170

Yes, yesterday there was a child went forth, to Bell Springs, to hike along the blue blazed Florida Trail that follows through palmetto, oak and Sparkleberries, to name a few, to the Robinson Creek, which at 65 feet above the sea, did not allow him to ford the tea darkly, so he turned after a time, to retrace his way. Two fishermen were up the creek in their boat and never saw him, so he whistled, and they waved at him. He did not carry Walt with him, he simply laid him on the ground and let him feel the leaves and the grass. What more could a 170 year old ask? 

Wolfie

Wolfie moon

Wolfie is one of my longtime lifetime friends

Wolfie first began his howling at our command

In the watermelon fields out from Williston

Wolfie was young and strong and could toss

them long after Eddie and I were bear caught.

Wolfie went on to work in clothing apparel

Retiring to howl from treehouses in Asheville 

Eddie became a roofer around Wacahoota 

Nights as these I’m wondering if from the

treehouse and from the rooftop they do

not let out a long mournful howl for me?

Pardon

 It only occurs once a year

I want to give you a heads up

Tomorrow is the day

I grant you a pardon

From your lack of interest

In poetry

In artistry

In trickery

In imagination

In dreaming

I give you a new start

From your void of

Metaphor

Alliteration

Parable

Humor

I free you from your

Humorlessness

Literalness

Narrowness

Idiotness

Tomorrow

You're on your own til then....

Snowy, snowy night

 Early on a snowy morn

Johnclarestokes 

Mamma never tired of telling how her brother Kermit drove her to St Luke’s Hospital from Crumpler to Bluefield in a Saturday night storm on icy snow covered roads, how Kermit, the Andy Ford car salesman who liked to imbibe a bit beyond moderation, how they made it at some point over the narrow mountain switchbacks past Pinnacle Rock where Luke had proposed some few years earlier, made it to room 301 where the boy, named for a United Methodist Bishop John Branscomb and a District Superintendent Clare Cotton came into this life at 9:25AM January  30th on a Sunday of 1955, weighing 6-15 3/4 pounds and all 20 inches by Dr Foweres, who wasn’t imbibed, who got the date right, unlike the doctor who delivered Clara Jean in October though he thought September.

Uncle Kermit Orander on the right with Grandfather Richard Orander by the 47 Kaiser. Richard owned a busline from Crumpler to Northfork which mainly carried miners. 

Orange Crush

 Orange Obscurity 

He stood quietly

Among the Chamber mixers

The movers

The shakers

Few even knew

It was he

Who hung upon

The walls

In the halls

Even by the restrooms

More consumed 

In the wine

The craft beer

The grits with shrimp

Networking 

It didn't matter

To them it never would

They could pass by

And did

The silent one in the

Suwannee Room

But he was satisfied

With the obscurity 

Glad handing 

Always came awkwardly

Like favoring up 

To the boss

Afterward he regretted

Ever even saying

Anything at all

Let the work talk

He slipped out

Into the rain

Taking photographs 

Of the wet palms

Moving on

Always moving on.

Boat!

 Becton

Fred Becton

Did you believe in election

Was it ordained 

The pew you sat in

Always the same

Did it upset the order

When from the front row

The toe head boy

Lately from Kentucky

Now in Sopchoppy 

Would spot you out

Slipping in late from a 

Deep sea Saturday adventure

Fred Becton

What were you

Expecting

Another Armenian?

70 from Sopchoppy

 Seventy from Sopchoppy 

john clare stokes

One is for Bluefield from where I was born,

Uncle Kermit driving mamma that January 30th in the snow storm.

Two is for coming from Vicco in

Kentucky to Sopchoppy in a Packard.

Three is for Mrs Mary and her bread pudding

Four is for Angeline and her red butcher knife

Robert,Sam and me running for our lives.

Five is for my Uncles in Mississippi staying summers happily

Six is for first loves, first grades and Helen Roussey from Panacea

Seven is for John Lloyd crying loudly 

Miss Townsend saying I'd be moving

Eight is for Monticello and Lewis being born

Nine is for leaving the loved two story Victorian parsonage 

Ten is for returning to Kentucky at Asbury in Wilmore

Eleven is for walking April Wells her answer I will forever be waiting for

Twelve is for the long 7th grade journey to Williston

Not believing Bill and Jack were not grown men

Thirteen is for JV Football and long haul fast end sweeping

Fourteen is for down by the Blue Grotto Melissa meeting

Fifteen is for playing point guard with the brothers

Sixteen and finding that Purple Haze a lot of love covers

Seventeen is for the Red Devil Class of seventy- three

Eighteen is for the perfect GPA at Santa Fe

Nineteen is for George Amica and working at Williston Memorial 

Twenty is for Catherine Wilson singing Healing Love gloriously 

Twenty one is for living with Dr ZT Johnson at Asbury

The F in Spanish and returning to Williston sadly 

Twenty two is for the painting the hospital walls a second time

Daddy saying, we can pay for college by cutting the pines 

Twenty three is for repeating a Junior year at Florida Southern

Twenty four for earning a BA degree finally.

Twenty five is for working as a service writer at Powers with Frankie

To turn down a job in Monticello teaching art convincing me

Twenty six is for wanting badly a photojournalist my career spending

Twenty seven is for Lucille and Lynn Counts hiring me to change mannequins at JCP

Twenty eight is for running 10k's with Forrest and Buddy

Twenty nine is for winning the city logo contest soundly.

Thirty is for canoeing the Suwannee with Bob Jones

Thirty one is for running the first marathon 26.2 miles long 

Thirty two is for meeting a nurse at Shands named Melanie

Thirty three Jesus died but in Whitehurst chapel we were married 

Thirty four and to our garage apartment on Camp came Landon

Mrs Beverly a job in JCP management offering

Thirty five is for that suit I now wore all the time

Thirty six is for Alan Crews his home on Camp selling

Thirty seven is for the Alachua General coming of Jordon

Thirty eight is for jumping on the trampoline under the pecan 

Thirty nine is for the stucco house outgrowing

Forty is for postman Brian and to his Tevis house moving 

Forty one is for winning nationally and to Dallas awarding sending

Forty two is for Rick Bringger and Hambone putting up with me

Forty three is for not taking the job in Albany

Forty four is for staying with family and friends in Lake City

Forty five is for letting Valerie take the job in Ocala

She wanting out of town so badly

Forty six and that sick feeling after telling Calise to chill

Forty seven is for that Friday in April I was fired

I can see it still

We are letting you go, with a gold retiree card

Twenty percent off a tad too hard

Forty eight is for Russell coming to Westside Chapel

Forty nine is for voting with Tom Bart not to build a new church called Grace Fellowship.

Fifty is for Ruth Garner hiring me at Sears

Fifty one and the Weasel is the top commissioned salesman to no cheers 

Fifty two is for the coming end of biking centuries with Roger Sessler

Fifty three is for lamenting the loss of Bob Jones memory in his nineties

Fifty four is for one last River Run 15k

Fifty five is for the sudden Sears closing 

Fifty six is for the coming of my Grandson Nathaniel Manoa and the heaven going of my father, Luther Ray.

Fifty seven is for Bill Giebeig hiring me to read meters slowly for a year while smart meters are installed.2

Fifty eight is for continual prayer for Landon and family in Japan in the Air Force.  

Fifty nine is for volunteering down at the gallery

Sixty will be for dreaming of being once again in ole Sopchoppy.

Sixty one is for beginning at the Gateway Gallery

Sixty-two Odom-Moses has a large amount of my photos, son Jordon joins the Army.

Sixty-three my mother Clara Stokes goes to glory.

Sixty-four I’m working at Baya as a DMC driver.

Sixty-five the same day I’m fired from Baya for taking photos on the job I’m hired by friend Ray to take photos.

Sixty-six and the Covid pandemic which I never got.

Sixty-seven working at Morgan Auto photographing vehicles.

Sixty-eight photographer job ended become a driver for Morgan.

Sixty-nine and a stroke gets Stokes reset.

Seventy and keeping chickens and happy to be alive in the Golden age. 

The Oaks

 The Oaks Restaurant 

When I was a boy living in Sopchoppy up until the age of eight, almost every Sunday after church we would drive over to Panacea for dinner. It was a destination location in the day, one of few places actually, before the days of eating out became prolific. Owned by the Oaks family, secretly I always hoped to catch a glimpse of Sonja, Mr Oaks daughter who was my age. I’d always order the same thing, the jumbo fried shrimp. Before the meal came, I loved the garlic butter and the captain wafers they would set on the table in the ceramic boats. Then they would bring the salads with the smelly anchovies I’d always pick off.

When the jumbo shrimp and fries came, I’d smother them with catsup and I was in a savory heaven. The Oaks has long since closed on the coastal highway at the Ochlochnee River bridge, but the taste of fried shrimp remains my favorite.

Cub Scout birthday

 Mamma made it with ice cream too 

We had made our first move from Sopchoppy to Monticello. Sopchoppy was all I had ever known, having arrived there from Kentucky in ‘55 around 5 months old. It was a very sad day leaving Robert, Sam, JL, the River, the town we could roam freely in, Angeline the maid, the second grade class where JL cried so loudly when Miss Townsend announced I was moving. 

From the concrete block parsonage we moved to the old Victorian two story on Washington Street with many rooms. It wasn’t long though, that things began to fall into place. Mamma and Mrs Plains became our Cub Scout den leaders, and I found in Hunter, Mark and Marc and others best of friends.

That Cub Scout birthday party with the car cake was one of the best ever. 

We were only in Monticello two years, but when we moved back to Kentucky with a now one year old brother, it was with the same great sadness I had when we left Sopchoppy. 

But then, leaving Wilmore, Kentucky after two years to return to Williston, Florida, an equal sadness. 

And through it all, mamma made all the moves bearable.

Trophy second wfe

 I don’t know why

It gets me so upset

This constant displaying 

The constant telling

How beautiful 

How great she is

I think of wife one

And how her praises were never sung

How miserable he was

Suppose I should be happy with him

I hope wife one will find

A trophy husband 

It is sad that posts like this gets the most views yet.

Suwannee

There is a place to go

When you are feeling low

A gentle turn past palmetto

Water soothing,current slow.

Traveled on

 Bob was making his way to Lakeland from Tennessee after misreading the map and winding up in Lake City. I said you got a ways to go my friend, told him I too used to ride a bike about, gave him some money on me for the memory of the journey.

Ralph on the right for years was a constant figure on the North Marion Street, walking the three miles daily from his place off Gum Swamp for the free breakfast and lunch from Cleopatra Steele’s soup kitchen. Ralph hasn’t been seen in awhile.