To open a bed of worms

 To open a Bed of worms

John Clare Stokes

In our Williston years, my father and I maintained a bed of worms, “the best you ever saw” said the late Bobby Sandlin who lived next door, the worm bed defining our property line. The bed was fed by the bantam chickens manure we raised in a pen my father made, by cow manure from the Elliot Whitehurst’s huge feedlots, and every scrap left from meals mamma made and the vegetables and leftovers from the garden beside the parsonage. 

And people would come and we’d dig for them a hundred wigglers for a dollar, an easy task for there were thousands in big clusters when you turned up the rich compost. 

When we moved from Williston to Lake City in 1977, as in  all our prior moves, daddy took a large quantity of worms to start a new bed. My father always maintained one where ever we lived, for he loved to fish. Though the parsonage in Lake City was on Alligator lake, someone stole the Mercury kicker and the trials of first church didn’t allow for much fishing. I’m sure though the yard is well wormed. I don’t miss so much the digging, but I sure miss fishing with him in Pappy’s lake back in Williston.