Bert and Cora

 Burt and Cora

John Stokes

Last evening on public broadcasting network they replayed the documentary of Joe Hutto called, My time as a turkey, about his study of a clutch of turkey eggs he incubated, who imprinted on him. The experiment took place in 1991 in the Apalachicola National Forest, near the farm of Burt and Cora Roddenberry in the Mt Beeser Community. It was years earlier, in the early sixties, that on this Thanksgiving morning my father, the late Rev Luther Stokes and I went on a turkey hunt on Burts property by the Deep Branch. It was before the stores sold the butterballs, and when my dad beaded in with his old Parker 12 gauge double-barreled, we knew we would have wild turkey for dinner.

We spent many Sunday's at the Roddenberry's, our favorite time in November when many would gather for his annual cane syrup making. It was from "uncle Burt" that my father learned to make his own syrup, which too later became our tradition on his little farm in Crawfordville called Homewood, after his birthplace in Mississippi. We called our syrup "old Homewood". 

In this photo, which my father took, Cora oversees the making of a chicken wire fence around her roses, no doubt to keep the turkey out. My dad was conducting a revival at the Methodist Church he served in Sopchoppy from 1955-1962. His good friend, then President of Asbury College my father and mother attended in Kentucky, Dr Zachary Taylor "ZT" Johnson, is in the background. He was the evangelist. Kneeling with Burt was Lawrence George, his friend from Asbury too, who with his wife, led the singing.

My fathers new blue Dodge DeSoto, 

Bought on trade for the old Packard, is in the background.

Today we shall gather and I shall dwell long in those cold deep woods of Wakulla next to my father, then move on over and sit beside him as he stokes the old Homewood fires.