Hidden Williston

 Hidden Williston

Williston has been dear to me and my family since 1967 when we rolled in to the Methodist parsonage on Noble Avenue from Kentucky.  Though my fathers pastorate came to an end in 1977 and we moved to Lake City, our connection to Williston never did. 

Mrs Valerie Blackburn, who lived in the trailer court where Hardee’s now stands, beside the large Mother Wilson’s two story, now gone, across the street from the white wood parsonage, now moved out toward Ocala, told me every time I visited her and her pet Mockingbird, that she was praying I would marry a Williston girl. I always laughed it off, seeing my prospects dimming with each passing year and old girlfriends marrying others. 

But in the hidden realm, the day I met my niece Jessica’s nurse at Shand’s of UF, my sister saying, “you just got to meet her! She’s a Williston girl!” The minute we met, my thoughts immediately went to Mrs Blackburn. That was around 1986. In 1988 I wish Mrs Blackburn was still alive to see me marrying the Mayors daughter in Whitehurst Chapel by my father. 

In 2001 my father sold his place in Crawfordville and moved back to Williston to the Chiropractor Lipscombs place near Blue Grotto on 27 across from the Catholic Church. We continued to return to Williston, sadly in March of 2011 where we buried my father at the top entrance of Orange Hill, where years prior, he had purchased several lots, then all alone beside Pappy and the beloved Whitehurst family across the street. 

In 0ctober of 2017 we sadly returned to lay beside my father the best pastors wife Williston ever knew, my mother. 

And so we continue to return. We continue to note the hidden. The KFC building where my sister had her first job, the empty hospital where Melanie started out as a nurse with the great doctors McCoy, Dailey, Reddy and Martin, where I later worked in maintenance and was friends with my future father in law, the empty Holiday Inn lot where we’d go swimming, the hawk in the tree by the abandoned school for sale where I graduated in ‘73 and my mother taught, the large oak tree that fell that was once beside my bedroom window, where we placed the worms for sale sign, the linear park where once the Seaboard train stopped traffic. We see the hidden. We see Orange Hill expanding over toward Joe Smiths. We hear Mockingbirds and thank the Valeries for all the prayers.  We ride down the hill and pause way too often and say hello to friends and loved ones.