During the summers while in Sopchoppy, William, Jimmy and Billy would arrive by Trailways bus out on 319 and Rose to stay with us. My Uncle William Clark, a diehard Mississippi State Bulldog fan would take me under his tutelage and attempt to make a bulldog out of me, passing and kicking the day away. It was common in those days I assume for children to travel on the bus lines without adults, for my mother would do the same for my sister and I, placing us on the bus for either Mississippi or West Virginia with instructions to the bus driver to watch out for us. Spending the nights with Uncle Curtis and Grace was always an adventure for I got to sleep in their spacious basement. With Aunt Grace whistling like a songbird in the kitchen and Uncle Curtis smoking his pipe, we would wake before dawn for breakfast in order to miss the downtown Atlanta traffic before the bypass days. By evening we were rolling into our new Kentucky home in Wilmore, a duplex apartment on Bethel Street, one block from the Asbury College campus.
This was quite the contrast from what we were accustomed to from our previous homes, especially the plush Monticello parsonage. We now had to secure our own furniture, of which I got a bunk bed I shared with my brother. Asbury College, of which my father was taking the position of Alumni Director and head of Public Relations, is a small, private Methodist affiliated Holiness college, founded by Francis Asbury, a Methodist minister. The campus is extremely picturesque with the stately red brick buildings with columns. The college now goes by the name of Asbury University.
My fathers good friend, who helped secure his position, the former President of Asbury, Dr Zachery Taylor "ZT" Johnson, lived one block from us on N.Lexington Street. Next to him was the home of two elderly ladies whom I would often see beating their rugs on the clothesline and on the other side, Mrs Quarey, whose yard with the huge mulberry trees we loved to explore. All these homes are now gone, having made way for the Kinlaw Library, named after the President who came to Asbury the year my father left Wilmore.
Getting somewhat accustomed to transitions, this time, I was able to meet two friends, the Smith twins, Stuart and Steven, their father having the year prior taken a science professor position, Winston Smith. It was the era of the Monkees and when we weren't watching Mickey,Davey,Larry and Peter, wearing our Nehru outfits, we had plenty to occupy our days exploring the campus, going to the track, the nine hole golf course and the little town of Wilmore with the constant train whistles at all hours of the day and night.
We would sit out on the back porch steps in the evenings, listening to the music students practice on the large pipe organ in Hughes Auditorium next door and watch for UFO's. One evening, two stars came together, there was a flash and two long star trails going east and west. Years later I speculated perhaps this was the Kecksburg, Pennsylvania UFO incident on December 9th of 1965. Another evening while watching from my bedroom window, a light larger than a lightening bug blinked across the back yard and toward my window. I ran and hid under the covers of the bunk bed.
When time for school to begin in the glorious cool fall of colors, and with my mother teaching 5th grade, the outlook was promising. For the first time in our lives, we were not the PK's, we did not have to act bad just to prove we were like everyone else. Another thing that came to my attention that I was going to like Wilmore, was the fact everyone here had a basketball goal of some sort. All those days in Monticello shooting against that homemade plywood backboard, I was now swishing shots in the Asbury College gymnasium on the clear plexiglass with the official Wilson basketballs. For as a son of a college employee and as friend of Coach Smith's son's, we had full access and loved it. Then there was the Wilmore Cubs. Even though it was only an elementary school, the upper grades had a basketball team that played a full schedule, home and away. Many a game I attended on the bus those two seasons, cheering as we rode through those Kentucky hills, Wilmore will shine tonight, Wilmore will shine!
In an unexpected plus to living at a college, my Uncles William and Billy came to live with us in the tiny apartment in our back yard. Billy was attending Asbury Seminary and William was working on his masters degree at nearby Transylvania College. My Uncle William, in his never dying efforts to recruit me to Mississippi State, on February 8th of 1965, took Billy and I to my first University of Kentucky basketball game in Memorial Gym with Coach Adolph Rupp. Even though State won that night 74 to 56, and despite him taking me down to the State locker room to meet the players, he could not budge me from being a Kentucky Wildcat. Louie Dampier, Pat Riley, Larry Conley and Tommy Kron had me from hello.
Besides, my father had been invited by Coach Rupp to pray with his boys. Who could resist a Blue God?
It snowed once in Sopchoppy and the light covering upon the ground thrilled us, but the snow that came that winter in Kentucky was beyond anything this Florida boy had experienced. The entire campus was closed to traffic, all the steep roads given over to children and adults on sleds of all sorts. That Christmas, I had gotten a 410 shotgun and my father was anxious for us to go rabbit hunting on a farm out from town in the rolling hills off Jessamine Station road. Walking through that quiet, thick snow, being the beagle following those rabbit tracks into the brush piles, along those old slate stacked walls built by slaves, I was in a hunting paradise reserved for the Crockett's and Boone's of ole 'Kaintuck'. We shot three cottontails that day and carried them home to mamma, who years later confessed she had no idea how to cook the creatures we toted home. We never complained that every recipe was fried in gravy, it tasted fine to us.
It reminded me of the time back in Sopchoppy for Thanksgiving, my father and I went out West of town to Burt Roddenberry's farm to hunt turkey. This is the same land that years later, Joe Hutto would come to live with a turkey flock and write his book, Illumination in the Flat woods. Well, that morning, Illumination came and my father shot with his double-barrelled Parker 12 gauge shotgun, a large gobbler which we again carried home to mamma, who knew how to stuff and bake. It was one of the finest Thanksgivings ever.
The two years in Wilmore were of the sort one does not want to end, but sadly they did. It was here that I finally mustered the courage I never had in Monticello with Deborah, to send that folded note to April Wells, asking her, do you like me? Yes, No, Maybe? The reply I got was a Yes! with heart after heart drawn all over. While we were not in the same class, I was able once a week to walk her from school to her girl scout meeting at the Baptist church. We never actually broke up as I can recall, we moved during the summer and I never saw or heard from her again. So I suppose in a way, we will forever be shy sweethearts.
My father made the decision to return to the pastorate in Florida due to turmoil within the college over the resignation of the President that preceded Dr Johnson and the hiring of interim President Dr Hagler. Since my father worked for President Wilson whom was fired, he felt his job in jeopardy as well.
And so that June of 1967 we loaded into the same vehicle that carried us to Wilmore from Monticello, minus Bobo our dog, who died while in Kentucky, buried behind the garage by Dr.Johnson's.
Stuart would go on to become the dean at Asbury, Steven, one of the winniniest high school basketball coaches at the Mouth of Wilson School at Oak Hill, Virginia. The duplex and little one room apartment out back would be torn down, along with Dr Johnson's and the old ladies who beat the rugs home for the new Kinlaw library.
And so with a boat in tow purchased from Dr Johnson and the prospects of what awaited us in the town of Williston as PK's again, we made our way back toward Smyrna, to spend another night down in the basement of Uncle Curtis and Aunt Grace. The strawberries and bread pudding of Sopchoppy were growing closer by the mile.
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