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Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 82/123

THE TRIPS TO TOWN-NOT EASY

When we went to town for supplies it was usually to Lake Cirv or
Fargo. At times we went to White Springs crossing the Suwannee on the
Cone Bridge or Jasper crossing the Turner Bridge. The waters of the
river looked so dark, deep and dangerous I always had a fear the
bridge would break and fall in when we were over midstream. The road
to the Cone Bridge was graded to the river. The road on the Columbia
County side of the Turner Bridge was not graded but a winding road
through the woods with a small creek and another area that stayed
about knee deep in water all the time had* to be crossed very
carefully. The trips to White Springs on the old unpaved Woodpecker
Route, was always a rough trip. The road was always a real washboard
road, very rough. By the late forties it had been paved to Belmont
and joined Florida Highway 6.

On one of our trips to Lake City in the old black Plymouth, we went
to Highway 82 (now called US 441) via the CCC road, it went near
where the Davis's lived near the Turner place. There were a lot of
bridges on this road. Many across several wet weather creeks, one
across Bay Creek. Most were short maybe 5 OR 6 feet across, the Bay
Creek was a long scary looking bridge. One of the bridges had been
broken in by a heavy truck. While crossing it Mama didn't give the
car enough gas and it rolled back, right onto a big nail. The nail
punched a hole in the gas tank, it didn't take long for all the gas
to drain out. I walked with mama back to the main dirt road, Wilson
road, to meet Jack Sandlin, the mailcarrier to see if he might be
able to help out a bit. Sure enough he tied his jeep to the car and
pulled us to Benton, where he pulled us under a tree, by the highway
in front of Willie Hall's house. When he tried to get the chain off
his trailer hitch, nothing he did worked, Mama reached down and with
just a jiggle it came right loose. He kidded Mama and said she was
trying to show him up. I was near the highway playing while the
adults, Mama and Burnette, decided what to do. I waved at a car, it
went a short distance up the road, turned around and came back. It
was Uncle Edwin and Callie Belle, they were heading to our house. He
had just gotten a different car and I didn’t recognize him. He found
a piece of cloth in the car, we went up to the Hall's and got some
soap and a quick fix to the gas tank. We drew some gas from his car
for ours and drove it to Lake City to have a repair job on the tank.
We actually took it to Johnny Rhoden's, Callie Belle's brother, he
had a shop and could do the repairs on the tank for us in a couple of
days. Had I not been playing around they would never have noticed us
there. Sometimes events turnout not as bad as they originally began.

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