, sweating away countless hours weeding and digging on days off, the physical labor an antidote to too many days sitting at a desk or in a conference room. He built a morning glory net over the living room picture window and enlisted some friends to pour a concrete(not flagstone) patio out back. It was his shelter and the place where he spent many of his happiest years. I and his closest friends and neighbors were lucky to spend time there with him, too. The house is still there, but Ground Zero only exists as an idea anymore, in drawings like this one, the busy, deep mind of Roy Burke spilling out on the page again, a marvel.
Around Christmas time, Doc and I would get together, sometimes with Paul, for a holiday toast, a meal, exchange gifts. We would listen to Bell Wringer, his Christmas music mixtape. Sometimes I would stay the night in the guest room at Ground Zero, preparatory to an early morning run into the mountains or down to South Georgia the next day. I always read before I go to sleep, and the light in the guest room came from one of these lamps. He had a few in the upstairs guest rooms. They aren’t antiques or museum pieces, just a functional little lamp with an unmistakable low-wattage yellow lightbulb. I keep one by the front door today, and the atmosphere it creates reminds me a little bit of good times with my friend, especially around this time of year.
doctor flowers redux 