Journey with John Stokes

Ecclesiastes 7:10
Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? For thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.

The farther I journey from my first known home in Sopchoppy, Florida, having arrived there in the summer of 1955 as a 6month old infant, born on January 30th after a snowstorm trip from Crumpler to Bluefield, West Virginia's St Lukes Hospital, my life since has been an effort to return home.
As the first son of a United Methodist Minister, I never knew what many took for granted, a town from which they called home. As sojourners, we were at the mercy of the Pastor-Parrish relation committee, and how well we lived the roles set for us, determining how long we remained in a particular town. Before moving to Sopchoppy from Vicco, Kentucky, where my father, the late Rev.Luther Ray Stokes was serving his student pastorate while at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, my father had refused to accept his first assignment with the Florida Conference in West Palm Beach. With the help of the President of Asbury College, Dr Z.T. Johnson, my father was given a second chance to enter the Florida Conference. And so my sister of two years, Paula and my mother Clara Jean Orander of Crumpler, West Virginia, also a graduate of Asbury College with my father, arrived in the tiny Mayberry like town on the banks of the dark Sopchoppy river. This part of wild Florida was immediately to the liking of my father, with the abundant forests of the Apalachicola National Forest with its many rivers for hunting and fishing.In the early 1940's, the population was listed as 400 and fluctuated little into the 1960's.
My mother secured a job teaching 4th grade at the Sopchoppy School and then sought a keeper for me.
Of the several we had, the first was Mrs Mary Rudd, wife of Emory Rudd, our neighbors who lived on a little farm on Rose Street as we did. Mr Emory was a jolly fellow that played the fiddle down at the skating rink when it was a dance hall and an avid pipe smoker. Each morning he would have a Prince Albert Tin and empty match boxes saved for me to play with. He would also collect the rats killed the evening before in the barn out back for me to see. He crafted me a nice high chair of wood in order to sit at the kitchen table with them. Mrs Mary would take me to the chicken yard and we would collect the hens eggs from their nests. From those eggs she would then bake my favorite treat, her unique bread pudding. It was a bread pudding of a consistency and taste I have yet to know since. Many attempted over the years but my reply was always the same, "Not like Mrs Mary's!" My mother always said her secret was in the eggs and the amount she used. It will be one of the first things I trust is revealed to me in eternity.
It was a confused day when my mother stayed home from school and said today I was not going to Mrs Mary's. That evening a bewildered little boy visited a forlorn Mr Emory as his Mrs Mary lay in state in the front bedroom, hands folded under the wedding ring blanket, sleeping through her wake.
It wasn't long afterward my mother secured another keeper after staying with me several months herself . Near the age of two I was in the kitchen and pulled the cord of a boiling coffee pot that splashed onto my left shoulder and arm, terribly burning me. The doctors in Tallahassee Memorial said I would never use my left arm again. The method of wrapping burns from Korean War experience proved faulty and left scars that I shall always carry. Not knowing at the time I proved the doctors wrong, I went on to use the left hand, actually being left-handed. My mother, returning to teaching, found a tall, boisterous black lady from Buckhorn named Angeline "Plump" Donaldson to keep me. She was for the larger part of the time of even temper and loving, allowing me to sit on her shoulders and comb her greased hair, which fascinated me. But when she took a mind to clean the house and we were in the way, she would go to the kitchen saying, "Don't make me get that butcher knife out!" If Robert, Sam or I tarried, out came the red handled knife and through the house and out she would chase us. We were convinced she really would butcher us to death. We never told mamma out of fear. From then on, all she had to do was make the threat and out the bathroom window we would climb to escape. And why would we want to remain inside? In those days, all adventures for a young boy or girl were outdoors. Television only held an attraction for the grown-ups, particularly my father and Gun Smoke or the Ed Sullivan Show. The only show we really begged to stay home from church once a year and watch was the Wizard of Oz, of which my father never allowed, in addition to swimming on Sunday.
In the town sparse with cars, main street teemed with people on the porches and in the yards, all known and trusted. The local swimming hole was directly across the street under the towering oaks, with the steep bank we ran down, splashing headlong into the dark, tannin waters. The roots from the pines protruded into the river, making for natural diving platforms. We would swim out to the large limestone rock just under water, take a rest, watch for moccasins, then muster the courage to swim on to the other side to the dock.
The other side of the river was a mysterious place, one of darkness and fear, loud with locust and cricket chorus, home to panthers screaming, bears and other creatures unknown that crushed and pushed the palmetto aside in order to get down to the river. We never stayed long on the far bank. Down river and across the bridge my friend one grade up from me lived named Robert Strickland. His father was a farmer and bee keeper, Mr George and his mother Eloise, the best cook I knew next to Mrs Mary. We looked forward with anticipation and fear of traveling far into Bradwell Bay and other remote swamps to check on his bee hives. When we would arrive at a hive upset by the black bear, we would linger inside the truck for fear the clawed monster would emerge from the thickets and take us. Mr George always assured us all was well as he patiently went about his way, restoring the hives and calming the frenetic bees. My other friend, Sam Dunlap, a grade under me, lived near Angeline out from Buckhorn. His mother worked at the post office in Sopchoppy. Sam and I were usually strapped with his younger brother Michael, who we tormented relentlessly, hiding from him in the green houses of his grandfather, escaping to the abandoned Willy's Jeeps in the woods to get away. We always got a good scolding from his mother Ann.
And while Robert, Sam and some of the other boys and I had a club house at his house when he lived in town, with the sign that said, No girls allowed, while I would never admit it, there were plenty of girls I liked or had a secret crush on. There was the exotic Judy Priest, daughter of Joe Priest who had the grand Kingfisher Lodge near the coast that burned. Then there was Margaret Townsend, my second grade teacher, fresh out of teachers school at Florida State. Dale Evans, not Roy's, but a girl who lived near the school with her mother my Uncle Jimmy dated. Sara Beth Strickland, a senior, Robert's sister who was a cheerleader and lovely beyond description. And then Helen Roussey, the girl in my second grade class from Panacea I imagined going over to her house, sitting on the couch and asking her hand in marriage. All this treachery from the clubs vice president! I would have been booted from the No Girls Allowed Club had they known.
The yards along the streets were always welcoming to us, except Mr Laird's next to our back yard. A stout, dour looking man of German descent, whenever our ball would stray into his yard, he would yell at us in unintelligible dialect and we would run, yet the next day, the ball would always be in our yard. Next door to our house stood an old unpainted two story house we thought haunted. We would muster our courage and climb the rickety stairs and peer out the open second story windows, enjoying a view down the street to uptown, making ghost sounds as the occasional pedestrian passed.
In those days, we only knew one style of hair cut, and that was the flat top with butch wax. The one barber was located across from the post office, next to Langstons grocery. It was a one chair barber shop owned by Mr Raymond Revell, a white-haired Floyd. On the walls was the painting of the visored dogs playing poker, which amused me as the clippers buzzed. The smell of Florida Tonic water and other concoctions in glass jars and bottles was a wonderfully invigorating lift to a little boy. The Stetson hats hung on deer antlers from the wood walls, the razor strap from the side of the chair hung, the blades sharpened to cut throat precision, the brush and mortar soap frantically mixed and daubed.
My father having been raised on a farm in Homewood, Mississippi, carried throughout his life, the vast knowledge gained from his early days when the farm provided all the needs of a family. One of the first things he did when landing at a new location was start a garden, along with the many flowers, especially Zinnias and lilys to grace the garden, to keep the bugs away with the marigolds. I often conjectured it was the reason he turned West Palm Beach down because it was too sandy and hot for a garden. West Palm and Quincy were the only places he refused to go. Quincy because the Bishop wanted him to rebuild another dead church and he was weary of raising the dead. My father in addition to a garden, always set up a workshop wherever we landed. He built his workshop in the side yard with a play house for my sister on the left and a garage for his boat on the right. From the shop he would build bird houses for the martins, that he always loved. It was a frightened little boy who one day shot with his new BB gun one of his martins. I quickly buried the bird and begged my mother not to tell, who never did. Sitting atop the workbench, my father would call for a hammer, or a screwdriver and I would proudly find it and hand it over. I loved to see the sparks from the grinder falling to the dirt floor. I recall sneaking a can of beans from the house, some matches and cooking the beans secretly in the tool shed. I would found out and got a spanking for having matches. To this day I used many of the tools handed down to me from the Porter Cable skill saw, the grinder, down to the same hammer I handed to him so long ago.
Next to the bread pudding of Mrs Mary, the taste that I long for are from the strawberries my father planted behind my sand pile in Sopchoppy. I would pick them and sit atop the cool propane tank next to the oak shaded sand pile and eat into the day. The sand pile was of the purest white of which my father dug from the beaches of Mashes Sands at Panacea to make a perfect baby sitter. My mother never worried for me if I was in the sand pile, for I would remain there all day, digging canals or swinging out toward the street in the swing my father hung from the tree over the pile. The strawberries were large, deep red and addicting at once, sweet yet tart and never since found in any garden or road side stand.
As a ministers family in those days before eating at restaurant's was common, every Sunday we were usually invited to a members home for dinner. The preacher was known to love fried chicken and we ate many a preacher's tail. Several homes I especially enjoyed going to eat at were Mrs Florida Roberts. She lived on Dickson Street in walking distance of the Church. Of Creek Indian descent, she had long white hair she kept in a bun along with the dark, chiseled high cheek bones of the Creek yet of tender and soft complexion behind her round wire glasses. Her son was B.K. Roberts, a Florida Supreme Court Justice and often he would be in attendance at our meals along with his wife Inez. Mrs Florida was like a grandmother to me.
When my father would be away on a revival trip and the weather would be threatening, we would spend the nights with Mrs Florida. During the flooding of the Sopchoppy river due to Hurricane Donna in September of 1960 I slept soundly in the real feather mattress bed after bathing in her ivory soap. It now seems ironical we would stay with Mrs Florida in her house of wood with the tin roof, while our parsonage was of block and shingles. That evening we sat around in the living room, me trying to sell her shoes from her closet, trying them on her. I had gotten my salesmanship skills from my best friend Robert, who would collect our toys, put them in the basket on his bicycle. We would then go downtown where we would hawk them, yelling out, Toys for Sale! Toys for sale!
The other home I liked visiting on Sunday's was Bert and Cora Roddenberry's farm out Smith Creek Road off the Greenough Road and down the deeply rutted sand road, into the thick forests teeming with turkey and deer, over the one lane bridge at Burt's branch and up to their farm with the cane mill and barns full of old implements. Mr Burt was one of several sugar cane syrup makers in the area, his especially sought after. In the fall of each year, we would anxiously gather around the pummy piles from the crushed cane stalks and play king of the mountain. Later we would attend the hog killings where the poor pigs would be scalded in the same 60 gallon cast iron syrup kettles.
Mr Bert had an operating well in the front yard with the bucket on the end of a long pole we lowered down for a taste from the dipper hung on the side of the sweet spring water. Mr Burt and Mrs Cora were of pure, old Florida stock, gracious, refined and always ready to share a good laugh. Today, their brick home that looked so spacious and large in the day, today is but a humble little structure.
We lived in Sopchoppy a wonderful eight years, setting a record at the time for longevity of a pastor's tenure. Toward the end of the second grad school year, my teacher Miss Townsend stood before the class and announced I would not be returning next year, that my family was moving to Monticello. Next to my desk, a loud wail drowned her voice. It was my good friend John Lloyd Roberts protesting the announcement the best way he knew, via tears. It was a wail, a wail not since replicated, just as the bread pudding and strawberries. J.L. made it to his twenty-second year, was able to marry and have a child before a crane accident took his life in Tallahassee. I wail today for my friend.
The few times I have visited Sopchoppy, I've headed up that straight Rose Street out past Strickland's, down Smith Creek Road, turning at the Lawhorn's to the West Sopchoppy Cemetery to pay my respects to John Lloyd, Abel, Mr.Emory, Mrs. Florida, Mrs. Porter, Mr Bert and Cora and the many others I loved as a boy. I then go back through town to the Grimes Cemetery at Mount Beasor, where Mrs Mary's grave is located with her first husband. The block parsonage is long gone, even the brick church my father had built used by Ochlockonee Christian. When we arrived in 1955, the Methodist and Baptist churches were large wooden structures side by side on the same property. With the windows up, one could hear the songs from the other and the preaching. Both now gone. The Methodists years later, in a twist of faith, purchased the new First Baptist Church which sat derelict, due to a common malady of Baptists, a split among the hand raisers and the hell raisers. The church sits on the same location Mrs Mary's home occupied, the old magnolia that shaded the front porch still protruding out over Rose Street, the only remnant of their humble white frame house with the picket fence, sad as a tree can be without a little boy on a porch swing to shade.
The old swimming place where the towns youth met is now overgrown and barely visible from the road. The mysterious dock still stands on the far bank, once so great a distance to cross, now just a short swim. It was difficult to believe Janet Trice once pushing me out into the deep of the river and Jimmy Henderson coming to my rescue. On the property is a toppled Realty sign, the lot long for sale. Times like these one longs for the wealth to purchase and restore the swimming hole. But, like the bread pudding and the strawberries, no amount of money could restore or satisfy. And were I able to clear the path to the river, rebuild the steps, re-stack the native rock walls, restore the dank bathhouse, hang the rope from the tallest tree, nail the wood steps to the highest branch, to what end?
The youth of the present age are no longer chased from the homes with butcher knives. Children of the chairs, for the most, they sit in cells of their making, leading lives confined within, aglow in games more enticing than reality, strangers to the mysteries lurking on the far shores.
Up and down Rose Street, the homes of the Jones brothers, the Carraways, the Rudds, Porters and others show times wear, some abandoned and needing occupants from another time. There is a greater increase in the vehicle traffic, the windows tinted and ghostly, as if they are moving under their own power, quite in contrast to the vehicles of old void of air conditioning, windows cranked down.
The wood train station on Rose Street,where the Seaboard Air Line once had a spur in the railroad hey day of the twenties, bringing passengers from afar into the heart of town, awaits being turned into a museum.
Down in the center of town, across from the Sopchoppy cafe, Langston's grocery looks about the same, now simply called Sopchoppy Grocery. I could almost hear the little tow headed boy crying for a toy, refusing to quiet until Angeline purchased one. It was weeks later she mustered the courage to tell my mother, who promptly gave me the deserved spanking. The old long,green ice cooler where the Nehi's bobbed is gone. The one man police force headed by Claxton Vause, the Barney of his day, is retired, the County now doing the patrolling. Along the walls in the store are the relics from the halcyon days, the manual cash register, the produce scales, the orange crates, all hung and overlooking the rushed ones who purchase the bulk of their groceries at the chain stores in nearby Crawfordville, the County seat.
The streets through the town are mostly quiet. I had to stop and listen, so see if there was now a Thalmadge Crum, calling out in her voice that carried throughout town, Henry! Henry! Calling her son home.
I paused by Mr Beckton's home, the Gulf of Mexico deep sea fisherman's home, thinking of him and how I would yell out, Boat! Boat! whenever he would enter the old Methodist church.
The school of native rock, ran like a taut ship under a cigar chewing Principal Gleney Bonner, is now on the historic registry of places for native architecture. In the day there were only two schools in the county, all grades together, Sopchoppy and Crawfordville, fierce rivals. The Yellowjackets uniforms were of black with the yellow shoulder stripes and the Panthers of blue and white.
No game was more intense or important, with All-conference players Walt Dixon, Morris Metcalf and Jerome Colvin under the guidance of Coach Red Sanders. No matter if Sneads, Bristol or Carrabelle won that season, only this game must old Sophisco win.
Down where Rose Street and Highway 319 meet was the Standard Oil Station under the ownership of Laurice Roberts and his wife Floride along with his daughters Meribeth, Carolyn and Patsy. About the only place one could secure gasoline in the day, everyone at one time or another made their way to the station on their way to Tallahassee or over to the Gulf to eat seafood at the Oaks. Full service was offered by the tall, handsome Laurice in his Standard Oil officers cap and uniform, while his black helper Johnny Bee would do the mechanic work. Floride and the girls handled the cash. The station remains today, the pumps gone but the old wood stove and counter just as it was years ago as you peer through the dusty glass. It was a place you could tarry as long as one wanted in the warmth on cold frosty morns and hear many a tall tale.
Usually one of the last people one would see upon leaving, I can still recall the day in June on our way down Highway 319, of seeing Laurice waving in the distance, the powder blue Dodge DeSoto with the high rear fins, making the long journey to Monticello, far from the forming memory of strawberries, bread pudding and ole Sopchoppy.