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Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 50/123

at the and of the recess, WON. Also, during these recesses we played
in the woods around school. When the timber cutting moved closer we
had a ringside view of what was going on. I am still amazed that none
of us got snake bitten or something, we would play in and around the
palmettos. We would crawl through them over them and around them in
the excitement of the many games we played. We had to wait for the
bus bringing high schoolers from Lake City, to take us home, much to
our delight more play time in the woods. Whenever The local log truck
broke in the Bay Creek bridge, we would go down an watch them unload
the truck, pull it out and clear the debris so repairs could be made.
During this year we may not have gotten a lot of book learning but I
know we would have won any physical 'fitness contest. For we sure got
a lot of exercise that year.

We went to Bay Creek School for two years, during my third grade, we
had another teacher and we had to get back in the role of being a
real student. Our teacher, Mrs. Mershan lived near Lake City. She
boarded with the Melton's during the week. During this time we were
getting a lot of rain, all the creeks and ponds were full of water as
well as the ditches of the road stayed full for a long period of
time. There were fish everywhere, we would catch and put them in
buckets and take them to school. When we changed the water at the
pump, the fishy water was dumped out right there and we would pump
fresh water for them. It didn’t take long for this fishy odor to get
all the way down to our water supply for the well. Our drinking water
took on a fish smell and taste. Again Frank Davis and a couple of
helpers put us a new well down a long way from the old pump. They
worked about two or three days getting it done. When we had a bus
problem we would walk to the Melton's and wait on the bus from Lake
City. The Melton's had a large family, Tommy Jr., Lee L, Fred, Betty,
Willie Gene, Hazel and Martha. On one of these trips to the Melton's,
their boys had been fishing and caught a lot of fish. They had a wash
tub about half full of all kinds of fish, including squealer cat fish
(good frying size.) Mrs. Melton, could skin a catfish before most
anyone could pick it up.

By now the school board had arranged for Tommy Melton to put a cover
on his 1930’s vintage Ford Pickup, to transport us to Bay Creek.
Leona Melton served us hot meals every day, a kitchen dining table
was set up in one of the former class rooms. She was a good cook,
typical southern style cook. On the way to school one morning I got
into a disagreement with someone and was assigned the front seat with
Mr. Melton. The back was really bad in the cold, wet, winter weather,
the back of the pickup didn’t have any kind of a weather flap or
cover. It could get cold back there, the

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