Page 105 - barefoot-in-the-sand-remembering-the-waning-days-of-the-hopewell-community-(1998)-bruce-c-gragg

Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 101/123

AUNT NITA MARRIES A BAPTIST PREACHER

Aunt Nita married a Baptist preacher/painter, Sol Rhodes. When he
visited us and we served homemade fruit cake, he would always ask for
a second slice of wine. He sorta liked it. He had met Aunt Nita while
he was conducting a revival at Hopewell in the early 40’s. At the
time she was still working in Georgia and would come home every few
weeks to visit. Soon after we moved into the new house, she bought
some new furniture for the new house. Elias Waldron borrowed John
Halls pickup truck to go to Moultrie to pick it up. Burnette and I
went with him to show him how to get there. It was a one day trip,
and a long one. Today it could be driven in a couple of hours but
then it took several hours to make just one way. When she came to
visit, Vera and I would take turns sleeping with her. We were about 7
and 5 at the time, the pleasure was ours. At one visit it was my
turn, sometime in the night I put my arm over my head struck the
headboard and said, "is we up or is we down." I knew if I was
upstairs I was not where I wanted to be and would not be happy. They
married in 1944. They lived in his house across US 90 from the Navy
Air Base in Lake City.

While courting Aunt Nita, he was showing out how he could jump the
fence in front of our house, and kinda got his pants caught on the
fence and tore them. He was up in our area holding a revival and was
visiting various homes in the community. By now, we were living in
the new house, I was in the living room, looking out the window as I
heard a car coming. It was Sol. as he passed our house, I called out
to him, "hi sport." I got both laughed at and scolded for that. I had
thought it a pretty good thing to say at the time. About three or
four years after they married they bought some adjoining land and
fenced it and began keeping some cows and a couple of goats. When he
fenced it they cut the post on our place, in the big Cyprus pond.
Sol’s brother Basil and some relatives, the Oddies were helping. The
Oddies had a mid teenage son, and he was having a bit of a
directional problem. He kept referring to going "up south" and "down
north", yep he was a Yankee, they were from New Jersey. He finally
got it straight, but it wasn’t easy. During the time of the post
cutting and pulling out of the pond U. Sol told of the time in his
younger years he was a "mule skinner" (he drove a team of mules
pulling logs) for a sawmill. He would ride one and have a big stick
to keep the other one in line. When working mules you learn you must
keep their attention. Mules suffer from a very severe case of
Attention Deficit Syndrome. About the same time as the post cutting
job was done Uncle Sol came to our house one day. I was in the back
yard when I heard a car drive up and I ran by the smoke house,
tripped on roots to the Ivy growing on the building. As I was falling
I saw I was going to land on a snake, I didn’t know what kind it was!
It

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