Over the years, John Comer has gone from chasing stray cows to chasing down antique bargains, and, during that time, he has operated heavy equipment for his own successful business. He has sung his way through it all.
Comer grew up in Jones County, and his parents, James and Frances, operated a dairy farm.
“I was milking cows when I was eight years old because I was taller than my older brother (Jimmy),” Comer smiled. “I was driving dump trucks hauling silage when I was probably 13, and I mean all the way to Wayside, everywhere. You know, I’d meet the sheriff, and I would wave when I went by.”
Comer, who will be 64 in a couple of weeks and has two adult daughters, Jamie and Jessica, continued his education following graduation from Jonesco Academy.
“I went to Georgia College for three years, taking computer science, and I was working with the boilermakers at Plant Branch,” he recalled. “I did all their books and their timekeeping, and then daddy called me, wanted me to come back to the dairy. He needed some help.
“That’s what I’d done all my life, so I went back with him and stayed there with him. I went in partnership with him.
“We had about 500 cows, all together,” Comer went on to say. “We raised all our own calves and replacement heifers and did all our artificial breeding. We had a feed mill. We had everything. We had a good setup.”
A big change
Comer eventually bought his dad out and ran the business himself for about seven years, but he began diversifying. Eventually he changed directions.
“I started running equipment in ’92 to pretty much supplement my dairy income,” he stated.
He then made the decision to get out of the business in 1995. “You work seven days a week for $600 a week. It’s just not worth it. You are on call 24 hours a day, milking at 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. We auctioned off the cows and equipment and kept the land.”
There is a distinct advantage to a bulldozer over a cow, Comer avowed.
“I can take this equipment, turn the key off, and come home,” he grinned. “And it doesn’t get out. It doesn’t have calves at 12 o’clock at night, and I’m having to pull them out.”
Comer has not wanted for work since he made the change.
“I build a lot of ponds. I work a lot on these big plantations around Eatonton and Madison, build roads all through these plantations, build ponds on them. I’ve got good customers,” he said. “I worked on a 3,500-acre plantation right up here on 129 for about 15 years.”
Comer has also done a good bit of work in Jones County.
“I built Phase One of Piedmont Lakes,” he shared. “I helped build the Pines. I helped build Hidden Lakes. A lot of stuff. I did the subdivision across the road from the skating rink.”
In all the years Comer has been in the clearing and construction business, he has experienced first-hand cold weather, hot weather, rain, equipment breakdowns, and even wasps and yellow jackets. On one occasion, the insects led to more than stings.
“I had a bunch of equipment, and I’d left one of them setting down there, ‘cause I didn’t really need it,” he explained. “Then, we were running some of the other stuff, and I went down there and hopped myself right up in it. There they were. They had built a nest in there. I didn’t see it. So I hit that T switch, and that vibration hit. Here they come, right on me. I jumped out. It’s off the ground, and that’s when I fractured my left heel.”
While he has stayed busy all these years, Comer has not relied on that business exclusively. He and his wife of 18 years, Janet, live in Haddock and own a few rental houses, all of them in the immediate vicinity of theirs.
“I got them lined up,” he said. “I crank the lawnmower up, cut all of the grass at one time.”
Comer said the homes are not new construction.
“All these houses were built in like 1908 to 1910. They are old, but we like them. We completely redo them. If you had seen this house when we bought it, you would have fallen over dead. It was rough.”
A ‘new’ business: ‘old’ stuff
While Comer has been using his equipment, Janet has been busy herself, working with Conn Realty and has a residential cleaning business. The two of them, though, have more plans.
A visitor to the Comer yard and home will see many antique-type items the couple have collected over the years. And, they have decided to give another venture a try.
“We’ve got a ton of antiques,” Comer pointed out. “That shop over there (in the back yard) is full of them. We have stuff all out here. We’ve been buying stuff for 20 years, but we’re actually going this Saturday up to Thomson, to Aunt Tique and Uncle Junks. That’s really the name.” He explained that he and Janet will be manning a booth. “Our van is packed full of stuff, so we’re going to be selling now.”
The couple does not limit their hunt for antiques to Georgia.
“We’ve been all up New York state, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire,” Comer commented. “We found a lot of places up there that are big, like old melt barns, and they’re out in the middle of nowhere. These people have these things, slam full of antiques. They sell them.
“So we’ll take that van and go up there and fill it up and bring it back down here because you buy stuff for half what it costs down here, bring it back down here and double your money. So we’re going to start selling now and doing a lot of these festivals.”
Comer will also be attending more county government meetings in the future. A few months ago, he was appointed to the Jones County Planning and Zoning Commission.
“One of the commissioners called me and said, ‘John, we need somebody on the board. We’d love to have you.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll try it.’
“I’m new to it,” he acknowledged. “It’s great to have, and we’ve got some good people on there.”
Pickin’ and grinnin’
While Comer has been operating heavy equipment for over 30 years, he has enjoyed another talent much longer. He is a guitar player and singer.
“I started taking lessons in the third grade,” he said. “I took piano and guitar until the seventh or eighth grade. Then I stopped, and then I started back taking lessons when I was 16. I took them for about two years.”
Comer started playing his guitar with local musicians, including Gena Beck and Ed Thornton (both now deceased) and Joe Thornton.
“I played with them for quite a few years,” he said. “We would go to Hiawassee to the music festivals and all that. We won one year at the Hiawassee Music Festival.”
The guitar player was not a singing member of the band initially, but Ed Thornton changed that.
“We were playing at Ed’s house one night, practicing. And Ed said, ‘John, I want you to try this song.’
It was Merle Haggard’s old song, ‘That’s the Way Love Goes.’ I tried it, and everybody was like, you know, yeah, and that’s when it started. That’s the first song I ever sang.”
“Now I probably do 250 songs. I do everything from Conway Twitty to Bob Seeger, Lynyrd Skynyrd, all of it. And I do a lot of Christmas stuff.”
(This writer can remember a night years ago when he heard Comer play and sing. With eyes closed, one would have thought Randy Travis was there.)
Sharing the love
Comer has had his own band, John Comer and Friends, and performs on his own as well. He enjoys sharing his music.
“Like when I go up there and play at Brookstone Village (senior apartments),” he said. “They have supper on Thursday night. So I go up there, and I play after their supper.
I do it two or three times a year. It’s fun because I know all those people. I cut up with them. It’s fun to me, and it’s fun for them.”
The musician is more limited now, thanks to another incident with yellow jackets, but with more serious results.
“I fell off a piece of equipment,” he lamented.
“I broke my wrist all to pieces. So, I can’t bend it anymore,” he said, holding up his left hand. “That’s all I can bend, like that.
It messed my little finger up, so it’s hard for me to get around the neck (of the guitar) now. But I can still play, just not as good as I used to.”
Comer and Janet are about to get more involved in the antique business, and he has no plans to stop playing his guitar and singing in the near future.
He has no timetable for his earthwork business, either. He just wants to do it right.
“I don’t really go out there and drum work up like I used to,” he replied to the question of when he might retire. “Word of mouth keeps me pretty busy. We’ve stayed busy for 33 years. So,” he reasoned, “I guess we do something right. Care about what you do and try to do the best job you can, that’s the way I’ve always run the business.”
