Oak pastures of Della Williams Lane

 

Tom Cat Lane Rose

 

Lift up

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Therefore
lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Hebrews 12:11-13.

Lantern Pop

 

What yonder see

 

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, and say what seeth yond? Shakespear from the Tempest

The Dougon of Bob

 

Dougon by john clare

i came upon the dougon
far from Suwannee facing down
plying the open blue sky
paddle strokes never dying
 rippling toward the gulf
against eternal shores brush

in dougon two friends
gliding quietly over springs
into the dark river narrows
past the flowing forevers
to the tupelo honey haven
 ripples by paddles making

golden streams only dougon knows
beyond the bends and  rocky shoals
scribed upon the back
every scrape and water lap
still the ripple in the shade
til once again currents assuade.

 

Land of Giants Part 4 Of Strawberries, Bread Pudding and Sopchoppy

In the afternoon of June 1967 our family arrived at new home on West Noble Avenue in Williston, Florida. We had returned from my father serving as the Alumni Director of Asbury College, Wilmore, Kentucky. Returning to the United Methodist Florida Conference, the parsonage was an older but comfortable wood house next to the church as was our house in Sopchoppy. The Pastor Parrish Committee headed by Mrs Emma Rutland and Joyce Bullock arrived to welcome us to our new home.
The next morning I saw these two grown men bringing watermelons and leaving them on the back porch. I told mamma and she went to the door. It was Bill and Jack Whitehurst and I learned they were my age.  Fear arose in me. If all the boys were as large in this strange town, I was in deep trouble.
The Williston Church is a beautifully crafted structure of historical value, similar to the workmanship that went into the Monticello Methodist Church. With the semi-circle congregation and the upper balcony and the beautiful stained-glass windows, it was and continues as a pleasing testimony of giving God the finest.
With each passing Sunday through the summer, I learned that not all the boys were giants and Orville Wheeler, a coach of the Williston JV basketball team from West Virginia, who attended our church, said he looked forward to this Kentucky boy trying out for the basketball team.
My father set about creating his workshop from the storage room at the end of the educational wing to the rear of the church and planting a small garden between the church and parsonage. I am sure he got permission from Mrs Rutland. There was a basketball court with four goals across the street from our house complete with lights so I spent the first summer shooting into the evening.
My father immediately went about making acquaintances with the members of the church, visiting their homes which was a strong point of his ministry. He became close friends with the Whitehurst families, the sons of Pappy, the elder Whitehurst, Bill, Elliot and Dan. It was Pappy and my father, along with Elliot who were the closest. My father spent many days at the cattle roundups on their vast farm plus fishing on the lakes on their property between Gainesville and Williston. One of the most looked forward to events in Williston was a Whitehurst Bar-b-que  at their lodge with the unique sauce Pappy concocted, along with the tender meat of the beef , elk and buffalo  they served. Gracious people, though well off, none exuded wealth or paraded their status. They were of a genuine, humble stock which endeared them to many of lesser means.
To make my summer days go faster, my father secured me a job at $1 an hour working for Mr Mixon in his hay fields. I recall the first day Mr Mixon put me on one of the tractors to teach me how to drive it. I let out the clutch too soon, nearly running him over. I am sure if I wasn't the Preachers son, he would have fired me on the spot. He persisted with me and I progressed to the point he would take me to a field out from Montbrook and leave me the entire day to bale, turn or cut hay, then pick me up in the afternoon.
No phones or communication, one day I broke down and just sat all day under a tree waiting for him to return.
The square hay bales now stacked and in the barn, my summer job came to an end. It was time to make that walk up the hill from the house and enter the 7th grade at Williston High. We all met in the auditorium and without any announcement for quiet, behind me, you could hear the rows going silent as Coach Sammy Smith entered and made his way to the front. Coach Smith commanded fear and respect just by his intense look, more than any coach I have ever known. Principal Powell came to the podium and made his welcomes and the new year had begun. The bell rang and we rushed to our home rooms.
My mother again found a job teaching a combination of the 5th and 6th grades in nearby Bronson.
Her mother came from Bluefield, West Virginia to live with us and keep my younger brother Lewis who was only four at the time we arrived.
Williston like many small North Central Florida towns was a farming community, primarily peanuts and watermelons and other seasonal crops. The Fugates had large peanut farms with processing plants and were a large part of the local economy. Many people commuted to nearby Gainesville for jobs at the University or many businesses. A spur railroad line from Archer to Romeo and Dunnellon ran through Williston at the time and would make a stop at the station on Noble and Main Streets.
The fall of sixty-seven, I made the junior varsity football team as a wide receiver. While the Whitehurst three horsemen of Bill, Jack and Monty all started on the line, I rarely played, but the coach knew I was fast.
My chance came one evening at an away game in Trenton. It was fortunate that my father was in attendance, as his busy schedule kept him from most of my games. The coach called for a fly route, which meant I was to go deep. I lined out wide to the left and ran as fast as my legs could carry. Carey Chandler let loose a high spiral which came my way into the zone, of which I dropped. I ran back to the bench dejected.
The next series of plays, we again found ourselves at midfield. The coach called for Stokes. He was giving me another chance. This time as I made the end zone, the ball landed and I clutched it tight for my first touchdown. A large roar went from our bench and from the stands, my fathers voice I heard above all," Way to go John!" All the way to the locker room that night, the Whitehurst boys could be heard yelling out my name! It was quite a night.
The varsity boys were not faring as well that year, but were holding back for what was to be one of the most memorable years in Williston Red Devil football history.
Under the intimidating and in your face coaching style of Coach Sammy Smith, in the fall of 1968, Williston made it as far as the  Class B State Final game against the Delray Beach Carver Eagles, an all black school. The game was played at the old downtown Williston City Stadium and not a seat was to be found. As the Carver men came onto the field, a hush descended with their size and numbers and they waved their arms bird-like slowly up and down as they paraded confidently around the entire field. With many of our players sick with the flu that evening, including our star half back Jackie Standridge, the dirty dozen boys lost a heart breaking game 39 to 9. Devils go for broke tonight went the headline. Varsity seniors whose names would live immorial in Williston Lore:  Hugo Legler,Flanker  Lee Chandler,End Mike Micheletti,tackle Jackie Standridge,halfback,Ralph Smith,flanker,Roy Stephens,quarterback,Emmitt Whitehurst,center,Buddy Gilley,Guard, Mike Smith,end,Danny Munden,tackle,Mark Smith,halfback and David Pitts,guard.
While the varisty boys were compiling their 11-1-1 season, in my second year of JV football, I was now the starting half back, emulating the great Jackie Standridge with long break away end around runs, led by the blocking of the Whitehurst boys and fullback Johnny Henry. The Yearbook annual staff caught me in full stride, captioning it "John makes a long haul".
While in the 7th and 8th grades I ran the 100 and 220 dashes since I was one of the fastest white boys. That soon came to an end as for the first time, Williston integrated with the East Williston Black school and I became after that an 180 low hurdler and middle distance runner in the 440 and mile relay.
But life for me was not all sports and as a true Stokes, my eyes soon turned to the girls of Williston.
The first girl I recall having a formal date with was Ann Brooks. It was a date to the United Methodist Church banquet. It was a double date of sorts as Eddie Inman, my first best friend in Williston along with his father driving us, took us there, then directly home. It was an on again and off again relationship as my ID bracelet got passed between her and Anita Micheletti. Then there was Pam Smith, daughter of Wesley and Annetta Smith. A time or two I went to her house and sat on her living room couch quietly, in fear of her father, several years before his conversion and forming the Wesley Smith Family Gospel singing group.
It was tough being a 7th grader and too old for this forth grader! I came to my senses for a time and Pam Standridge, a majorette my own age was my next girlfriend. Stranger still, my future wife, while I was an eigth grade vice president was in kindergarten with my brother, Melanie Eatman.
It was in a typing class that another girl caught my attention, the daughter of a teacher Jimmy Shelton, Melissa. Again, as the extremely shy person, our relationship never grew much beyond the typing class. Attempts were made to meet along with roads of Blue Grotto Springs near her home, but either I was too timid to come down from the trees or her mother called for her and she ran home.
And so, with the girls being a difficult proposition, my thoughts mainly dwelt upon sports.
It was the rebellious sixties and I was not immune to the rantings of the hippies and the teachings of Jerry Rubin, Abby Hoffman and Malcome X. My rebellion manifested in many ways, one being my hair, of which I tried to grow as long as possible. My dad would always prevail though and off to city barbers I would go. One particularly painful day, when Mr Griffis was occupied, I let his father cut my hair. Between his coughing fits and the clippers jerking erratically, I came out butchered and in tears.
The other form of rebellion was directed toward Coach Miller and his authoritarian rule over the school. I determined I would not play varsity football, which Coach Miller really wanted me to. Instead, to the realization of my mistake since, I decided to forgo football and concentrate on basketball. Problem was, with integration, I was the only white boy on the team, which meant I never got the ball to shoot after working as point guard to get it up court for my so called team mates. While they accepted me into their ranks, on the court, it was a quest of seeing who could compile the largest stats, and that did not include the white boy. As a consequence, we never won many games. The only real joy I had in basketball, my first love from Kentucky and under Coach Wheeler in JV, was from DeMolay. Demolay was the youth branch of the Masonic Lodge and under the leadership of Jay Burke,Mr Aderholt and later Joe Crane, we were able to compete in sports without the dominating black boys.
Our team consisting of Steve Moree, John Bolton, David Hassell, Eddie Inman and myself made it all the way to the state final two years, losing due to most of us catching food poisoning down in Hollywood. I also went to the state finals in track winning every event I entered including the 100, 220, 440 and 880. The other DeMolay boys did not appreciate us since we were not interested in the ritual aspects, only the sports. They really fumed I suppose when I won the title of Mr DeMolay and got to kiss the order of Eastern Star sweetheart from Ocala.
 On April 19th of 1969 while my mother was at the A&P, managed by Lewis Inman and Johnny Tyner, my grandmother Orander came from taking her bath and asked me for a drink of water. I said, "Oh Grandma!" and went into the kitchen to get it. When I came into the bedroom, she was laying on the bed and her false teeth fell out as she relaxed in death. She was trying to take her Nitro pill. I called out to her but she had a massive heart attack. I ran to the A&P and said to mamma," Something is bad wrong with grandmother, come!" I always felt guilty that the last words she heard on earth were my, "Oh grandmother!" The rebellion haunts.
We had a memorial service in the church then made the long drive to her home in Bluefield, West Virginia to be buried next to her husband Richard Orander who died in March of 1961.
In 1971 after taking the drivers education class with Mr Johns, I received my drivers license. My sister already had a car, a blue Volkswagen fastback which we now shared. It opened possibilities beyond my three speed Schwinn bicycle which could carry me only so far from town. We were now able to drive into Gainesville to the Mall, then out on 13th street with Sears on one end, down an escalator and through the stores to Maas Brothers on the other end. A mall was a new concept to us and nearly everyone in Williston could be seen at one time or another there. We were able to drive down to Dunnellon to the pristine Rainbow River and the KP swimming hole. Out to Devils Den and the large sink hole opening we dared jump down into, climbing back up the rope ladder. Out into the sand hills to visit the hippies. Over to Motion Sink to our cabin in the woods Eddie and I spent time thinking ourselves Thoreau's. To Ocala and the DeMolay sweetheart's home Eddie was dating, then onto the Silver River or Juniper Run.
Then off to Ft Walton Beach to visit our friend Michael "Wolfie" Parrish and search for vacationing Mississippi girls along the beaches of Destin. Gas was only 1.25 a gallon and there was always a gas war going on in Perry or other towns along the way.
While on the exterior I spent much time living down my image as a Preacher's son, the effects of my fathers Baptist style of evangelistic preaching was wearing upon my soul. Having been confronted a few years back in Wilmore by a persistent Seminary student about my spiritual state of life, I knew my soul was one in jeopardy.
But the peer pressure over rode and  I continued to sit in the back row rooms of the church and try not to listen to the sermons.
My senior year in 1973 arrived and I only participated in baseball and basketball. I gave up track my senior year, again out of rebellion due to Coach Tom Honea moving to East Carolina University and the cancelling of the 180 low hurdle race. As the movie said, "I could have been a contender"  if not for the rebellion.
A year earlier, in physics class under Emil Santiestiban, I purchased his Yashica P 35mm manual camera with a screw mount 135mm lens and a Sekonic light meter for $25.I was able to develop the black and white film in the school's darkroom. It was the beginning of a serious interest in photography. With the graduation money I received, I went to Harmon's in Gainesville and bought a Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic with a 50mm lens, lamenting not having enough for a Nikon.
It had the built in match needle light meter and I thought this a marvel, not to have and carry the Sekonic meter.
Graduation was at the football stadium by the Peanut sheller with my mom able to sit out on the field with the collected dignitaries. The hair was now long and styled, quite funny looking by today's bald standard.

A photo of my dad with his dour,sour look and my mom, with equally large hair and me, posing seriously, is a picture telling a thousand words.

With my sister already at Santa Fe Community College which then was located in downtown Gainesville across from where Alachua General Hospital was, I enrolled for the summer. We were still in the latter stages of the hippy era and the smell of pot was always in the air, the professors spacey and the students free spirits. I wanted to start out in biology and some medical field like respiratory therapy from working at the Williston Memorial Hospital in maintenance under Warner Morgan, but found the classes beyond my ability. I then switched to Art where my interest and ability resided. For two years I made A's in every class, quite a contrast to my C average high school career.

By 1973 the ten acres my father and mother had purchased in Wakulla from Mrs Towles in 1963 was taking shape. My father and I had made many trips over to Crawfordville to clear the land, plant fruit trees and plants, including blueberries and muscadine grapes. The old house with the cracker style four rooms and dog trot, built by the freed slave Mr Gavin, was furnished and habitable. We built a tool shed and my father again had a spacious place for his tools and a large garden. We loved going as a family and staying at the old tin roof house, with the long front porch under the large oaks. We could go over to Wakulla Springs again as we did as children living in Sopchoppy, hear again the old black men on the jungle boat calling for Henry the fish to jump the pole. We could go over to Mashes Sands out from Panacea and swim in the Gulf amid the many horse shoe crabs.  The Oak's Restaurant which we ate at on Sunday's years earlier was still open. And we could re-connect with our Sopchoppy friends as well, though I seldom saw them despite being near.

It was here we began the syrup making tradition, my father acquiring a 60 gallon kettle and Golden #2 syrup mill. He had Mr Snyder a local brickmason lay the bricks and chimney. We hooked up the Gravely tractor with the cart to the pole and locked the tractor into a turn. The tractor would go under its own power like a mule and we could feed the mill with the stalks we grew.

We called the syrup Old Homewood after my dad's birth town in Mississippi. We called the place at Crawfordville Pilgrim's Rest. It was my hopes to someday return to Crawfordville myself and live, but those hopes were dashed several years later. 

Angeline Gainey "Plump" Donaldson

It was with sadness when my old friend Robert Strickland from Sopchoppy told me via Facebook that Angeline, the maid who kept me while we lived in Sopchoppy, died on July 4th at the age of 89.
She was the daughter of Charlie and Rachael Gainey, and the wife of George C. Donaldson for 56 years.She was the mother of three sons, Willie G., George Patrick, and Alvin B.Donaldson, and a daughter, Juanita Staley, who all preceded her in death.
She was a home care provider for 31 years.
Her service was Saturday, July 14th at 11AM at the Greater Mount Trial P.B. Church in Sopchoppy. She was buried at the Buckhorn Cemetery.
She was survived by her two devoted sisters, Rosa M.Roiser and Annie Lee Carter of Tallahassee, a brother-in-law, Roscoe Franklin of Philadelphia.
She had 13 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren, five great,great grandchildren, nine nieces and nephews and a host of great niceces, nephews, cousins and sorrowing friends, including one little boy who would lovingly run from her as she lovingly chased him from the house with the big red butcher knife.

 

Wilmore will Shine Tonight! Part three of Strawberries, Bread Pudding and Sopchoppy

Whenever our family would take a journey North, we would always stop for the night at my fathers brothers home in Smyrna, Georgia, Northwest of Atlanta. Uncle Curtis and Aunt Grace both worked for Lockheed Aircraft in nearby Marietta. My fathers original brothers and sisters were Earnest Curtis, James Marzelle, Hazel Marie and Esther Irene. My father fell in between Hazel and Irene in the birth order on October 16, 1923. When their mother Ethel Marie Wike died as a result of a blood clot in 1937 at the age of 37, grandfather Earnest William re-married in 1939 to Bernice Beatrice Boykin and had four children, William Clark, Jimmy Boykin, Rev Billy Ferrell and Mary Carol Watkins.
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.