one mile of life remaining....the poison in the vein coursing….too far along I had come....so the final mile I would run....set the timer to zero....time to go....crossed the line in four thirty three...some minutes later time caught up…...what a great
In my life of moving vehicles to photograph them, one of my first tasks after setting the A/C, is switching the SXM station if a vehicle is so equipped, from the various obnoxious rap stations laced with profanity, to channel 18.
And I am for a short duration, back to February 9, 1964, watching Ed Sullivan on the black and white television announcing, “ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!”
And the world began screaming and hasn’t stopped since. Up until that time, I never put much thought into music. My sister had her 45’s she and her girlfriends would play at slumber parties, groups such as Jan and Dean, the Dave Clark Five, The Beach Boys, nothing they’d scream over.
I did not aspire to become a Beatle that night. I wanted to become a Bart Star Quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. And in that summer of ‘63, when in Monticello I took second in the Pafford Motors Punt, Pass and Kick, winning a Washington Redskin helmet, I was let down it was burgundy with a feather. I considered painting it green and yellow.
Then in the Spring of ‘68, after four of my 4th grade friends won the Jefferson Elementary talent show, impersonating the Fab Four, down to wigs from the downtown toy store, seeing how the girls even screamed over them, Bart was a falling Star.
I begged mamma to let me buy a Beatle wig. I now listened with my sister and her 45’s.
But like all fads that last a lifetime, we moved from Monticello to Kentucky that year, and the Beatles were no longer played much. I think the only album I ever owned, from one of those record clubs, was Rubber Soul.
But their music never left me, all the way through The Monkees, through the Cat Stevens years, the Pink Floyd Metal Years, The Bee Gees disco out of joint right up to today where I paused maybe a bit too long in that cool F-150 King Ranch, totally immersed in the Beatles singing In My Life, and of all the faces I remembered sitting there.
Seldom do we stumble going in
Putting our best foot forward
But oh the stumbling going out
Snubbing and cursing without
a word.
Johnclarestokes
I think of those now gone on
Some to eternal worlds
Others yet remaining here
And I’m ever grateful for their labors
In the kingdom not of calloused hands
Men as ZT Johnson of Asbury
Who helped usher me into the kingdom
A father, Luther Ray, who welcomed me
At the altar of repentance
There were many following
Razziel at Florida Southern my brother
Mentoring me so lovingly
A long chain of laborers
From Russell and a community praying
Melanie back to us
To Aaron singing softly to a dying mother
Touching beyond knowing this
Heart prone to hardening
So grateful for the workers in the vineyard
So looking forward to drinking in
The fruits of their labors one day.
The “first” church
This was the first church my father oversaw the building of, the Sopchoppy Methodist Church. It replaced a grand old wood building upon hindsight I wish they had preserved, along with the old wooden Baptist church behind it. Our white block parsonage is beside it. Today the parsonage is gone, it’s no longer a Methodist church, as years ago they purchased the new brick Baptist Church beside it, who built a new church west of town.
Upon the death beds
Heard confessing
You were the one
Never in my possession
Though I carried you
All these years
Locked up deep inside
Where we'd abide
In your fine longhand cursive
Writing down the poetry
For only our eyes inside
Our confines
In my final dying
Take the words so secret
And scatter them liberally
About the wondering ones
Don't fear our uncovering
The words rhyme in a
Dialect foreign.
Like the ole farmer before morning dawn
The poet quietly went about his orisons
Searching pastures for those not returning home
Setting out provision for the anticipated coming
For words and images were important
Even if the congregation was but few
He could not force any to the nourishment
Convince any that manna was in dew
It's always been the way of the givers
Always the way of the prodigal wanderers
Starved upon the husks of the swine
Provision before them of water to wine.
For he was hungry
Come late night fall
To the campfire he did crawl
By dawn's early red canoe
They only found two
So if you make it through Suwannee Shoals
Better pack Jack Links I'm told....
Old Steichen was
Losing his mind
Never knowing
Once in time past
It was him who made
The memories last
By some quirk in the
Wheel with every third
Revolution it would click
Akin to a sound distant
He vaguely recalled
Some days when Steichen
Was in a good frame of mind
He would click the wheels
Like a motor winder
Not pausing or even
Contemplating direction
Other days in more the
Pensive melancholic mood
He would slowly click then
Look
Look then click the wheel
Smiling at the capturing
A foot entering the frame
An orderly passing
The pattern of shadow on
Carpet
It was the unknown click
In that wheel that kept
Steichen from totally
Becoming lost in this
Place.
