Once Upon A Lifetime In Baker County, Florida: The Moonshine Legacy, Part Two (file 1/2)

                     By La Viece Moore-Fraser Smallwood
                              Copyright © 1995

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Carl Mobley, cmobley@magicnet.net

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           Copies available from the author complete with photos:
                   Rt 2 Box 543 Macclenny, Florida 32063

    Permission has been granted by the author for posting to this page.


   * George Washington 'Dub' Sands, Jr.
   * The Skeeter Gainey story
   * Tommy Gerald Johns
   * Richard H. 'Dickie' Davis (in file 2/2)
   * Carl Henry Rewis (in file 2/2)
   * The Sigers Saga (in file 2/2)
   * Elmer Lee 'L.E.' Wilkerson (in file 2/2)
   * Tommy Register (in file 2/2)
   * James Arthur Barton (in file 2/2)


Dear Readers,

     This volume in the Once Upon a Lifetime in Baker County series is
different. It's subject is very sensitive, one that evokes strong emotions.
For many, these stories have aroused pain, regret, remorse, and even shame,
but still, for most, if they had it all to do over again, they would.

     I think perhaps, to understand why this subject spurs such sensitive
emotions, you would need to understand the history, the people, the times.
This is the logic as to why this book has been written. It is for this
reason, unlike other volumes in this series, that anyone using any portion
or portions of this book for commercial reasons or for any other purpose,
at any time, must have written permission from me, my heirs, or those
individual persons who have signed their names to these stories, or their
heirs.



                    George Washington 'Dub' Sands, Jr.
                             Moniac/Macclenny

     If you think that designing a brand new custom designed automobile
right off the assembly line happens only in renowned places like Detroit,
Michigan, think again. If you believe the vehicle has to be especially
designed by an ace designer and draftsman to create the perfect model,
think again. Nor does it take the expert skills of a mathematician,
blueprint reading and mechanical experts, a machinist, chemist, engineer,
physicist, laboratory technician, pattern maker, or tool and die maker with
years in apprenticeship.

     George W. 'Dub' Sands can do all of that singlehandedly, and right
here in Baker County. The genius automaker has astonished mechanical
colleagues for decades and staggered the imaginations of the craftiest
masters. His custom-designed cars were for moonshiners. Lawmen dreaded to
see his creations zoom down the road at lightning speeds and quickly
dismissed any idea of attempting a road block or confrontation when they
saw "it" coming. They marveled in awe as they watched "it" pass unscathed
into the night.

     "It" might be a Dodge or Plymouth frame, but what was beneath the hood
was anybody's guess except for the mastermind who put it together.

     Dub Sands was born in the crook of the Georgia Bend in 1927 to Baker
County pioneers George Washington and Nellie Thrift Sands. His family's
496-acre spread bordered the Florida-Georgia boundary line separated by the
"big" St. Mary's River. They were a hard-working, self-sufficient couple
who cultivated their land and worked hard to support their 11 children with
what it produced. In the wintertime, George Sands always managed to grow a
cane patch that would yield enough sugar to sweeten the moonshine pot that
boiled down at the river's edge. Its proceeds were for "the hard times."

     "I helped in the home brewing since I was large enough to tote a jar
of syrup to the still," he said. "I been running a liquor still since I was
at least six years old. Liquor was a way of survival when I was growing up,
and no one could make it taste better than my daddy.

     "I remember many mornings looking out across our fields almost every
direction and hearing my daddy say, 'Well fellows, I see that old man so
and so is a stillin' today.' Why, all you had to do was step out in the
yard and it was easy to tell who was cooking it that that day because in
those days they used fat-lightered wood and the smoke just billowed skyward
exposing the locations."

     Sands said his favorite brewed moonshine was an art performed by his
dad. "I can remember the old wooden trough, hand-hewed from a cypress log
by my uncle Dan Thrift. In fact," he said, "it is still at the old home
place that is now owned by my brother Clyde. I can remember going to the
corn crib and shucking the corn and then putting it in the old-timey corn
shucker. We put the kernels in the trough near the water pump because we
didn't have electricity back then. We pumped enough water to cover the corn
about two inches and after a few weeks it began to sprout. It would drink a
lot of water and we'd keep it covered. When it would get to boiling we
would take it to the still and put it in 55-gallon barrels, add more water
and wait for it to start fermenting. You could hear it frying inside and if
it was real cold weather, we'd take dirt and put it against the barrels to
hold the heat so it would be real warm inside At the right time, we'd pour
our sugar in and I can just see my uncle now, running his finger through it
and testing to see if it was right. If it was, he'd say, 'Okay, boys, we
got to take it up or it will vinegar on us." Sands said when they got the
liquor like they wanted it, his daddy would 'season' a portion. "That was
the art," he said. "We'd go out in the woods and cut these Blackjack oaks
down, peel all the bark off, and chisel it about as thin as you could and
you'd have baskets full of it. Well, my mother would put that in an old
wooden stove and parch that and it would turn brown. She knew just how long
to get all that acid out of it. Then they would take barrels and put so
many gallons of liquor in there and so much of the parched wood and store
it in an accessible place so you could occasionally shake it. That would
stay there for about six months or longer, aging, and every so often daddy
would taste it to see how it was coming along. When daddy thought it was
ready, they would strain it and it would be a red color from the chips. But
daddy wouldn't be through with it yet. He liked to fix it so the women
folks would like it. He would put it back in a clean barrel, then he'd buy
boxes of dried peaches and he'd put so many of them in the brew and keep it
another six months or a year. That was as mild and as pure as you could
get. You could never buy it that pure and if I was now a drinking man I'd
get me a little pot and I'd make me some and I'd drink all I could hold and
then call my friends and see if they wanted some.

     "Daddy kept it buried everywhere. One time a mule fell into our well
and we found several barrels in there we'd forgotten we had. I've seen the
time daddy had 300 five-gallon cans of whiskey and couldn't sell it;
sometimes there was a demand for it and sometimes there wasn't.

     "Daddy bought the B&W Bar in Macclenny in 1936 and got rid of the
bootlegging, but the boys messed with it a little bit until one or two of
them got caught and spent some time in prison. Anyway, moonshining is
nothing new to me, it was there as long as I can remember and we used to do
it with a mule and wagon."

     Sands said he dropped out of school at the age of 16 while in the
seventh grade.

     "I stayed home and plowed a mule for a long time, then I took my first
job in 1944 with Mr. J.J. Pribble. I made twenty-five dollars a week in his
Glen St. Mary garage working as a mechanic," he said. I had worked on
tractors around the farm, but other than that I didn't have experience. He
was a good man and tried to adopt me. When I got drafted, he didn't want me
to go into the service, but I left for the Army along with my first cousin,
Dof Lyons and friend, Lawrence Green."

     Sands only served 13 months, but obtained a vast amount of knowledge
when he was sent to automotive mechanic school for eight weeks. "That was
really interesting and I really learned some valuable things there."

     He married Harley Burnsed's daughter, Edna, after his discharge and,
with a friend, Everette Moran, bought Mr. Pribble's garage. Eventually he
left there and went to Jacksonville to work for Massey Dodge Dealership,
mainly selling trucks. When Massey opened another dealership Sands went
there as a mechanic.

     Meanwhile, his parents moved to north Macclenny in 1951, purchasing
the 210- acre old Nath Pellum Place. Sands' oldest brother, Clyde,
purchased his parent's 496 acres.

     Sands moved to Jacksonville after he purchased a service station at
Park and Roselle Streets. "It was a good business, but I was always
thinking about Baker County," he said. "I wanted to move back home."

     Before he did, he learned about another service station at San Juan
and Roosevelt. His decision to purchase that one changed the course of his
life. "It was there I got a lot of experience messing around with race
cars," he said.

     Sands met people like Frank Ironmonger, a race car winner. I watched
him very closely and what he was doing. His chief engine man was Mac
Richardson. He built race cars and ran a machine shop in St. Augustine. His
driver was Bill Snowden, and Frank Ironmonger's driver was Ace McCartlin.
They're all dead now, but Snowden used to race with top race car drivers in
the southeast, like Curtis Turner. I learned a lot from them, everything
they done. They built flat-head Fords. I sponsored Frank's car and from
that time on, I really got interested in fast cars. I should have been a
race car driver," he said.

     Then something happened that brought him back to Baker county and once
more changed his life forever. "I leased a new Amoco station on the corner
of Highway 90 and SR 228. I was the first one in it, but it was too slow
and no room to mechanic. Then the old Dunk Dinkins Ford building was empty
so we rented that and I set up shop there," he said.

     The couple first lived in a small home they rented from Ms. Sallie
O'Hara located in back of the now-demolished Morris House Restaurant.

     Eventually Sands leased a building from Rudolph Powers on the
northwest side of the railroad tracks on SR121.

     "It was when we built our garage on Highway 228 that I really got into
building cars," he said. "We moved into a house next to the business, so
everything was right there," he said.

     "I had connections to get engines. I favored the Chrysler 300. There
is no limit to what you can do with that," he said." There wasn't anyone
around that could tune one of them suckers up. I bought all those type
engines I could find anywhere, four and five at one time, mostly out of
wrecked cars and I'd rework them, and put them in another kind of car. I
put a Chrysler engine in an international pick-up for Junior Crockett, and
it would haul 60 cans of liquor all day and all night. He had saddle tanks
on it so he hardly ever had to stop at a gas Station. It also had a
Chrysler transmission and a Chrysler rear end."

     It didn't take long for word to spread and the moonshiners bootlegging
whiskey came around in droves.

     Sands said he usually used Chrysler products like the Plymouth and
Dodge. "I had a black'49 Dodge with a Chrysler-300 engine in it. It was
just a little short, four- door thing, but it was a well-balanced car, the
best I'd ever built. It cornered and handled better than any car and that
was the name of the game. All that speed wasn't any good unless you could
make the car handle well. I had a good man named Ealie Johnson in
Jacksonville that did all the front-end setting. He was from Baker County
and worked for Massey Dodge. With a lot of the cars, I'd take the body off,
inspect the frame, and then reinforce it and do whatever it took to make
sure there wasn't any weak places in it. Then I started from there, putting
it back together. The big problem, and that's why they didn't use them in
race cars, was that the Chrysler-300 was so heavy that one of the cylinder
heads on that thing weighed 90 pounds, and that's 180 pounds to start with.
Then you got the rest of the block, so that thing would weigh 200 pounds
more than the average V8 engine. But it was a work horse, it would do the
job," he said, adding, "There was no limit to what you could do with it;
you could make it go faster than anyone would want to ride and faster than
the speedometer would register. I built one and took a feller riding with
me one night and the law got after us between Hawkinsville and Macon and
you couldn't tell by the speedometer how fast you were going. I said,
'Well, I just built this little old car, wonder how it's going to run,' and
when the race was over that feller said, 'Well, I've never rode in a jet
until now.' I can tell you the truth, anything going that fast just takes
your breath."

     Sands said the smaller cars such as the Plymouth and Dodge were not
equipped with power brakes. "So we'd take the engine and the power brake
system off the Chrysler and bolt the power system under the bottom on the
frame; then you could hook up to it. Those shine cars were not made to stop
until you got to where you were going because you were usually running a
car wide open.

     "You had to stabilize the car by installing an air bag. It's a pad you
screwed up in the coil and after you put this bag in there it's got another
one that fits on the bottom. It's a rubber plate with a hole in it for your
valve stem to come out in the bottom and you air it up and that gives it a
lot of strength. It took a lot to hold up that engine. Now if you could get
the car where it would corner right, get the front end and all that set
with all this equipment on it, you'd have quite a bit of money in it. But
it had to be set up right. You see, what the average mechanic didn't
understand, I'd been doing it with the race cars. It was the gear ratio
that was important to create in the rear axle. I can remember that if you
broke it down it was a 354 ratio which means there was nine teeth on the
pinion gear and 36 on the ring gear. I found out that I could get the ring
gear and pinion from a man named Getts who manufactured the ring gears. For
years he sent me catalogs and all kinds of information. He'd help me if he
knew what kind of transmission I was going to use and the size of tires. He
could help me pretty good on the gear ratio and that was very important
because you've got a lot of pulling power, yet when you get on the highway,
you are going to want to get some mileage too. So you have to strike a
happy medium."

     Sands said he attended a carburetor school of instruction. "That
Chrysler engine had two four-barrel carburetors on it and you had to
synchronize them so you had to make all the linkage to hook 'em up. I threw
away anything automatic on them, like the chokes. You just needed one
linkage and that went from one carburetor to another. The front one had to
do the same thing as the back one, so I had to make all the linkage to
that. When you got them synchronized, that car would talk to you."

     Sands said he has forgotten how much money he charged to build the
specialized vehicles. "It wasn't enough, whatever it was," he said. "If I
could get all the money I've got in my experience messing with 'em, I'd be
a millionaire. A lot of it I'd do for nothing. If I made any money, I spent
it all on engines," he said.

     "My big problem was that I could not keep exhaust valves. If you could
see in that engine, you'd see that the exhaust valve is not very big and
the head of it would get cherry red. I had to put springs on the vehicle so
it would pop the head of that valve off and it'd go right to the engine and
tear up the butt hole and piston or whatever. A lot of 'em would keep
running, and a lot of 'em would tear up, but that cost me a ton of money.
You'd have to go through the whole engine, then. That went on and I had
some tough luck there with hot spots. It would blow a hole in that piston
and it would look like you'd shot a hole in the top of the piston with a
load of buckshot. I couldn't figure out why. I couldn't whip it and it was
bothering me not to know what was causing it to swallow them valves. Man,
it would tear up the whole works and that was $1,500-$2,000.

     "I had a friend by the name of Homer Teston. He came to Jacksonville
from Johnson City, Tennessee, and he worked for Consolidated Automotive. I
went down there one day to see him and told him about my problem of not
being able to keep an exhaust valve in a Chrysler-300. I told him it just
swallows them things up over night. Well, there was this old man standing
there, named Dutch. He had on a pair of what I called convict coveralls and
was greasy from the top of his head all the way down. He had a little ole
cigar in the corner of his mouth and he looked like he was going to swallow
it any minute. He said, 'Mister, if you want to listen to me, I can tell
you how to fix that,' and he said, 'When you leave here, you go to the
Universal Automotive Parts store and see Mr. Moody. Tell him to give you
what you need to convert your exhaust valves to the new truck valves which
has a sodium-cooled valve. It has a fluid in the stem and is a much bigger
stem and that means you've got to change the guides and the valve seats,
and all that.'

     "Now, back then, them valves were $16 apiece and it takes eight of
them for an eight-cylinder engine. I bought me two sets and I had me a
little box that I put in the freezer and made it off limits to everybody.
Now, what you do to change all of that is to press them guides out. You put
all that stuff in the freezer and you have to install them while they are
frozen, very quickly, one at the time, and when it comes to room
temperature, you can't get it out unless you beat it out. Putting them in
the freezer shrinks them. When you drop it in that head and it expands,
it's there to stay. You'd have to tear it out, and the guides were the same
way. Although that solved my problem I still ain't satisfied because I need
a little more speed."

     Sands said that problem was solved when Junior Crockett took him to
see a man who made Chrysler-300 engines. "I bought one from him for $225,
came home and completely tore it apart. It had an oil pan on it and the
heads, and had an intake for one four-barrel. That man didn't know what I
knew. He was blowing engines, and what he was doing was loosening the
valves. The main thing I needed to know from his work was what type of
pistons he used in it. He was using a three and 15/16 bore. That's a
good-size piston and looks about the size of a coffee can. It had a pretty
dome on top of it and the imprinted name was what I needed. I found out the
pistons were made in California and so I had someone call there and get me
a set of 'em. They cost about $20 apiece.

     "Now after that, I mean to tell you it worked; it did the job then,
and I never had no problem with the bottom side of it. I had the crankshaft
side mastered pretty good, but Lord, that was one engine. I don't know how
many of them I built. I put the one I had bought and tore apart all back
together but I didn't like his cam shaft, the part that works the valves.
From then on, I used the Chrysler-300 to build the whole car from one end
to the other and I always kept enough supplies in that freezer to do what I
needed to do. It took two cylinder heads to do an engine and from then on I
never, had anymore trouble with an engine blowing.

     "Junior Crockett bought the first fuel-injection Chevrolet around here
and they thought that was going to suck them Chryslers up, but mine
continued to beat them. We had tire problems, like slinging the rubber off.
Those cars had to be made with overload springs. See, you had a spring that
you laid on to the housing and you pulled two pins and you could take the
spring off and put it on and when you were not loaded, you just laid the
springs in the back and all you had to do was have a bumper jack to raise
it up a little bit and flip them springs. Then you were ready to load and
when you got unloaded, you took the springs off and the car would sit back
level again.

     "We used Goodyear's Blue Streak tire when we could get them. I finally
mastered not having the rubber sling off. I had a friend I met at the race
track and he introduced me to a feller that would put two coats of some
kind of pink rubber on them tires, mold it and then put a cap on it. When
the tire wore out we recapped with that pink rubber. Some of them tires we
used had been recapped as many as 12 times. I'd rather ride on his tires
with that pink rubber than a brand new tire. If the cap did come the pink
rubber would save you."

     Sands said in 1953 he once again became involved in moonshine. I liked
driving the cars. A good car is just like a good saddle horse, it ain't no
good if you don't have a good rider. If you don't have a good driver to
take care of equipment, it ain't no good. I hauled moonshine, sometimes two
loads a night, five or six times a week, or I had good drivers to take my
loads for me."

     Two of the best were Glen Johnson and Jimmy Lyons, he said. On one
occasion, he remembers proving his point to Glen Johnson when he proved
that a car loaded with shine could outrun an empty car.

     "I had already arrived at the destination, unloaded and was waiting on
Glen when he came driving up with the empty vehicle," he said.

     "And you had to know the tricks of the trade, too. That was very
important. I remember a state trooper named L.B. Boyette. He should have
been a beverage agent, because he loved it so. He was always out there
trying to catch us. The one thing he never learned though was to tell which
of the cars was loaded. Sometimes, we would send the empty car up ahead of
the shine car, and L.B. would see it coming and take off after it while the
shine car went on through. He never figured out that a loaded car always
sounded just like a diesel coming. We were always trying to outsmart them,
and they were us," he said.

     Sands remembers the only time he was ever cornered by the law. "Jimmy
Lyons was driving the loaded car and I was following in a midnight-blue
Chrysler. We were driving up toward Tallahassee one night. Some man had
been killed at a little country store in Salem, Florida, and he had been
driving a Chrysler, but the newscast said it was a white one. Well, I was
running like hell, and I wasn't familiar with the roads up there, when,
before I knew it, there were red lights all over. I had a boy with me and I
stopped long enough to let him out and told him to stop the loaded car
coming behind us and for them to get out of there. I went on and slid
sideways through the road block with my lights out. I got my car behind
this house, but they were close enough behind me that they saw me before
the dirt had settled. Before I knew it there was this one old man who
looked like he was as tall as my fireplace. He had on a pair of bib
overalls and a long-barreled pistol. He stuck that long thing in there and
said, 'Don't you run, you S.O.B. We got you now!' And they jerked me out of
there and handcuffed me. I had $500 in five dollar bills that was bulging
from my pockets and they got that. They pulled the seats all out of my car
and looked in the trunk, thinking they'd find a gun that was suppose to
have killed that man. Then they were going to take me on to jail, when a
state trooper I knew named Woodle came up there. He told them, 'There ain't
no way this boy shot anybody. If he is doing anything he's over here with
Junior Crockett and his bunch hauling moonshine liquor.' Boy, they
scattered like a covey of quails and they went to looking for Junior.
Meanwhile, the highway patrol had jumped my loaded car going back to Perry
from Madison. Jimmy out-run them and got away and went on up to Greenville.
He found a place to hide the liquor and came on back home. I was put under
a $150 bond, so I took off and stopped to call home. They told me Jimmy was
just driving up. I went on back and I had one hell of a time getting those
boys to go back for that liquor, but finally Jimmy Lyons went back over
there with me. You could see it by the side of the road. If anybody had
come along and looked that way, they could have seen it. We picked it up
and made our delivery and came on back home."

     And there was the time he was traveling back to Baker County after
delivering a load of moonshine with Jimmy Lyons as driver. They were
entering Fargo, Georgia, at a high rate of speed, just before daylight one
morning.

     "I remember Jimmy saying, 'Okay, George, here we go,' and I heard a
bamm, bamm bamm. We landed against a telephone pole upside down."

     The twosome had hit a farmer driving a truck loaded with his mule.
"They tell me they didn't find that mule for three days," he smiled. " The
impact demolished that little Plymouth and that mule took off. We had it
loaded down with sugar."

     Even though it was in the days before seat belts, Sands had installed
them in his cars for safety in case of such accidents. The accident left
him with cuts and bruises, and Jimmy hospitalized. But, he said, it could
have been much worse without the seat belts.

     Today, Sands is retired, except maybe for a bit of farming. He and
Edna live on an expansive stretch of land just before crossing the Georgia
State line on SR 121. Instead of assembling engines for fast-moving cars,
he helped to construct the couple's lovely, comfortable home. The spacious
family room with its ever-glowing furnace fireplace, is filled with his
sporting trophies. Large black bears peer from a corner of the room, along
with deer and moose heads. Life is quieter.

     "I used to drink pretty bad and the family got to worrying about me,
so I went into the hospital about ten years ago to be checked over. A liver
expert came in to see me and he said, 'Mr. Sands, how long have you been
drinking alcoholic beverages?' I looked at him and I said, 'Well, Doc, I'll
tell you the truth, because that's the only thing I know to tell in this
life, because I don't know what's going to happen in the next one, if there
is a next one. But I can faintly remember my mother bouncing me on her knee
and she got a saucer and poured out this white moonshine. Then she took a
match and lit it and it made a pretty blue flame. When that flame went out,
she took a teaspoon and give it to me, and then a bunch more of it. For
what reason, I don't know, but you asked me the question and I'm telling
you I can faintly remember that.' And you know, he didn't have any more
questions and he left. He sent me a bill for $100 and never told me nothing
and I told him the truth. That's been a decade ago. I used to drink quite a
bit, and smoked cigars, but now I've quit it all except I chew a little
bit. Of course, a man has to have at least one bad habit because I don't
know anyone that would like to live with someone that's perfect, do you?"

     Well, that's debatable. But in any case, some people come pretty close
to it. In Dub Sands case, he is a man before his time.



                         The Skeeter Gainey story
                St. George, Georgia, and Macclenny, Florida

     Marion Ernest Gainey was one of 14 children born to William Clayton
and Matilda Howard Gainey in the Georgia Bend on March 30, 1941. The old,
rustic, three- room clapboard home with its circular drive is where he grew
up with his 12 living brothers and sisters. They were Eugene, Vivian,
William (Bill) Clayton, Jr., Joe (who tragically died at the age of 17),
Merel, Barbara, Ray, Tommy, Mitchell, Johnny and two younger siblings died
in infancy.

     By the time he was five, he was riding the family mule through the
corn field and on down to the river that flowed behind the family farm. Two
empty five-gallon jugs, bound up in croaker sacks, were tied in front of
the saddle and two of the same were tied behind the saddle. When he
returned home, those jugs would be full of crystal- clear moonshine
manufactured by his father at the antiquated family liquor still. He
remembers those days as if they were yesterday.

     "The mule would automatically take it to the still, but we younguns'
liked to ride, so we'd go down and drop off the four empty jugs and return
with four jugs filled," he said. "It was a great experience for us to get
old enough to go to the still. I felt all grown up when I saw it because it
was a way of life. It meant survival, if the tobacco crop didn't come
through, because what little we made from it provided clothing and other
essentials our family needed."

     Muscular and handsome, shy, yet talkative, the man who is now called
Skeeter is particular who he talks to about his experiences in the
moonshine industry. He has turned down a movie offer and the opportunity to
be in a book written by a "revenuer."

     "They might not understand how it was, back then, he says, "and if
it's going to be told, then it needs to be told right."

     Like most folks in the area, the Gainey family lived on a farm and
worked from sun-up to sun-down, grubbing a living from the soil that
provided them with corn and potatoes to eat and tobacco to sell for family
necessities, like shoes and clothes. Their water was drawn from a bucket
well, and the smokehouse was usually filled with smoked hams and sausages,
the annual staple meat preserved after butchering hogs in the fall. It was
hard work, and no conveniences. There was no electricity or indoor
plumbing. The family used a one-seat outhouse, or, he said, "We went behind
the barn if we didn't have time to get to the outhouse, which was located a
good piece from the house."

     "We used corn cobs or the Sears catalog back then because there was no
such thing as toilet paper," he said. "And it was amazing that certain
pages never got torn out of the catalog. Guess which pages that was?" he
asked with a grin. "It was the lingerie section. That was our pornography
in those days!"

     The family owned a battery powered radio. "Us kids would listen to
Cisco and Poncho, the Lone Ranger, and, on Saturday nights, our greatest
treat was to listen to the Grand Ole Opry. We had an old cypress pole that
had a copper wire running up it to try and get better reception, but it
would fade in and out about the time everything got to picking and grinning
real good. You'd just hold your breath until the music came back.

     "My grandparents lived on adjoining land. Their names were Lewis and
Pinkie Jo Bennett Gainey. They, like our parents, really worked hard to
make a living. In those days, none of us had conveniences. Even with her
big family, Mama still helped in the fields. She canned and preserved our
food under the most primitive conditions. The kitchen was not attached to
the house, and the three rooms in our house all had beds in them. We grew
tobacco, always hoping for good weather to make a crop. If the tobacco crop
made, then we would gather it and hang it on sticks in the barn to dry.
Then, we would take it to market to sell, hoping to get paid enough to pay
off our bills for the plants and fertilizer we had previously charged down
at the local store.

     "We bought sugar in 100-pound bags because we needed that for making
our moonshine. I remember some of the sugar bags had an imprint, 'Made in
Cuba'. Mama made all our shirts out of the material after she bleached the
bags to get the color and imprint out. She used an old pedal sewing
machine.

     "Daddy made the shine to help us make a little extra money for
clothes. We didn't have a car while I was home. My parents used a mule and
wagon until the 1950's, so people would usually come up to the house to buy
what moonshine we made. Clarence Johns of Macclenny He peddled whiskey for
years and sold it in pints and I have a copper funnel out there in the old
shed somewhere that came from Clarence's house that some of my daddy's
whiskey was poured through. If I remember right, Clarence came after his
moonshine in a 1941 Ford Coupe.

     "Do you know why bootlegging was originally called bootlegging?" he
asked with a grin. "The name originated during prohibition days when people
would stash a pint in their boots, or tie it onto their leg. Back then
making moonshine wasn't illegal, just illegal if you did 't pay taxes to
the government. The moonshine name came about because people making it used
fat-lightered wood and it caused such a smoke that they would have to make
it at night or be spotted by the revenuers.

     "That was in the early days," he said. "By the time I came along, they
had graduated from lightered knots to kerosene burners -- galvanized tanks
that would hold about 15 gallons of kerosene. You would have to take a tire
pump and pressurize it. It was real hard work.

     "When we got big enough to help with the whiskey, we thought we were
real grown up," he remembered. "And we had more responsibility. I knew it
was against the law, but I didn't look at it as a shameful thing, like
dealing with crack, marijuana or cocaine or stuff like it is today. It was
just a way to have enough money for our family to exist. We really had it
hard even with the extra we made from the moonshine.

     "I remember walking barefoot the three miles to school before the bus
started picking us up, in weather so cold, icicles would pop up out of the
hard ground. We had radiators in the school rooms out at St. George and my
feet would be so cold that when I first put my foot to 'em I wouldn't even
feel it, my feet were so numb. Mama managed to keep us in overalls, and
some kind of little jacket, but we'd be so cold. Mama wanted us to go to
school. She only had a fourth grade education, but she could write good.
She wrote beautiful poems, even some about bootlegging and the revenuers."

     By the age of 13, he had been arrested for making illegal moonshine.
The year was 1954. "I was with my father in this little old still behind
the farm there. We'd had it for years, you know, so somebody turned us in,
most likely. It was the Federal guys Mueller and Maine, I remember. They
called one of 'em 'Yank' because he used to play baseball with the New York
Yankees. They caught us, just me and dad. We both got probation. They tore
our still up. They beat the oak barrels in and we were not able to patch
'em back, so we had to start over.

     "I think dad felt the worst about me getting caught, like you would
your kids. We found another spot further down the creek, and then I got
caught again when I was 15 at the new still. Dad, too. This time, he got
three years in Tallahassee and I got two years in Natural Bridge, Virginia,
Federal prison.

     "I was treated good in Federal prison. Dad and I wrote one another
while we were in prison and he'd write who all was there that we might
know, like a lot of people from Baker and Charlton counties. While I was in
prison, I attended school, but I dropped out when I got out and finished
years later. I did eighty percent of my sentence. When I was released, they
gave me a suit of clothes and a little money, just enough to feed me on the
way home. They gave me one of those Air Force Bomber jackets, and I wish I
had kept that, I'd love to own it today. I didn't write anyone that I was
coming home. I rode the bus to Folkston, Georgia, and arrived there at
night. I walked over to the jail and knocked on the door. The sheriff was
an old gentleman by the name of Jim Sikes. He came to the door and said,
'Can I help you, son?', and I told him I needed a ride to St. George. He
said, 'Give me time to get dressed.' His wife went with us and we talked
all the way. He was a good old gentleman. Back then, nobody locked the
doors, so I just walked on in the house. Mama had moved a little closer to
St. George when me and daddy went to prison. Everybody got up and mama
started cooking breakfast.

     "I never got along with mama too much; I think we were too much alike.
I was the only one who had her hair color and all the rest of the family
looked like dad. She had dark hair, and dad had blond with blue eyes. Mama
gave me some severe punishment a few times with gallberry switches. I've
still got scars on my back and legs to this day. I was a rebellious-type
person from an early age and still that way today. Daddy never whipped me,
he used his voice, and that is the same way I've raised my kids. I've never
whipped them; I use my voice, and they've all turned out real good.

     "Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I got more whippings than any of them. I
don't know if I led everybody into getting into trouble or what, but I
didn't stay home after I got 13, even though I was on probation after I got
out of prison. I might hitch-hike to Zephyr Hills and be gone for three or
four months and nobody would know where I was at. I'm still that way, just
like now. When I start out the door, I hate to tell Carolyn where I'm
going, even if I'm just going to the Jiffy Store, but I like to know where
she's going.

     "Anyway, after my probation, I got a bad whipping, I mean a bad one. I
left that time and never stayed there permanently again. I'd just come in
and out and if she started fussing at me, I'd go. I'd leave. Daddy never
interfered.

     "Now, mama was a good woman, and she caught hell, too. She raised 12
of us. Her oldest child only weighed two pounds when he was born, but his
twin, a little girl weighed ten pounds. She died after birth. She had
another little girl named Beatrice that lived four or five weeks before she
died. Daddy lay drunk a lot and Mama had to do the providing. I lay it all
to that. I don't blame mama for it. I drank like dad. I was a teen-age
alcoholic. I started drinking at nine years old. I couldn't even pick up a
five- gallon jug. I could lean it over an fill up a glass with it. I'd lay
out in the woods passed out for hours, drunk. Me and my brother, Joe, would
go to square dances at Miller's corner between St. George and Hilliard.
We'd always take shine with us and while he was inside dancing I'd be
outside passed out. I started liking the girls when I was about 14 or 15
so; when I got out of prison at age 16, I started working for myself, not
dad.

     "Junior Yarbrough had a car lot next to the Midget Burger on Main
Street in Macclenny, so I went and asked Junior if he'd sell me a car on
credit. He said, 'Well, go out there and pick you out one,' and he said,
'When can you pay me?. I told him I'd have to haul a few loads of shine and
when I'd made a little profit I'd come back and pay for the car. So, he let
me have it. I always went for Chrysler products, so I picked out a Chrysler
and went and bought some whiskey on credit as well. I got me some contacts
and started hauling 'shine to Haines City, Gainesville, and different
places. Back then you could buy whiskey stashed out in the woods for about
twelve dollars a jug and haul it down state and get twenty five dollars for
it. So doubling my money, I accumulated enough to build my own stills,
eventually.

     "At this time, they had advanced from scratch-feed whiskey to
groundhog whiskey. Catfish Stokes built the still, which was a 40-barrel
still that I could put 1,800 pounds of sugar in and 200 pounds of wheat
brand and 14 pounds of yeast. About every four days, I'd turn out about 70
jugs of whiskey. I was making my own and hauling it. As my profits
increased, I would put up another still. I hired some help, but mostly I
did it myself and got my car paid off.

     "I had a '54 Chrysler that Dub Sands souped up the motor. It had two
four-barrel carburetors in it, and there was very little that could keep up
with it. I started making good money. I blew a lot of it, gave away some. I
had so much money, I thought I'd never need any more money for the rest of
my life. I kept it in sacks, in the car, or somewhere like that."

     The moonshine profession was hard work, he said, and, unlike what some
people think now or thought then, while the money might have been good, it
didn't come easy. It was a way to survive during a time jobs for the
uneducated and untrained were scarce.

     "I had this guy working for me who had one eye. We were about the same
age. I had a still about five miles below Saint George on the creek back of
Emmaus Primitive Baptist Church, located in the 'Bend' section of Charlton
County. It's really a historical church and mama wrote a poem about it
once. It was started in 1868 and the old church still has spit holes in the
floor for the old timers to spit their tobacco, and they could do it and
never miss the hole," he laughed. "There was no fence around it at the
time, so we'd pull up by the old oak tree behind the church to unload all
our paraphernalia. "All that heavy stuff had to be hauled down to the still
by hand and caution taken to hide our tracks so we would not be followed.
I'll never forget this particular night because that's when I got my name
Skeeter and I've been called that ever since. There was an old drainage
ditch that was always filled with water running toward the river, so we'd
take and wade in that water far enough to hide our tracks. Then we'd come
up on a little bank and walk on down to the still. On this particular
night, that this boy was helping me, the mosquitoes were so thick you could
swing a pint jar and catch a quart of 'em. They were so thick that they
were all over me and I was saying dirty words and cussing and carrying on
and he started calling me Skeeter. We got into two or three scrapes over it
because I didn't want to be called that, but after I got to thinking about
it, I thought, 'Well, it sounds better than what I'm being called now,' so
it stuck with me through the years.

     "One particular night I was out there by myself when he couldn't help
me and it was time to run the still. I had this '54 Chrysler with the seats
out and overload springs and it was loaded down with paraphernalia. I had a
groundhog still where you put 1800 pounds of sugar in 'em, 14 pounds of
yeast, and 200 pounds of wheat brand and it all had to be toted to the
still. We had graduated from kerosene to propane by this time and it took
four propane bottles to run that 70 jugs of whiskey.

     "Just as I started unloading it about 10 p.m., there came up a
thunderstorm and lightning started flashing. I heard a noise and it was
sorta a bleating noise like bababababa, just an awful noise. The hair stood
up on top of my head and I started graying right there. I'm serious, back
then we were always pulling tricks on one another and that's what I thought
was happening, so I just reached back and started getting more stuff from
my car to set under the oak trees.

     "After I got it all out of the car, I parked the car by the river and
walked back to start toting all the stuff to the still. Just as I did, this
big clap of lightning struck again, and I heard this terrible noise once
more. I looked out toward the grave yard and saw something white with horns
and the reddest eyes you've ever seen. I said, 'That's the devil,' and I
mean I got scared. I was the type that I thought, now someone may still be
playing a trick on me and I'm not going to leave until I find out. The
noise was coming from in the middle of the cemetery and I was so scared
that the hair was standing straight up on my neck and chill bumps were all
over me. Every time the lightning would strike I could see it.

     "Finally I said, 'Well, I've got to find out what this is,' so I got
my old '32-20' pistol -- I've still got the very one -- and I reached under
the seat. I was afraid to cock it, my hand was just a-shaking. I said,
'That's either the devil or someone is playing a trick on me, and I'm not
going to leave until I find out' so I started walking that way, just
knowing I was going to catch the devil. We were always taught at home that
there was a heaven and hell and Jesus Christ and the devil, and that the
devil had horns.

     'As I got a little closer and could hear the noise better and see the
figure when the lightning struck, I'd made up my mind it was the devil and
I said a little prayer. I said, 'God, let me find out for sure if it's the
devil; if it is, don't let him get a-hold of me.' I had a flash light in my
hand. We moonshiners always carried a flashlight because we had to carry
the tip of 'em in our mouths since our hands were always full, and the next
day my mouth would be so sore, but that's the way we done it.

     "When I got up close to it, I could see that there was an open grave
the grave diggers had dug that afternoon. In it was a big old Billie goat
one of them that roamed the woods. It had fallen into that grave and that's
what it was. He was up on his back feet and I could see his front legs and
eyes a-shining and looking my way with his horns. I helped him get out when
I calmed down. I kept saying, 'Thank you, Lord, Thank you, Lord, Thank
you.'

     "It wasn't long after that people began to say, 'You're turning
gray-headed,' and I was. That damn Billie goat scared me to death. I moved
that still from there because after that I had such a weird feeling. "The
next time I located near an old abandoned house where someone had been
murdered. A man had beat his wife to death with one of those sticks you
hang a hog up with, and they say as she ran around that house it splattered
blood all around on the walls. I don't know why I put the still there
because every time I went by the place I thought of that. Well, Catfish
Stokes had built me two good little stills and they were all sweetened up
and there came up a bad storm one night. The rain was hitting me so hard it
felt like hail, so I got into my little still buggy and got stuck right
away, so I had to walk about two miles to that old house. It was so cold
and I was shaking all over, just about to freeze to death.

     "When I got there, I noticed many of the boards on the front porch
were missing but I wouldn't go inside, so I crawled up against the wall on
the front porch. The wind was blowing so hard, and I was really cold and
miserable. I finally couldn't stand it, so I got up to go inside. I had
always heard that dried blood would actually cause a reflection like a
lightning bug, so I crawled up in a corner where no wind could reach me.
The windows and doors to the old house had been busted out and the wind
just blew right on through. Each time the lightning struck, I could see
spots of that woman's blood glowing. I sat there shaking and finally said,
I can't stand this anymore,' so I walked three or four miles to where I was
staying to get some dry clothes. Later, I found my helper, who went back in
there and finished running the two stills for me."

     Eventually the stills were blown up by revenuers, he said. "After that
I put five stills up. My goal was seven. I hired a couple of guys, but was
still hauling most of it. Finally, I reached my goal and had me seven
stills. I was into moonshining big time now. There were some big elaborate
underground stills in the county and they even had bedrooms and a kitchen
in them. You could even drive a car inside them to load up. I hauled the
moonshine from my stills and for others as well. I had so much money at one
time I had trouble finding a place to put it. I had more than $80,000
stashed away in a suit box I kept in my car.

     "Later, most moonshiners got into what we called double-trucking. We'd
have an old cut-down vehicle with an old wooden bed on the back of it we
called a still buggy. It would usually have a windshield but no hood. Just
a junkyard thing. We'd find us a road that had a thick palmetto patch where
we'd hide it. We'd put long boards across the ditch to walk across and load
all our stuff on the still buggy. Then, we'd drive the still buggy with our
supplies to where the still was located and unload. We'd have to bring our
shine out the same way, and hide the signs where our vehicles had been.
Most of the time this was all done at night and we'd have to go back in the
morning as soon as the sun came up to verify that we'd done a good job
hiding our tracks from the revenuers. This way you wouldn't have to tote
all your equipment so far to the still, which was backbreaking work.

     "Sometimes we'd find a good place where somebody lived in the back
woods and, maybe, go through their cow pasture to a creek or pond, anything
that held water.

     "With seven stills, I now had several cars, plenty of money and hired
four persons to work for me. My stills could run about 14 quarts of whiskey
a minute. I paid $2 a jug for someone to make it, and $1 a jug to haul it
You could haul about 65 jugs of whiskey on one of them cars in a two- or
three-hour trip, so that was good money. If you wanted, you could turn
around and make another trip. I was clearing about $1,200 per still or
$10,000 a week- I bought some land, but sold it; I should have kept it,
because I got caught again and had to serve more prison time. I left my
suit box of money -- more than $40,000 -- with a girl friend, and when I
got out she had bought a car and spent most of the rest.

     "Have you ever seen the movie, 'Cool Hand Luke?"' he wanted to know.
"Well, that is just about how I found it in prison. I got four years from
Judge Ben Hodge in Folkston, Georgia, and was put on the Georgia chain
gang. You know these big gigantic rocks under the bridges in Georgia? Well,
I put lots of 'em there. I transferred from Waycross to Reidsville. If you
misbehaved there, they put you in the hot box and you were given bread and
water. I was refusing the bread and water when I came down with mumps and
went down from 185 pounds to 135. I lost lots of muscle and was transferred
to Reidsville Hospital where I regained my health. I was still at
Reidsville when they had their last electrocution.

     "During this time, there was a murder there and pieces of body were
flushed down the commode. I saw them beat one man to death who tried to
slip a letter out in an attempt to escape. One man said he personally knew
of 18 that had been killed there but it was always reported to be death by
natural causes. A lot of things went on there that I knew about. I was
rebellious and if a guard raised his voice at someone else I felt I just
had to put my two cents worth in. I've been beaten and chairs busted over
my head and I'd go right back in the hot box. I don't consider myself a
dangerous person, but I don't let people mess with me, or cross me. I never
had any trouble making friends, and people seemed to like me because I
tried to be honest. If I owed you I paid you.

     'While I was in Federal Prison, I was sent to Petersburg, Virginia,
and started back in school. I took auto mechanics. In November of '65 I got
out and went and bought me another car from Junior Yarbrough on a credit.
He sold me a white Plymouth. I bought a load of whiskey and hauled it to
Valdosta and on the way I ran out of gas. If I'd known it was a gas hog I
would have carried some gas with me, but I didn't. One of the five-gallon
cans was leaking and you could smell the whiskey real strong. The first
thing that pulled up behind me was a state trooper. I got out of my car and
walked back to his, so he wouldn't smell the whiskey. He said, 'What's the
matter? and I said, "Well, I'm out of gas of all things, and he said,
'Well, it's not too far to the station up there, I'll run you in and bring
some gas back,' and I said, 'I'll get a way back, you don't need to, you
need to be watching this highway' and he said, 'No, I'll bring, you back.'
So he took me and I put a deposit on the gas can, and the trooper took me
back. We were driving back on the expressway and about the time we got back
to my car, another car came by going about 100 mph eastbound. He said,
"I'll check on you later, I got to go catch this man,' and I said, "I
appreciate it, man.' I got my car going, and that was the last load of
whiskey I hauled in that direction.

     "One night, I came out of Nahunta where we went through a pasture. I
was hauling it from Nahunta across to Jacksonville. I came in on old Kings
Road, to hit Lane's Avenue. When I got to Beaver Street, my car shut off.
The first thing that pulled up behind me was a policeman, at three o'clock
in the morning. I had five-gallon cans in the car. I said, 'Man, my car
won't crank, can you push me off?' and he said, 'No, I'll call someone to
get you going,' and I said, 'I need a push now, I'm running late.' He told
me he wasn't supposed to, but he pushed me off, then turned around and went
another way. That was my next incident after Valdosta and I said, 'Man,
someone's trying to tell me something.'

     "By then, I was an habitual crime offender. I'd already been convicted
three times, and I could get 10 years the next time, so when I met Carolyn
shortly after that, I did just a little bit, not much, before getting out
of it. There just wasn't no way I could do 10 years."

     Skeeter married pretty Carolyn Long, daughter of Hugh and Irene Long
of Macclenny in 1966. "We liked each other at first sight," said his
pretty, petite wife. "We met one Friday and the following Friday he asked
me to marry him. We went to the judge's office to get our license and two
weeks later to the day, we got married," she said. No one thought it would
work out because we were both such independent persons, but it has lasted
29 years."

     When the couple met, Carolyn said she knew Skeeter was working in
moonshine. "Yes, I knew he was dealing in moonshine," she said. "But back
then, we didn't think too much about it, everyone seemed to be connected in
some way or the other to it. I was surprised I felt that way, because my
brother was a police officer, my father a part-time deputy, my sister was a
police officer and I had a nephew who worked in homicide."

     Carolyn's father, Hugh Long, worked part-time for Baker County Sheriff
Ed Yarbrough. Skeeter remembers the Baker County sheriff with respect. "I
can't say anything bad about Ed. He was always firm, but fair," he said. "I
remember riding through Baker County one time in a '55 Mercury and the
sheriff pulled in behind me. I pulled into a truck stop and he pulled in
behind me. I said, 'Damn, I hate to get caught with empties,' because
that's all I had in the car, but back at that time you could have whiskey
or any paraphernalia and it carried the same offense. Well, I pulled back
on the highway and he followed me right on. When I passed the inspection
station he pulled in and turned around, so from then on when I went to
Gainesville, I went through Baxter and Sanderson on 229 to Lake Butler. He
had probably seen me before, but I got his message to stay out of Baker
County. I knew he'd stop me the next time. I respected him. I didn't come
back."

     The young couple was given land by her parents across from where she
grew up. "Our first home was a trailer," said Carolyn, "but in a short time
we began building our present home and through the years have added to it.

     Skeeter began lawful employment with Florida Wire and Cable Company in
Jacksonville. Before long, he worked up to a crew leader, then went on to
become a supervisor.

     "When the company opened the plant in Sanderson I was selected to
start it up and was made the plant superintendent," he said. "I was in
charge of cross-training everybody. I returned to school to get my GED. I
don't know how I passed, but I did. Then I took some Dale Carnegie courses,
and a business and management course at Florida Community College of
Jacksonville (FCCJ) at night," he said. Soon the personable man who had
lived mainly in the backwoods of Charlton County, driving souped up
vehicles laden with i1legal moonshine, was travelling around the United
States representing his company and spiralling upward to reach the top
supervisory slot. "If I had it to do over again, there are some things I
would change," he says, in a deliberate slow drawl. "I'd be a little better
at it, and I would buy land with all my excess money."

     One thing he would not change is his marriage. "I never thought about
getting married and having a family until I met Carolyn," he said. "We've
been very happy."

     The couple adopted two children and had one together. "If we had all
the children I lost, along with the two we adopted, we'd have had nine
children," said Carolyn. "I only carried one baby full term," she said.

     Skeeter's criminal record was no obstacle to adopting Lori, who is now
married to Daniel Moody, or Ernest, Jr. who , with his Wife Lynn Hodges,
have two daughters, Kristy and Delaney. Their biological son is Clay.

     "Both my boys are 6 foot 4 inches," he says with obvious pride.

     It is easy to see where the couple places their priority. It is their
family. Photos grace every wall and table.

     Skeeter retired in January 1993 from Wire Mill. "Today, I just spend
my time fishing or riding the woods, thinking about my moonshine days," he
said. "Sometimes it doesn't even seem real, but it was, and the way I've
told it is just the way it happened to me."

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            'MUELLER, and MAINE'
             [Written by MRS. MATILDA GAINEY, St. George, Ga.,
     a small town on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, Charlton County,
                                 Georgia.]

St. George was once a nice little town,
Until Mueller and Maine got to hanging around.
The poor folks here at least they could eat,
And sometimes even give their families a treat.

The law got rough about two years ago,
And Uncle Sam said, "Boys, this bootleggin'must go."
Mueller and Maine caught 'em Til the jails over-flowed,
And they were sentenced by a Judge from way down the state,
While the wives and children were left home to wait
For the father's return from the sentence he gave,
And the poor mothers worked back home like a slave.

The planes would fly by and the cars go scurrying,
While Mueller and Maine got on with their hurrying,
So maybe they'd know whose pot they had found,
Before they got going with that dynamite sound.

Sometimes it seemed the country was at war,
With dynamite a sounding from a near and a far,
The houses would rattle and the earth would shake,
For Mueller and Maine had made another rake.

They got the bootleggers down to their last measly dime,
And couldn't see how they'd set up a still another time,
But the boys figured out a plan even from behind,
To set up a still of a more different kind.

They made them a still of two old drums,
And when they got started the burner did hum.
The whiskey would pour in a great big stream,
And the bootleggers eyes once more did gleam,
For they thought Mueller and Maine,
Had just been out-smarted again.

It began to get hard to get any sugar,
So they named their new still a precious little lugger
The bootleggers had lots of fun I do know,
With Mueller and Maine a hunting stills so.

But when at last they found that lugger,
Mueller and Maine were as mad as a bugger,
For when they charged in on it like a bear,
All they did find was exactly nobody there

But they kept up their slip, slide, sneak and crawl,
Until be darned if they just about ain't got 'em all.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             In Memory of Mama
                           MATILDA HOWARD GAINEY
                            By her son, Skeeter

If I could give my Mother...all the flowers she has earned-
She would have flowers, to infinity and then some.
She gave birth to fourteen children,
She loved us all the same.
She buried three, eleven still remain.
I never understood how hard her life must have been
To feed and clothe us so we could grow to be women and men.
All she had while she was alive,
Was hard times, trouble and a will to survive
Thank you Mama for everything you have done
And I'll tell the world I'm proud to be your son!

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            A PRISONER'S PRAYER
                      Written by Matilda Howard Gainey
                 For her son Skeeter when he was in prison

When ever I have served my sentence, God,
I pray that I will be
A credit to my country
And to my community.
That I may never stray
Beyond your ten commandments
Or what any law may say
For I have learned my lesson God
And I would start a new
To walk in good society
And live my life for you.
I want to put away my past
And build a future bright
With honesty and decency
And all I know is right
That I may gain your blessings God
And my eternal goal
And by my good example
May save another's soul

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                               GAINEY STREET
                             By Matilda Gainey

 Gardenias are blooming
 The air is so sweet                  And hope for the best
 The sun is shining brightly          And leave it up to Jesus
 On Gainey Street                     And he will do the rest
 The day is about over                He will surely watch over
 Tomorrow will surely come            And protect us from harm
 No matter what it brings,            And securely protect
 It shall be a happy one              With His loving arms.
 For those who look ahead                  1975

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                 OLD EMMAUS
                             By Matilda Gainey

Old Emmaus has stood for many years
She has sheltered many joys
She has sheltered many tears
She sheltered the meek
She sheltered the bold
She sheltered the rich
She sheltered the poor
That's why we can't understand
Why the devil would send some evil hands
To try to destroy the poor old thing
When she has done no evil to any man
I know God protected her there
Or the hand of the devil could have stripped her bare
The land would be saddened
The tombs would be bare
Thank you Lord Jesus
For protecting her there.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                               I AM NOT THERE
                             by Matilda Gainey

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there.
I do not sleep, I am a thousand winds,
I am the diamond glints on snow
I am the sun light on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain
When you awake in the mornings hush
I am the swift upflinging rush of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the soft star shine at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there.
I did not die


                            Tommy Gerald Johns
                            Macclenny, Florida

     From the front room of the house where he grew up in north Macclenny,
Tommy Johns spins a tale that even amazes him.

     "I get to telling all this to people and some times I get to wondering
if I'm telling the truth about all the things that happened here," he said.

     Born in 1938 to Kathryn (Davis) and Clarence Johns, he probably knows
more about the people of Macclenny and Baker County during the days of card
games and gambling, moonshine making, bootlegging, and drag-car-racing than
any other person living in the area today. He was named in honor of his
father's favorite moonshiner, Tommy Holland, of Jacksonville.

     From the time he was a small child, he was keenly observant and can
chatter off story after story of the extraordinary era he astonishingly
lived through. His maternal and paternal lineages connect him in close-knit
kinship to almost every major family in Baker County. He is exceptionally
likeable, with scores of friends, and his remarkable life has revolved
around most of them in a very personal way.

     Tommy Johns' life has certainly been no Sunday School picnic. It has
been one round of parties, drinking, fast cars, gambling, and moonshine
whiskey. He was a senior in high school when his younger brother, Jimmy,
was born. He had an older half-brother, George Wray Rhoden. In the
atmosphere he lived, he grew up fast. The front room of his parent's modest
north Macclenny home was always open to the community, and almost everyone
who was someone, and many who were not, lodged there, sometimes for days on
end. Some came for a weekend and stayed for years.

     "I don't remember a time when there wasn't whiskey dealings, card
games and gambling going on in our house," he said. "I can remember most
things pretty good from the time I was six years old. For a while my
daddy's sister, my Aunt Novie, and her husband, Lloyd Eddings, lived with
us, right back there in that back bedroom. Uncle Lloyd killed a man up
there on Highway 90 at Frances Grill in 1941. In 1943, they came to spend a
weekend with us and stayed here six years. They moved out in 1949 and then
my Uncle Dickie (Davis) got married in 1950, and he and his wife moved in
that same bedroom for about a year.

     "For awhile, we all used the same bathroom, but in 1952 daddy had
another one built. Now that was something back in them days to have a
couple of bathrooms in your house, because I can even remember when we had
an outdoor toilet.

     "Grandpa (Richard) Davis had this old house built. I was up there in
the attic one day and found where Andra* Mobley had signed his name on the
rafters in July, 1933." [*Andrew Jackson Mobley]

     "By day, and by night, people came to the house for at least 11 years,
and especially during the war. We were one of the first families to get a
television set and everyone would gather here to see it, especially the big
fights. They'd be sitting all around, even be up and down the halls, even
standing on the outside, whites and blacks. I remember how we'd come in
here and look at the test patterns waiting on the TV to come on. Howdy
Doody would come on first thing. We never thought anything about it. To us
it was a way of life."

     A way of life was selling moonshine from the house in pints,
half-pints, fifths, a gallon, or even five gallons, if you wanted it.

     "Daddy made, bought, sold and hauled whiskey. In 1943, he started
bottling and selling it here at the house. We'd store it in the attic, and
bring it down at night by the five- gallon jugs. We'd bottle about 32
halves, 16 pints and 8 fifths, except on weekends or holidays we'd bring
down more. We bought our bottles from Duval Spirit and Bottle Company out
of Jacksonville.

     When we first started out doing it, kids would bring us used bottles
and mama and daddy would pay them two cents apiece. You could see little
kids coming up the street and it was nothing to see them with a half-pint
in each pocket, and he'd make himself four or six cents, how ever many
bottles he had. We would wash them out and use them to bottle our whiskey.

     "For years, we had big card games at our house and some people would
play for days without leaving. We made good money. I've seen some of the
people bring sacks full of money in here and play for days at the time. It
was just a scheduled thing and daddy would cut the pot about every other
hand for a dollar. I had me a little shelf where I sold cigarettes and
chewing gum, and candy and such as that. I had me a bank account back when
Coca-Colas were a nickel.

     "People would come and go all the time and I've seen cars parked all
over everywhere and almost to Highway 90. They'd be playing music up here
and have two card games going at one time, and I mean big money, some of
the biggest and most influential people in - and out-of-town came. People
from Jacksonville came, like Sheriff Rex Sweat and some of his deputies. I
can remember four or five guns laying over there on that big table in their
holsters that the detectives would take off while they played. "Some people
would lay down and sleep an hour or two, especially if they got hooked, you
know, and just play on through the night and into the next day. I'd go to
bed when I got sleepy. I could sleep right through it. Mama always had
something cooked and they'd usually leave her nice tips, and as Aunt Novie
always said, it was just like one big happy family. I never remember no
arguments, or anyone acting up or being ugly or using bad language. If
there was, I don't remember it. It was a fun life because I knew everybody
and everybody knew me. And the people, when they gambled, would relate
funny stories, and if they told a joke unsuitable, they'd ask me to leave,
because I was younger. Even when I got older they'd say, 'Tommy, why don't
you go in the next room?-- and I would.

     "I enjoyed it when some of my great uncles would come over here and
sit and visit in the front room. They'd buy a pint of whisky and when it
got time for 'em to take a drink they'd get up and go to the back of the
house to do it. They'd just sit and talk for hours. I remember how one of
my uncles, during the war, would get to drinking and he'd take his old
knife out and go to sharpening it, and he'd say, 'I'm going to cut that old
Mussolini's mustache and Tojo. And Hitler. I'm going to get him too.' And
everyone would laugh. People came here to drink and play cards just like
they do at the 121 Club, and they were regulars for years.

     "Some of them were real interesting too, like Tinsey McEwen. He'd come
here to watch the 64 Million Dollar Question on television and I remember
that before they'd get the question finished, he would answer it. He was
real smart. People were regulars and we expected them, you know, they just
came to fellowship and drink and enjoy the music -- someone was always
playing music.

     "And they'd come at all hours, day and night, to buy whiskey or do
business with daddy. I could tell, just like mama and daddy, who it was
that knocked on the door and what kind of whiskey to go and get and how
much. I knew if I was to put it on their charge account, or if they would
pay. I'd go write it down on a pad. Everyone had their own knock, their own
characteristics.

     "If I was going to bring a friend home with me after school, I'd look
the situation over before I'd bring them in. I had as good a mama and daddy
as you could get, but it was a strain sometimes, as I grew older. You know,
like when I'd go to birthday parties, like to the homes of people like the
Gilberts, the Frasers or Hiers. But, I want to make one thing clear. They
were always nice to me and treated me like a perfect gentleman. They were
just people that never messed with Whiskey in their life, but they all
treated me like anybody else. I always had an inner fear that something
would come up about what mama and daddy did. Mama and daddy always would
tell me they didn't ever want me to mess with it. Daddy would say, 'I want
you to get an education and go to college.' They'd say, 'This life is no
good, can't you see it is a strain living like this?' and daddy would say,
'I don't like doing it, but I have to provide for you and your mama. I
don't have any education or another way to make a living.' Daddy had about
a fifth grade education.

     "Daddy's mama had 16 children in 24 years. His parents, Jessie
(Prevatt) and Ernest Johns, did the best they could raising their big
family. I remember how grandma loved her children, and she'd better not
catch any of them talking about the other one. She'd stop them right in
their tracks, and she'd say, 'Hold it! You're talking about your brother or
sister.' Grandma knew when each one was born; she remembered their
birthdays. Two of her children, Junior and Carl, died when they were
little. Besides there was an infant that died, and then Nellie, Freddie,
Thelma, Jennie, Shep, Novie, Carl, Junior, Lonnie, Bobby, Lois, Virginia,
another infant that died, and Eugene (Lefty). Grandma lived to bury seven
of her children. Today, Thelma, Novie, Virginia and Eugene are all that are
living.

     "But daddy went away to prison when he was a teen-ager in the place of
an uncle who was caught with moonshine. He just turned himself in and gave
his name as Colonel Johns which was his daddy's brother. I think daddy was
always a little embarrassed about them times he pulled in prison. He served
two times before he married mama.

     "He was shot up pretty bad in Titusville, Florida, running from the
law. He ran a road block, and they chased him and shot at him. Daddy run
and got away and crawled under a house. There was a boy walking his girl to
the door, saying good-night and they saw daddy crawl under the house, so
they called and reported it. The law surrounded the house and just stuck
their shotguns under there and started shooting. Daddy had pulled up and
was hanging onto the rafters, but he still got a bunch in the back and
legs. Somehow, he ran out from there and was running down the road. The
bullets kept knocking him down and he said he thought he was falling
because he was trying to run fast. He stayed in the hospital a long time
befofe serving prison time. For the rest of his life, you could still see
the bullets when they took x-rays. That's when daddy started selling
whiskey from the house. Times were hard and it was during the war. He had a
kidney taken out and we didn't have any money. I know it must have been
Grandpa Davis who was feeding us.

     "I can remember one Christmas, we were so poor after daddy had his
kidney taken out. There was no substance or programs available back then to
help and daddy couldn't work. I got a ball that Christmas, that's all, and
I'll never forget it had stars on it. I remember that I felt very fortunate
to even get the ball and I slept with it for a long time so no one would
take it away from me. And the next Christmas, I got a pack of fire
crackers. But by the next Christmas, daddy was back on his feet and we had
a new car sitting out in front of our house, I got a BB gun and I had a
wagon under the tree and it full of presents. Even when we were real poor,
though, the lack of money never took away our love or closeness in the
family. I guess we were so dependent on each other.

     "Daddy used to haul whiskey to the Al Capone gang down in Miami and
they would hide the whiskey in the elevator shafts of their hotels. I
remember daddy saying he could drive right on in and unload his whiskey,
sorta like a basement. And when he got well after the kidney operation, he
started in the whiskey business in a big way again. He hauled to the Queen
of the Bootleggers, a lady named Sue Cause, in Miami. She shot a revenuer
right between the eyes and the bullet somehow went around his skull and
came out the back of his head. He lived, but she had to go to prison. The
day she got out of prison, she came to our house. We knew she was coming
and we were all dressed a little nicer than usual. I must have been about
10 or 12 years old, but I remember we were all excited. It was just like
the movies. They drove in this big LaSalle car. She got out with these two
guys who had striped double-breasted suits on. I'll never forget one of 'em
had two teeth out and his hair was slicked back. They got out and she came
in here and sat down. Daddy called me and said, 'Come here, son, I want you
to meet Sue Cause. She's Queen of the Bootleggers.'

     "I was impressed and I thought that was an honor to have her sittin'
there. She said, 'Yeah, I heard you had a boy,' and she gave me a present
that the prisoners had made over there. She gave us a copy of Look Magazine
that had her picture on the front cover. It said, 'Sue Cause, Queen of the
Bootleggers.' I remember they sat around and talked about the future of the
whiskey business, who was still in it and who wasn't. I was taking it all
in. They talked about who to trust and who not to trust. It was just like a
business meeting of the county commissioners discussing paving a road. I
remembered feeling so honored that she had come to our house. I've never
forgotten that day, or Sue Cause.

     "Daddy hid whiskey in our attic. The outside vent was too sma11 to get
a five-gallon jug through, so he had a larger vent made and we would put it
up there at night. Daddy would age some of the whiskey and that brought
more money. We had a concealed place in our bedroom closet where we could
hide five five-gallon jugs broken down into pints, half-pints, etc. We
could just lift the floor up and place it in this hollow place. The
revenuers use to come in and look through the closets, and the floor would
be just full of shoes and they never found it. It's been nailed down and
boarded up, now.

     "Daddy had whiskey buried all around the place and I remember one
time, daddy had some liquor buried not far from our house. The woods caught
on fire, right about where Fraser Hospital is now. The fire chief was Teddy
Bear Yarbrough and he came rolling up there in his fire truck and daddy
yelled at him to put the fire out over his whiskey first, so Teddy Bear
did. Everyone around there was helping to tote daddy's whiskey back across
the road. I remember the sheriffs car was coming and somebody yelled to run
stop them until we could save all daddy's whiskey. And they did.

     "Daddy had some people working for him selling whiskey. one time one
of them got caught, and daddy helped take care of that family.

     "I remember people took you at your word back then. They trusted you.
People brought daddy and mama money up here for whiskey bills and they
never counted the money. I can never remember them doing that. I'd go with
daddy to buy a load, but mostly we made most of our own at our own stills.
Daddy always had a still, and what made our whiskey good clean whiskey was
the clean copper stills and good wooden barrels daddy used. He always hired
someone to make the whiskey for him.

     "Grandpa Davis built the first telephone company in Baker County. He
lived in the first block off Main Street on North College and the telephone
company was across the street from his house. He eventually gave it to some
widow woman. It didn't have any air conditioning and Dorothy Byrd was the
telephone operator. She would sit out on the front porch where it was cool.
I remember Uncle Lloyd would be trying to get the phone and he'd go out on
our front porch and holler to the next block, 'Dot, go inside and answer
the phone!' Dot kept us posted when the revenuers were spotted. Someone
would call her and they'd say, 'The bull is out,' and she'd call and say,
'The bull is out' and we'd know to be careful.

     "Daddy had the distinction of opening the first bar in Macclenny, and
there are still bullet holes in the ceiling where they used to shoot up the
place, right at the corner of 228 and Main Street. Daddy didn't drink. I
used to see him taste it to see if it was good whiskey. I was in college
when I drank my first drink.

     "I remember one time one of my friends came up here to the house to
buy some whiskey, and daddy asked him if he was old enough. I reckon he was
trying to do a little right.

     "I remember one time when I was young and impressionable, Uncle Dickie
came by and said, 'Come run down to Umatilla, Florida with me. I've got to
pick up some money' so I got in the car with him. I remember he drove fast,
but you know that was the times back then and to mama and daddy that was no
more to them than if I was going to get a loaf of bread. When we got there,
he pulled in the woods and I'll never forget it. He pulled right off to the
left of the highway and put the car in park and reached right up in an oak
tree and got the dangest sack of money you've ever seen. It was $800, all
in tens and twenties. I was young, so therefore it looked like an enormous
amount of money to me. He just put it in the seat and we turned right
around and came back.

     The house is still standing today that daddy owned across the street
from Knabb's Sports Complex on West Boulevard North. We stored whiskey
there for several years, and I remember it was so full of whiskey we had to
make trails to walk through. The same in the attic and I'm guessing we had
about 50 or so five-gallon jugs stored there for further distribution.

     "I remember going with daddy to the train depot in Macclenny on at
least one or two occasions when he sent several five-gallon jugs of
moonshine to Tallahassee. We pulled up to the east side of the platform and
two African-American train conductors knew all about it because they took
the shine and loaded it onto the car and it headed out to Tallahassee.

     "We used to race a lot. People were always coming up here trying to
get daddy to race. Tommy Moon used to fix up his cars to run fast. People
would be lining 121 at Turkey Creek Bridge, where we started, and we'd go
all the way to Cute Starling's juke. Then we started racing further,
because Eulie Dugger would come home with a patrol car and we'd race the
patrol car. Daddy never lost a race.

     "Junior Crockett and Ray Dinkins bought the Kaiser/Frazier place, and
Junior came here one day and wanted to race daddy. Daddy had a Hudson
Hornet. They started right there on 121 at Dr. Watson's house, and I think
daddy passed them right there where Aunt Novie and Uncle Lloyd had all
their cows. There was some manure in the road and the impact just threw it
up on their windshield.

     "Daddy always had a number 68 tag on his car. We wouldn't buy a 52 tag
because people would know we were from Baker County and they were liable to
pull you over and look for moonshine. There were only 67 counties in
Florida, but we could buy a number 68 which meant office agent. Daddy got
them through the mail somewhere.

     "We used to race and do just about anything when Charlie Johns was
governor. We would pull out our driver's license and they would say,'You
kin to Charlie? and we'd say, 'Yeah,' and they'd say,'Go ahead.' That
happened several times.

     "Daddy got to where he'd let me go for small loads of whiskey,
especially if he was into a big poker game and really winning. I'd been
with him so much, I knew how to do it. I could tell if it was good liquor
or not. You'd shake the jug about three times and if the bubbles left the
edges and went to the center, it was 100 proof. If they went up and didn't
all connect, it was under a 100. I could taste it and tell if it was made
in a copper still. Daddy insisted our stills be kept neat; he didn't allow
any paper or old bottles around, or if you were drinking a Pepsi, you
didn't just throw your bottle down, you had to put it away. We never went
to the still the same way, either, in case someone was watching us.

     "Daddy let me borrow his car and he knew I raced. I was caught
speeding with someone over in Lake Butler on my way to a ball game, and was
fined. They let me go but I was supposed to come back to pay my fine. When
I got home and told daddy, he just said, 'Well, did you win the race?' and
I said, 'Yes, Sir,' and he said, "Well, go pay the fine.' One time, Daddy
had a new '53 Olds and I'd drive it uptown and loan it to my first cousin,
Maurice Prevatt, to take his date out and I'd just walk around hunting me a
way to ride around. Maurice was older and I looked up to him and some of
the others like him that played football.

     "I totaled two cars and one had to take two wreckers to bring the
pieces in. It was strung up and down 90. I was driving and Bobby Thomas,
who was in the back seat, said, 'How fast are we going?' and George Taylor
said, 'You can't see the speedometer.' About that time the right front tire
blowed out and we started rolling over. It took the hair off Zade Cowart's
head and required 23 stitches. John Porterfield and Steve Johns and the
others were slung out all through them woods. George's eye stayed black and
blue for almost a year. We didn't have any sense of fear back then. It's a
wonder we lived because such as that went on all the time.

     "Fortunately, I had one experience that was very positive for me.
Things could get pretty hectic around our house at report card time, so one
day, Lonnie Dugger, who was my high school principal, caught me signing my
own report card because it wasn't a very good one to take home for daddy to
sign. He said he wanted to see me in his office, so I went in there and
noticed my report card on his desk. I didn't realize it until then just how
much interest Lonnie' Dugger had in me, and I'm sure all the other
students. From then on, I made good grades in my junior and senior year,
and I made sure daddy signed. If I made anything lower than a 'C', I'd have
to come in after school to study and make it up, and he would be the one
that would stay after school with me. That was a blessing that I got caught
because that, really helped me. My brother, George Wray, had the knowledge
of just how important an education was and he was always on me to study.
And mama and daddy stressed education and would always say to me, 'Can't
you see the strain we're under, don't do what we're doing.' I guess I
couldn't because we had all them big card games and I saw all those sacks
of money and it was influencing.

     "Eventually, Daddy wanted to get out of the whiskey business. The law
was closing in and searching with airplanes. Radios had come out in the
police cars. He knew it was time to get out and when we got out, we got out
altogether.

     Daddy built a truck stop on north 121 in 1956 across the street from
Uncle Dickie's house. It was open 24 hours a day. He was under such a
strain and I could tell it because he thought the internal revenue was
going to come around and say, 'Where did you get the money to build this?'
Daddy would have the money, but he'd have to go to the bank and borrow the
money, and then pay the bank back. I can remember that after a couple of
years, after no one came around asking questions, we started breathing
easier and thinking, 'Well, we're going to get by, we've made it.' I
remember when we got the ice machine, the guy brought it out here and daddy
said, 'I want to pay you cash, but I'm just scared.'

     "Almost everyone gathered at the truck stop to eat, just like they did
at our house to play cards. One time, my little brother, Jimmy, walked up
to one of the most influential men in Macclenny, Billy Knabb, who was
eating lunch there with some friends. Jimmy knew him when he used to come
to our house to play cards. Right in front of everyone, Jimmy said, 'Hi,
Mr. Knabb. Ya'll getting up a little game?' That man still gets a laugh out
of that today.

     "Daddy sold the truck stop after 12 years. Then he went to work as a
jailer at the jail and mama their cook/dietician. They retired 10 years
after that."

     Tommy went off to college with his best friend, Pee Wee Brinson, in
1956. He was 25 years old when he married Jacquelyn 'Jackie' Colley from
Starke. Their 16-year marriage produced two children, Tommy Gerald Johns II
and Leslie Jacquelyn Johns. Three years ago, he married Janie Echols.

     An avid sports fan, his home is decorated from front-to-back with
Florida Gator souvenirs. The station wagon he proudly drives has more than
352 Florida University Gator stickers plastered over the entire body of the
vehicle and a sign that says, 'A Gator Fan is in this Vehicle.'

     Would he change his life in any way, if he could live it over?

     "You know if I could live my life over, I'd want my mama and daddy to
have a job like everybody else, because it was a strain, if you get down to
it, the bottom line. They were as good a mama and daddy as you could get.
They loved me, and I certainly loved them, but it was a hard life on all of
us due to the constant strain."

     After the death of Kathryn Johns in 1985, Clarence began attending
church with his sister, Novie. She was a member of "The Lord's Church" in
Taylor, whose pastor is former sheriff Ed Yarbrough. In 1986, Clarence's
health failed. As he lay in a coma in a Jacksonville hospital, his grieving
family decided to phone Reverend Yarbrough to come. The former sheriff-
turned-preacher, did. And this is how he remembers the incident.

     "Clarence started coming to church with his sister, Novie, after his
wife died. He was just as nice and kind as he could be. After he became ill
and hospitalized, the family asked me if I'd visit him. So after church one
Sunday afternoon, my wife Faye and I went and joined his family at his
bedside. It was evident that the family expected him to die from his
condition because he had been in a coma for so long. When I went in, we
gathered and had a prayer for him, and Clarence opened his eyes. I said,
'Brother Clarence, do you know who this is?' and he kinda smiled and said,
'Yeah, Sheriff, you didn't come to put me in jail did you?'

     "Well, after he said that I knew he was coherent, so we started
talking about the Lord. I asked him some questions like, 'Do you believe in
the Lord?' And he said he did. I then said, 'Brother Clarence, would you
like to join the church?' and he said, "Yeah, I would.' So then I went
through the same questions we ask when one comes down to the altar, such as
if they believe Christ is the true Son of God, and born of the Virgin Mary.
He said 'Yes' to all of them. So I began to look around for something to
baptize him since he'd made his confession of faith. I got a little pan of
water and a wash cloth and everyone gathered around his bed and in the
room. I couldn't baptize him the traditional way that we believe in doing,
because we couldn't take him up out of his sick bed, so all we could do was
go through a formality So I dipped the cloth in the clean water and
squeezed it on his head and wiped it off with the towel, and said the
words,' I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy
Ghost.'

     "Everyone was just amazed, they could hardly believe it. I'd never
known Clarence to be in any church much -- he may have gone and I never
knew about it -- and so after all these years to have him come to me, after
I wasn't sheriff any longer, and he wasn't a bootlegger any longer, and say
that he wanted to join our church, it was a wonder."

     Tommy Johns agrees.

     "You could feel the Spirit of the Lord there, and right after that
daddy went back in the coma. We moved him to a nursing home and he died
almost two days to the year after mama."

     Ed Yarbrough preached his funeral, and then Clarence Johns was laid to
rest beside his wife in Woodlawn Cemetery. One of the most vibrant sagas
and two of the most colorful characters of its era were gone.

     In the past 17 years, Tommy has had three cardiac arrests, two heart
attacks, and two "balloons." He's been in the hospital more than 20 times.

     "The last time I was in the hospital, I knew I was at the cross
roads," he said.

     "On Friday, I had been out in the yard feeding my dogs when I felt
something coming on. I came in and took nitroglycerin, lay down and waited
on Janie to come home. We had Reverend John Chesser from the Assembly of
God Church come over and pray for me, and I prayed. I didn't get any
better, so on Sunday we called my doctor in Gainesville and he said to
bring me on in. I told everyone that I knew God was going to heal me or he
was going to touch my doctor and he was going to do something different.

     "They started working on me by the time I arrived at the hospital.
They catherized me. I watched them do it, I've always been able to watch it
each time they do it. Three months before they had done a balloon, and two
years before that open heart surgery in Alabama. I remember watching the
Super Bowl game that night and got some relief. Then the doctor came into
my room and said, 'Tommy, I can't find a thing in the world wrong with
you.' He told me he was going to put nuclear dye in me in the morning just
to see if he had missed something. He said that would show it up. But after
that he said, he still couldn't find anything wrong with me. He said, 'Go
home and do what you feel like doing. I can't give you no instructions.' He
said 'I know something was wrong when you got here, but now I can't find
anything.'

     "I remember one time they were working on me in Gainesville, and Janie
was standing there crying a little bit, and one paramedic said, 'Honey,
we're going to take good care of your daddy.' I raised up on the stretcher
and said, 'Daddy? That's my wife.'

     I had been going to church for about a year when that happened in
Gainesville last year, and I told Janie the Lord had healed me and I was
going to serve Him the rest of my life, and I mean serve Him. Before we got
married, we were both tired of our lives; she had been single six years and
I had been single six years. She had been married twice and I'd been
married twice. We'd been dating six years, so we said we were going to find
a marriage counselor and be counseled before we got married. She had been
going to the Macclenny Assembly of God and said the minister was a marriage
counselor. I asked her where she was going to church and she told me it was
a Pentecostal. I said, 'What is that, a holy roller?' I told her I wanted
to go to church where I could bend a little. But we went to her minister,
who was John Chesser, and he has a license to be a marriage counselor. I
felt comfortable right there at the Assembly of God. He wouldn't even marry
us unless we went through marriage counseling.

     "I was elected a deacon last week. It takes three years to be a deacon
before you can even be elected, and then you can't be if you've been
divorced. However, the Board wavered, and I got elected.

     I've been studying the Bible. The guy that just studies it
occasionally can't talk to me about the Bible because I'm getting to know
it pretty good. I study almost every day, because it takes a lot of
studying to finally get the whole picture. I haven't missed but twice in
three years.

     "I was sitting in church the other night when the Super Bowl game was
going on, and you know how I love football, well it didn't bother me a bit.
I went right on to church and I came home at half time and flipped it on,
but it didn't bother me not to be seeing it while he was up there
preaching. I mean I got it. I wanted it and it took me two years to get it
like I wanted it. I mean I just stayed in the word. It used to didn't mean
anything to me to hear people say, 'You got to stay in the word, you got to
stay in the word,' and then it started falling in place and I began to see
everything as I studied and studied. I went and I listened. I went to hear
people preach. I went to hear Rodney Howard from South Africa, and other
people from all walks of life. I'm just analyzing and absorbing. I'd say,
'Lord, I want it, Lord, I want it. You saved me, but I want that anointing
power, I want the Holy Ghost. I believe in it, and I want it.' So I worked
for it and I got it just about ten minutes after four a.m. early Saturday
morning after the Super Bowl game last year (January, 1994). I had gotten
up and gone to the bathroom. I felt I had been awakened up for something,
but I lay back down and pulled that cover up and got comfortable, and
buddy, it was Bamm!. I come out of that bed and it was just like you had
turned on a light and grabbed me out of bed from a deep sleep. It wasn't
put on, I wasn't dreaming, but when I come out of that bed, I was a saved
Christian person. I told them at church, and this is just me talking, but
it's how I feel. You know you are saved when you are not afraid of dying. I
said, 'if you're afraid of dying, then you're not saved. Now, that's just
the way I feel personally about it. I have another saying I've come up with
I like, and that is, 'Death couldn't conquer Him, and the grave couldn't
hold Him.'That's just what suits me!

     "I've had this house anointed. I got the preacher to come here with
oil, because I believe in all them demons and all. We used to sell liquor
and gamble and all, so I got this house clean. Anytime the devil wants to
come in here, I say, 'Come on in, buddy, I got a chair for you, then I tell
him, 'You remember the cross?' And the Devil says,"what about the cross?'
and I say, 'He was on the cross but He is the only one who ever come back,
and there have been a lot who have died, but Christ is the only one who has
come back from that grave.' "All of those times that I thought were good
times, dancing and drinking that liquor, and oh, how I loved to dance, me
and my wife, but all them times, I've tried to be a gentleman. One reason I
think the Lord let me live is I never cussed; for some reason, I just never
did. I was telling someone the other day that and how I'd cleaned up my
life completely, and she made me feel good when she said, 'Well, you didn't
have much to clean up.' But, I did. I went through some marriages, and if
you want to lay fault I didn't show the leadership and all I should. I was
drinking that liquor and beer and dancing and partying and that was it, and
now it seems like a bad dream, and it seems like I never done it. Today,
there is no high like getting in that church!