There are races I remember
John Clare Stokes
Over the years I have occasionally visited the place of one of my most memorable races. Last year this time on our way back from Mississippi we detoured off I-10 monotony to the wonderfully landscaped West Washington US90 to Monticello and then down Waters Street between the Methodist Church my father pastored and the Jefferson County Elementary where I was a new third grader from Sopchoppy. We turned off Waters to the no trespassing road behind what was once the PE building. I went back to the day the coach announced today we are going to determine the fastest third grader. We all knew it was going to be Jimmy Haines, the champion from first and second grade.
We all lined up along the P.E.building and the instructions were to the guardrail, touch it and back up the hill. At the blast of the whistle, we all, boys and girls, set out in a tangle downhill. As expected, Jimmy reached the turn around first, but not far behind, the new boy from Sopchoppy.
About half way up the hill, the new kid surged ahead and handily won the honor of fastest runner in third grade. It was a door opener for the shy boy as now he was suddenly wanted on the team, in the group, at the lunchroom table.
The boy from Sopchoppy won few races over his running career, but he was certainly stoked to have won this one.
If there was a year
I’d ask to live again
Give me seventy six
It came near the nadir
of a life
Twenty one
Junior year at Asbury
how I would not get that
F in Spanish
how I would play on Winstons
Viking basketball team
How I’d run cross country
through the Jessamine hills
how I’d board in Johnson dormitory
maybe even Fletcher Hall with Freddie
how I’d graduate
with my fifth and sixth grade friends
If only I could have
Seventy six again
John Clare Stokes
When an old love dies
we don’t send flowers
we don’t attend visitation
we mourn in silence
among the hidden letters
after the grass has grown
the marble marker placed
we visit the lover
glance about lest some say
why lingered he there today.
This is the type post that gets no interest. Melissa was the only one to like it when i placed in Poetry of Image.
I may post it to my main page just
to see.
When we lived in Sopchoppy in the 50’s and 60’s, Laurice and Floride Roberts Standard Oil Station on the outskirts of town on HWY 319, was one of two places to get gas or have your vehicle or tractor worked on by Johnny B, the black mechanic. The snapshot inserted is of my father, Luther Ray, who passed away in 2011, and Laurice with his dog. Laurice died in 1997 and Floride in 2008.
Someone commented on Old Florida, that the people of Sopchoppy were unfriendly. If so, it’s only because all the people I knew as a boy are buried out in West Florida Cemetery, and all the unfriendly have moved in from Tallahassee.
I think there were few towns like Sopchoppy in the 50’s and 60’s that epitomized Mayberry more.
Home of Florida Morrison Roberts, Sopchoppy, Florida. 1883-1976.
When we lived in Sopchoppy in the late fifties
Early sixties
Mrs Florida was the matron of town
A stalwart in the Methodist Church my father
pastored.
We spent many Sunday afternoons after church
eating dinner with Mrs Florida, her daughter Inez and her son Bonny Kaslo “BK”, then one of the Florida Supreme Court justices.
When my father would be out of town on a revival, we would stay with Mrs Florida. She would let me play shoe salesman with her button up shoes, trying them on her. Her down feather mattress guest bed was a dream to sleep in.
When Hurricane Dora came through, we stayed at Mrs Roberts, even though our concrete block parsonage was stronger than her wood and tin home.
Mrs Florida corresponded with us in letter up until her death in October of 1976. My father returned to conduct her funeral.
I now have Mrs Florida’s sweet letters and will always, next to Mrs Mary Roberts, who kept me, hold a place in my heart forever.
Through the mystic artistic
Like a Turner painting we were in
as the mystic sun was blending
in the electric blues from below
our paddles paintbrushes in
the canvas flow.
The night I told God... I could do a better job...of running this sphere.... placing the moon here...and the road there....with trees everywhere....and so I got my way....and if I might say....was doing a pretty decent job....till cicadas waking started....and stars began departing....and darkness wasn't regulated...and floods inundated ...and I prayed for day....to tender my resignation of doing a better job than God...
Sunday road trip
There we were, like Barney in his first car from Myrt “Hubcaps” Lesh, heading out for Georgia, when having the time of our lives around White Springs, Roscoe decided to become sick as a dog like Gomer and heaved all over the camera on the console.
Naturally there were no towels in the car, McDonalds was closed to indoor dining, so the Gate bathroom provided enough towels and water to clean up. By this time we were too hungry for Lake Park so at the Jasper intersection of 136, we headed for Zaxby’s in Live Oak. It was still a good trip despite it all, good for Thelma Melanie to get out after being cooped in the last two weeks.
Zebra Long-wing
And in my long sitting and pondering
In alas flittered a zebra long wing
to briefly on its journey drink some zinnia
leaving me pondering my own journey.
In the old green hall
Mrs Thompson still calls
The little second grader
Let his inner man out to play
Rues the day
He left the old green hall
Yellow Jacket Fever
John Clare Stokes
In the old green hall
Miss Thompson still calls
the little Sopchoppy second grader
Time for class children
Longs for the day
the bloody nose at recess
for Miss Thompson took him
laid him on the counter
and took away the
Yellow Jacket fever.
Second Grade
Margaret Townsend if you are out there
The little boy who had the crush on you
Who moved to Monticello for grade three
He still misses you and ole Sopchoppy
And thanks you for gently teaching him
More to life than his A,B,C's.
I grow weary of posting photograghs i try and be more than just pretty and there little intesest. Post and pretty pic or a mug shot and there they go. The poetry is worse. I guess you keep on and damn the lack of intesest.
