Each local florist has its own Valentine’s Day delivery system, dividing Coweta County into “pie slices,” splitting up business and residential deliveries, or assigning areas of the map like puzzle pieces.
ROBINSON DELIVERS YEAR AFTER YEAR Johnny Robinson is no stranger to delivering flowers in Newnan. It was an average Friday in 1947 when Robinson set out to find a job, having heard rumors at a downtown barbershop that Arthur Murphey’s Florist was looking for a delivery boy, and was told by Murphey himself — as the owner made his way out the door en route to a Florida fishing trip — to start work the following Monday. Fishing was a favored hobby of Murphey’s, known to many as “Doodle,” so much so that, for a time, Murphey Florist co-existed with an outboard motor dealership. Robinson chuckled as
he recalled one fishing trip Doodle took with then-Sheriff Lamar Potts — the pair commandeered the delivery van to pull their boat. Robinson, who still had a delivery to make, was told to take Potts’ patrol car. With the car’s radio antenna swinging the whole way, Robinson made quite the spectacle downtown — “I enjoyed it,” he said with a grin. As the years passed, the job held the same draw it had since the beginning — the people. Back then, Robinson recalled, downtown Newnan was bustling and
everybody knew everybody. Before long, he no longer needed directions to make his deliveries, and when regular recipients saw his face, they knew what was coming. In those days, the flower sender wrote his or her own card. Though Robinson never knew what they said, he knew the flowers he carried marked special occasions, both happy and sad. It wasn’t just the thriving customers to whom he delivered arrangements, but also those laid to rest in local cemeteries — “Johnny knew where everyone was buried,” said current owner Hutch Murphey, who
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