Lost in Florida in Williston

Yesterday, I began a Facebook page titled Lost in Florida, at the suggestion of Melissa Lord, and so I told her my first post would be Frogs, of which she detests. Little did she realize I meant Frogs BBQ. And so Melanie and I traveled down to spend the day with her mother Billie and step father Gerald, esteemed Mayor of Williston. 

 

so we loaded in the car and first went through town to the Sunoco station for gasoline around 3.40. I recall the day taking a photo of this station from our parsonage with gasoline being around .94 cents. Pumping gas into a SUV in front of us was Warner Morgan, my old maintenance supervisor when I worked at Williston Memorial after graduating from WHS. We had a few good laughs.

arriving at Frogs out on US27 through East Williston, we were greeted by the two cooks, Ethel here and Crystal below. They were quite friendly and we enjoyed kidding about while ordering.

Crystal was nice enough to give me a free bottle of the secret recipe sauce for simply coming from so far.

Billie Earl ordered the Pork plate with corn on the cob and  baked beans.

Melanie ordered the medium Pork sandwich with corn on the cob and sweet sauce with half and half tea. She liked hers so much, she ordered another before leaving, eating it there.

We drove through the Williston Crossings RV park and enjoyed seeing all the arriving snow birds and locals in their very nice RV's. What an innovative idea for an old abandoned lime rock pit!

While at Frogs, we sat next to the band, the Rebounders from Ocala performing that Saturday night at the RV park. 

I had Gerald slow while I took a shot of the United Methodist Church and the spot where the old parsonage we lived in was located.

we went by Bob and Dotty Hughes home up on Mortgage Hill. This was the field across from Mr Kathleen Wheelers home. Gerald exclaimed, when I told him to stop, how do you see all these scenes? Ha.

another stop Gerald stop, taken through the glass of the car. A view up mortgage hill. There was the time I could name every resident on both sides of this road. Not sure who occupies them today. It is still a lovely lane.

It was sad to see Verbenadale in such a state of decay. Someone had posted No Trespassing Signs on about every tree, obviously growing weary no doubt of so many coming to view the demise.

this was a deliberate distortion to accentuate the erosion.

we went on towards Orange Hill, going down Blue Grotto lane. Blue Grotto is again under new ownership and looks as if they are constructing a new building next to the cave entrance. Still $40 to enter. This is the graveside of Melanies father Skeebo, her grandmother Pearl and grandfather Otis, her brother Kelly and sister Melissa.

I took the flag and put it in the car.

a view up the hill of Orange Hill.

my fathers grave stone. We will soon finally special order the white marble marker for him.

we came home to make a fire in the syrup kettle of Geralds, eat pound cake and coffee and take it easy until we had to return to Lake City to put out fires that raged since our leaving. Back to reality.