In Dream

Melanie sleeping early morning on the couch at the Summerplace condo. Allison, the Powers grand daughter, did a good job remodeling, getting an A rating from the Condo Association.

Out there

In the five AM surf of Crescent Beach taking a few time exposures before the battery died in the Canon S95. Friday night Melanie and I had attended the St Augustine versus Columbia High football game with the Taylors and Hamiltons. We sat in a light rain the entire game.
The Yellowjackets of St Augustine kept the game close until the third quarter when the Tigers intercepted a pass and went up by two touchdowns, the final score being 42 to 24.
We had gone to watch Nathan, the Taylors son at quarterback, but he saw limited action after throwing an early interception.
Following the game, Melanie and I drove down to Summerplace to stay the night at the Powers Condo. At first we went to the wrong condo, but got it right eventually.
We did not want to mess up the place so slept on the couch. And thus I was up by 5am not sleeping well.
Melanie slept well though, not waking till around nine. We packed and went to Denny's at I-95 then on home, stopping at Winn Dixie in Starke for $200 worth of groceries.

Bill Time

Pouting beside the Ford Ranchero 500 in Williston. Lewis, eight years younger than I had been told it was time to get a hair cut. Lewis, like me in the early 70's of long hair and hippies, rebelled against having to travel down town to Bill Griffis barber shop. And heaven forbid if your turn came and old Mr Griffis, Bill's father, Alfred Griffis, had an opening. He would not let you say, I am waiting on Bill, making you climb on up. He would wrap the striped drape around your neck with the toilet tissue pulled tight enough to choke and slowly prepare his tonsil tools of torture. Old school, the only cuts he knew were the crew or butch. A little off the top or just a bit on the sides fell upon deaf ears literally. "What's that you say?"" Yes", and with the crew cut he would proceed. Even on his finest of days, well in his eighties, he was shaky and erratic.  Invariably, at some point in the process of getting 'crewed', he would go into a coughing frenzy, never slowing the buzzing, as the stainless clippers followed the familiar path of their master, as an old cow on a rutted trail, jerking about with every spasm like an old Willy's on a Gulf Hammock road, sending blond  chunks of hair filling to the floor. It was always my greatest fear that he would decide to give me a shave around the ears, sharpening the straight razor on the leather razor strop, applying the warm lather from the foam dispenser. By the time Mr Albert had straightened up the erratic hair lines and applied stinging tonic water to the bloody moles he had flattened , dashed talcum powder all over you and brushed you down with the soft whisk bristles, you may as well of called Joe Knauff to come and lay you out, dying in the chair, than to have to face your friends the following Monday, shorn shamefully as a bleating sheep returned from a de-wooling.
And is it any wonder Lewis had such a powerful pout, knowing what he was soon to face?

Supper on the stove

 

Clara's Kitchen

Came across this negative from the 70's with my mother in the parsonage kitchen on Noble Avenue. I had forgotten the layout of the kitchen, and now it returns to me via the photograph. We lived in the white wood house from 1967 to 1977 in Williston, Florida. The house was moved after we left for Lake City and taken out of town toward Ocala on US27 where I assume it is today.
The lot remains vacant where the house once stood across from the basketball courts of the Elementary school where my mother taught. From her room, she could see the house.
I recently took all her cookbooks I had taken to the shed and bought them back into the house to go through. When my mother is here this week-end with us, I hope she will go through them with me and be able to pick out some of her favorites.
She must of had many, for even in the various books from churches we had attended and from schools and various fund raisers, the pages are worn and in places she has added a cup more of sugar here or flower there, making modifications. Then there are the extra clippings stuck between the pages cut from papers and magazines.
I was glad to have found her recipe for White Chocolate Cake in the 1982 Delta Kappa Gamma cookbook.

The Logo protest

During the Olustee Festival parade the NAACP came out to protest the Confederate flag in the Lake City logo I had designed back in the eighties via a contest. They stood along the route then marched over to City Hall to rant. The Confederates out numbered the protestors, but they got their way sort of in the end, with the flag left in, but the American flag added. It was a bad re-design of the logo.

 

 

 

 

 

Land-em

We would travel down to Panacea
to Mr McMillans ponds
on Mashes Sands Road by the
Oclockonee River where it
flowed into the Gulf
and the fishing was good
for few people were allowed
to fish in his ponds.
Of my father he was fond
as were so many in Wakulla County.
It was beyond terrible when
he told us he had sold the
property at Crawfordville
and was going to move to Williston.
As a consequence
we never again fished
or went to the beach
or to the river
but to a twenty-acre piece
of land a mile outside
Williston
where the large oaks had lightening rods
and it was near Blue Grotto
but
hard as we tried to make the best
of a sad situation
it just wasn't
Crawfordville and
Wakulla County.
So many stray turns occurred
and I firmly believe had
we held onto that little
piece of paradise on the Aaron Road
our son would not be estranged
our family as a whole would be
much more tight knit
but as it is
we are scattered
with no anchor place to
call the homeplace.
Oh I lament the day
my crazy daddy sold
our birthright!

From Bank to Baya

went to Columbia Bank to cash a twenty and a view of the boarding house as you leave the bank drive thru.

passed the bathroom at Powers Service where i used to first work when i came to Lake City for two years, turning down an Art teaching position at Monticello. I was actually fired by the Service Manager Rusty Hurrell for doing what he said, write the times down of all the sales people when they come and go. Little did he realize I was writing the times down of sales lady Betty, of whom he was leaving as well and having an affair. The spineless brother in law, whose father owned the business would not back me up, though I was in the right. Hindsight being clear, should have taken the Jefferson County job!

down Marion Street and the drug store that used to be a nice place to eat..

saw Ralph who walks daily from Gum Swamp to the Cleopatra Steele homeless food kitchen to eat, about to enter the open area that was once Esco Hardware, then Community Jewelers, where I bought our engagement and wedding rings, the building burning several years after the Lovely and Diana Shops burned across the street in the early 80's, of which I was there to photograph, working as a photographer for the Reporter at the time.

made it to the corner of Marion and Madison and the former bank turned city hall with a view of the city logo I designed and they changed for the worse...

to the intersection of US90 and Marion Street with the new Welcome to downtown sign.

with an clear view of the old post office and First Baptist educational wing and parking lot where the chamber of commerce and other buildings once stood.

past one of the grandest homes in town on the corner of St John's where the girl used to take dance lessons years ago upstairs, where the attorney's reside who tried to handle our fathers estate.

past the nicely painted home across from where my mother gets her hair styled each Friday at 1PM sharp at Southern Exposure.

past the Greyhound bus station and a line of passengers with Lake Isabella and Womans Club just behind on Hernando Street.

the always well-maintained grey home.

the stately and fine oak tree shaded home that serves as a frame shop.

to Emory Grays place he used to maintain so well when living, where we first lived in the upstairs garage apartment for $125 a month.

to Wileys Insurance where i used to have my Cleaning business liability insurance and the end of the journey with Baya the next stop just past the Pizza Hut....

Sedge of Pounds

Upon the nadir of a bike ride nightly
i come to the place where the broom sedge grow
usually carrying two cameras with me
the iphone4 and the Canon S95 in tow
the iphone4 simply for recording history
Canon S95 with the JB Welded back
set in manual usually
so familiar a blind John could get it right
but each time is like the first day
i took the Yashica in wonderment
set exposure just as the Sekonic meter said
focused the 135mm lens slowly
exposing the Tri-X film toward Noble
the next day in the darkroom at school
the physics teacher guiding the reel
doing it quickly by feel
in the devils darkroom thrilled
at this magical photography.

decoration day

 

Tabor Light

 

Blossoms past