"The Way It Was" Newspaper Column on Baker County, Florida History, 1983 File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Gene Barber (no email address), through Carl Mobley (cmobley@magicnet.net) USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other presentation. This file may not be removed from this server or altered in any way for placement on another server without the consent of the State and USGenWeb Project coordinators and the contributor. *********************************************************************** THE WAY IT WAS ------------------------------------------------------------ William Eugene "Gene" Barber authored a series of articles for the Baker County Press entitled "The Way It Was". His articles covered all aspects of Baker County pioneers lives in a colorful, entertaining, as well as, educational manner. At an early age, Gene possessed the desire and ability to interview the 'Old Folks'. He was as talented in the use of the pen, as he is with a brush, choosing his words and expressions in a way to paint an exciting and interesting story. The following are his articles written in 1983. Contents: * The Colorful Colonel Cone (in part 1) * The Colorful Colonel Cone - Part Two (in part 1) * Darbyville, a parent community of McClenny (in part 1) * Getting the Cracker treatment in Keystone (in part 1) * The Georgia-Florida boundary - Part One (in part 1) * The Georgia-Florida boundary - Part Two (in part 1) * The Georgia-Florida boundary - Part Three (in part 1) * Boundary wrap-up and notes on the Dawkins Lodge (in part 1) * McClenny Potpourri (in part 1) * some old and interesting McClenny structures (in part 1) * some old and interesting McClenny structures - Part Two (in part 1) * some old and interesting McClenny structures - CONCLUSION (in part 1) * some old and interesting McClenny structures - Sites without (in part 1) structures or newer buildings * A recap of the 1st Centennial (in part 1) * Rain soaks sale; but not the dance (in part 1) * Well, it's our final weekend to celebrate! (in part 1) * The Centennial - A wrap-up (in part 2) * The month of May has arrived... (in part 2) * Historical potpourri from a desk drawer (in part 2) * Historical potpourri from a desk drawer - Part Two (in part 2) * Historical potpourri from a desk drawer - THIRD AND FINAL PART (in part 2) * A Plea For Presidential Pardon (in part 2) * A look at commercial McClenny of 1887 (in part 2) * McClenny social notes from the year 1887 (in part 2) * Fred 'Bubba' Bullard; a genuine McClenny product (in part 2) * It's been eight years..... (in part 2) * Historical potpourri (in part 2) * Ms. Liberty and Daisies (in part 2) * "Summer sort of slow-walks you down" (in part 2) * More Nostalgic Reminiscenses (in part 2) * What are is not..... (in part 2) * Now, what art is..... (in part 2) * Composition in art (in part 2) * Creativity in art (in part 2) * Different types of art * Autumn brings out poet * Hoppin' John discourse * 1921 catalogue goodies * The Household Guest, 1921 * Historical potpourri * More.....potpourri * 'Ain't no boogers tonight * Crackers & nature's signs - Part One * Crackers & nature's signs - Part Two * Boost Christmas downtown * The'Tarnished Tinsel Trophies' * Edging into Christmas * The Yule tree ordeal * The 'magic' of Christmas * Thoughts on the new year _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 1, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Different types of art This is the end of our little series on art. Our treatment of the subject has been terribly over simplified due to shortness of time and space. In case you are interested, the content has been drawn from the writer's 33 years art activity (study and practice) and the 23 years he has called himself a professional in the field. Please understand that those years have been concurrent rather than sequential. We now must address ourselves to some of the types of art. Commercial design is the best buddy of advertisers. . A big golden M sells more burgers than taste ever could; a crisp white wave on a clean red background builds an immediate thirst and a desire to pause and refresh; no company, no matter how small, would be caught dead without a logo...all designed to attract attention and to sell. Decorative art is used to enhance, relieve, and beautify. Friezes on buildings, printed and painted patterns on clothing material, and embellishments on books are but a few uses of the decorative arts. This writer prefers not to include tole painting done from a purchased printed pattern as being under this heading. Art crafts are currently big in America. We are writing about those crafts in which their utilitarianism is far secondary to their design, beauty, and provocativeness. In other words, who cares whether one can drink coffee from a potter-created mug as long as it is well designed and well made. Who cares whether one can keep eggs in a basket if it is pleasing to the eye and looks well in a corner. What is not considered an art craft is a piece of purchased greenware of someone else's design and construction that has had a paint job and glaze applied according to directions and then baked by the instructor. It is a craft and a hobby, but, because most of the principles of art have been removed from it, it is no art craft. Fine art is mainly categorized (and, too often, simplistically so into three directions-traditional, abstract, and non-objective. Traditional, also labeled representational or realistic this last term is often mis-used) that type most people feel comfortable with. There is no doubt what the subject is, and, to the conservative eye, it is not "weird" Its treatment ranges from photographically representational (looking like, or even sharper than, a photo) through impressionistic and slightly abstracted. Lack of space precludes a detailed description of the latter two, but suffice it to say that they are usually characterized by softer, more painterly edges, by visible paint application, and by lack of detail. Abstract has received some bum publicity, and most folks toss the term around rather carelessly. In art, abstract means to draw out the gist of a form or subject and to ignore the details. If a form or subject, regardless of how many liberties have been taken with it, is recognizable but the details have been omitted, the result is thought of as being abstracted. We shall ignore expressionism here, because nobody seems to agree on what it is, but we shall be happy to sit with you some day and discuss it. Non-objective art can be described as presenting no recognizable object. It is, often called "painting for the sake of painting." This is the one that might put one in mind of the perpetrator who tosses a can of split Pea soup at the canvas from ten feet. Believe it or not, it can be art...but only if it submits itself to the same principles of art as the already discussed types. This is the stage most artists reach after they have accomplished all other types and directions of art. Unfortunately most state supported art institutions and many private art schools have placed the cart before the horse by shoving their students directly into non-objective work. These are the folks who slip in several bootleg lessons of drawing and composition from your ol' writer after they have gained a name and position in art but finally realize they know nothing hardly about art. Please be advised that fine art does not have to make sense. It exists simply as a means of expressing attitudes and to appeal to the senses and mind. Don't hold your writer to this lengthy and vagarious treatment; his opinions will have changed with a few more years of living. That is the beauty of art; it grows with the person it lives in. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 8, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Autumn brings out poet Labor Day has passed, and summer, except for the heat and September's infamous mugginess, is over. This period between summer's last holiday and the onset of fall's chill is often an awkward time not unlike the middle age crisis experienced by the more neurotic among us. Up north, this lovely no-season is referred to as "Indian Summer." Down here, it is just tolerated, filled with school opening activities and relieved with the final flowering of the woods and pastures. There are the seemingly interminable baseball games on television. It is this time of year that brings out the romantic in your columnist. He fancies himself a poet...not a good one, albeit a poet. September and October ease deeply into his mind and bring it out. Time was he wouldn't admit it, let alone share it. But on the subject of September, here is one dragged from out of his musings on the banks of little Turkey Creek. The drawn out golden afternoons of September are with me giving my body a last warmth. Hints of chill by morning. I must hurry. No. No, sweet May you are desirable but... I am September. My days were once firm and radiant I remember. May was fickle. June hot very hot. I was best as August. But there's a sensitivity to September unmatched. You too are September? Come with me. For several mornings now, the days' frustrating hazes have been replaced with another of nature's rather pushy climatic conditions-fog. That misty heifer has been treated in painting, photography, and writing, but never, to this writer's knowledge, as a poetic subject in Baker County. Soft dirty gray, the fog mistily clutches, Rudely erasing slender independent pines. The bravest of stars are but icy green touches. Damply greedy about my world she twines. Diffused among her nebulous bowels, The weak glow of wet-wreathed moonlight. Her moist chilled arms, as unkind trowels, Smear away my world from my anxious sight. The road is but a silvered strip of blur. The slender stalk of the pine is gone. Hardly a hint remains by her erasure. Not to leave on this dark and damp note, we include parts of a couple more effusions. First, the dramatic hurricane release from summer doldrums: Large drops, hungry drops pearl gray. Frankly kissing dirt sandy-gray, Wetting, joyously blessing happy gray Weeds of dusty green-gray. Yellow splashes in fields dust gray. Waking into highlights of silver-gray. White birds spangling skies of purple-gray. Rain frogs' arias out of blue-gray. Release, sweet release from dismal-gray Into intoxication of polychromatic-gray. Gently lifting, steadily rising golden-gray Wildly soaring into spiritual-gray. And then, the renewal process of October: But October is blue and gold and crisp and all is revitalized. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 15, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Hoppin' John discourse Your columnist recently took a delightful and satisfying meal with his aunt and enjoyed a dish of hoppin' John. Because the dish and its name have became outdated and almost non-existent except in articles on Southern cuisine in woman's magazines cooking sections, and, because its ingredients to Florida Crackers is quite different from those of other regions of the lower U.S., a discussion on hoppin' John ensued. Later, your columnist talked with other Cracker type cooks and old-timers, nosed through old recipes, and checked out the subject at-a couple of libraries. We know as much about hoppin' John today as when we began our research. But, then, the world has hardly waited breathlessly for a discourse on the subject. We can safely say that of all the several types of hoppin' John we've been privileged to sample, none has been found wanting. Our local variation seems mostly to have been almost any vegetable cooked in and with rice...tomatoes being a Florida favorite. We say "have been" in reference to our paragraph 1. And it seems that the local habit of stirring rice into certain vegetables rose from the use of rice--once a very inexpensive and easily stored foodstuff--as an extender. Until about World War I the McClenny-Baldwin area was a rice producer. In your columnist's youth he heard a few old timers talk about rice farming, but he does not recall details. They told about flooding the fields and even demonstrated harvesting procedures with an imaginary scythe. Florida had been, until about the-afore-mentioned WW I era, a rice producer from Spanish days. Coastal South Carolina and Georgia, background for many Florida Crackers, enjoyed a similar distinction. The earliest Cracker pioneers to Florida combined their established affinity for the subtle flavored grain with that of the earlier Minorcan settlers. Both types of early Floridians had learned by necessity to be frugal. Rice, as mentioned earlier, was plentiful and was a perfect extender for poor folks...ergo hoppin' John. No, we don't know where the name came from. And after reading up on the subject, we are convinced nobody else does either. Higher up the coast, hoppin' John becomes a relatively complicated concoction of cooked and mashed dried black-eye peas, spices, and rice, and which has been formed into balls and fried. Your writer's: experience has been that the farther into the interior one goes the less elaborate becomes the dish. In upper Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, hoppin' John is often no more than black-eyes spooned atop dry rice (not uncooked "dry"but. cooked separately in water rather than in any kind of broth). The farther from the coast, the more hoppin' John is no more than simply cooked dried black-eye peas. Back to our local variety, rice was usually cooked in the already stewed tomatoes (a definite Minorcan variation), liberally seasoned with onions and perhaps other compatible vegetables such as peppers. The flavor was enhanced with a bit of salt and a pinch of sugar. In the words of Uncle Budder Johnson;"Monstrous good." Some who claim to be hoppin' John purists (your columnist personally thinks they are weird) would decry the use of tomatoes rather than black-eyes. To which we reply that this is not the only instance of other folks getting confused in their food terms. Stick with this column, and you will learn good stuff, including the correct names of foods. Northern folks would doubtless gag at the thought of gopher stew, but a good Florida Cracker (especially a poor one) knows that it is a toothsome delight, takes some doing to get it out of its shell, and its eggs are not as tasty as those of its cousin the sea-going cooter. But an old time Minorcan would spend half a day scratching one out of its hole. This columnist is put in mind of when dear Uncle John Crews caught a particularly large gopher in the corner of his garden (actually Aunt Molly's garden; Uncle John did not believe in agrarian pursuits) one day when he was on one of his "toots". He insisted that little ol' aunt Molly dress and cook the gopher into a stew since he had often heard its praises sung by members of the black community and some of the Saint Augustine Minorcans who were on the railway, crew. She worked almost all day stripping it of its shell and simmering the meat tender. Some time along about suppertime, she "chunked the whole mess out'n the door fer the hawgs." Why would our Northern friends be opposed to gopher stew? They, unenlightened creatures, still think a gopher is a furry little fellow of the rodent tribe. What they think is a gopher is, as any Florida Cracker knows, a sallymander. They, (bless their hearts; they're good people, but they Just don't know much about some things some times) even hang, the appellation "corn dumpling" (that doesn't even sound good) on that culinary classic of the Deep South "the corndodger." Now, corndodgers would require a whole month of columns just to begin to praise their flavor and mind gratification. Maybe later we'll address the subject, but until then...bon appetite, ya'll. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY, PRESS, Thursday, September 22, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber 1921 catalogue goodies Your columnist recently received a call from Allie Mae North to stop by her house for a stack of magazines and other items which were of historical interest. Mrs. North was preparing to move to Leesburg to be near her daughters, and the moving van was, she warned, on its way; anything sitting around would be picked up and packed by the movers. We rushed out and happily carted home an armload of paper treasures. Three of those treasures were a 1921 Cohen Brothers catalogue, a 1921 gifts suggestion booklet from Jacobs Jewelers, and a program from around 1929 for the George Fasshacht, Sr., company's Passion Play which was presented in Jacksonville. The Cohen Brothers catalogue advertised ladies' dresses for up to $35.00 in Georgette, taffeta, and Canton crepe and down to nice little $3.99 ginghams. Choices of colors were as varied as they are now. They were dressy frocks in gray, navy, brown, black, taupe, flesh, and jade. Less expensive dresses were offered in white, rose, copenhagen, maize lavender, pink, orchid, and green. Dresses sizes were interesting...16 years to bust measurement 44 inches. Nowhere in that part of the catalogue did we see a bust size approaching 16 years, let alone 44 inches; it was the time of the boyish figure. Gabardine was the big material for skirts, and voile seemed to be most popular for waists (that is "blouses" to you born after 1950). Skirt colors were rather cheerful in addition to black and khaki. Waists were popular white, bisque, copenhagen, flesh, peach, brown, and navy. Sweaters were offered in the colors of cascade, paragon, honey dew, and shell (whatever they were). Bathing costumes came in one color-black-and in two styles-ugly and uglier. Porch or neighborhood wear was somewhat fetching and inspired by oriental styles. For as little as $3.95, a lady could lounge around looking like a Theda Bara. We though it of special interest that the illustrations for stout ladies' clothing and foundation garments actually showed stout ladies....much different from the current "big girls" catalogues using emaciated models. For the women of 1921 who did not look emaciated but wished to do so, there was the "Boyshform Brassiere for stout and thin women. The brassiere that give that boylike, flat, smooth appearance." One item brought back memories that were not too pleasant for your columnist. The Kiddie-Koop was a crib-like affair covered with wire screen. Your columnist recalls his mother keeping him in one and how he bawled when she put the wire screen lid over him and the Koop. He was too young to put his protests into words, so he just screamed a lot. Victrolas came either wind-up type or were electrified and ranged in price from $35.00 to $1265.00. Most were elaborate affairs, and some were advertised as having the same finish as a fine violin. Cohen Brothers listed 7,000 records in a separate catalogue. Jacobs Jewelers, then known as V.E. Jacobs Company, printed a very slick eight page booklet full of silver so expensive they decided to not include the prices. It said, "And now it is fitting that the more elaborate jewelry than would be good taste for a debutante, be her portion." The Passion Play program, like all good programs, contained more advertisements than information on the performance. The municipal Light Plant of Jacksonville provided the information that one could use a curling iron for no more than 7 cents for 40 hours, an eggette for 1 1/2 hours for 7 cents, and a fan for 17 hours for the same amount. This columnist has never figured out why any utility which has a monopoly thinks it has to advertise and make us feel better about something we can do little or nothing about. Utilities never change. Why not save their propaganda money and lower our rates? Other ads which might recall businesses to the minds of some of our older readers "were H. and W.B Drew Company; Seashole Funeral Parlors; St. Albans Hotel(rates $1.50 and $2.00); Keys Chilye Parlor; Biser's Restaurant; California Fur and Fur Works; John A. Cunningham (now Cunningham's); Rhodes, Futch, Collins Furniture Co. (now Just Rhodes); Hotel. Windle; the Arcade Theatre; and one which your columnist remembers so well...Howell and Jenks Restaurant. One of the highlights of a trip to Jacksonville was our visit to Jenks. There were stenciled flamingos on the table cloths and chair covers, potted palms, ceiling fens, and the most delicious shrimp salad in the world. Ever notice...nobody makes shrimp salad anymore? _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 6, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber The Household Guest, 1921 When your columnist was very young, he thought his present time was the only time that had ever existed. With the addition of a few years, he abandoned his own age and time and believed that anything less than twenty years in the future was not worth the thought. Closer to maturity, he moved out of the "now" and "what might be" and concentrated on the distant past, refusing to accept anything less than a century old. In fact, anything from the decades of the twenties and the thirties depressed him. Pity...for that was one of our most interesting eras. It was probably in the twenties that the old way of life as many of us remember it passed away. The age of innocence, so carefully constructed and nurtured for the past couple of centuries was lost. The abandonment engendered by first truly world war and the influence of European avant garde styles and attitudes that returned with many of the doughboys helped remold America. She received the impetus to gain control of the social, cultural, political, and artistic movements of the day, and she blossomed out. This columnist is now thinking that we hit our apex in the thirties and have been rushing headlong downhill ever since, floundering but not hopeless, in several fields and disciplines of endeavor. Return with your columnist to those gentler times of the early twenties (the rest of them tended to be a bit wild...remember the "Roaring Twenties"). We shall present some choice bits gleaned from a May, 1921, The Household Guest we discovered whilst browsing through a stack of old periodicals. The Household Guest was a rural family-oriented magazine which contained some quaint items that we of the enlightened age tossed out of our 11ves back in the fifties. There were, for instance, poems and essays touting high regard for motherhood (can you Imagine?). One editorial addressed itself not to our modern problem, of self-sufficient, achieving folk not feeling guilty enough about the deprived...the deprived whose dignity demands they not be forced to work at anything even though they are physically able and that there are jobs scattered about that are menial and out of their trained fields and don't pay executive wages. It rather suggested the reader spend some time to "Root out the 'contrary streaks' in himself" and discover that the amiable personality is more productive than that of the habitual protester and complainer. The Household Guest quoted Carlyle: "Work rids us of three ills-tediousness, vice, and poverty. To our ears so lined with wild-eyed liberal (and hardly ever gainfully employed even in the days when there were plenty of jobs unless, of course, they were members and friends of a certain Massachusetts family who could well afford to preach liberalism as they lolled about Palm Beach in their Scotch whiskey-built compounds)...what were we saying? Oh, yes, to our ears so lined with the wild-eyed liberal preaching since the days of the sick sixties, that sounds like the pejorative term "Protestant Work Ethic." Your columnist could never figure out that little phrase. He knows many Roman Catholics, Orthodox folks, and even a couple of Copts who could present a pretty valid argument against work being the exclusive property of us Protestants. Well, once again your columnist has gotten off his subject (you've doubtless noticed that your columnist is wont to tangentize). Let us pick up again on The Household Guest and its tidbit. There were thinly veiled hints within the advertisements of the little magazine that the farmers and their families of the day either enjoyed being titillated, or at least, they tolerated suggestive material. There were ads for books full of "...dramatice intensity...love, passion, intrigue...sends the blood coursing like a mill-race through the tense arteries of a spell-bound body." Now, even a Harold Robbins effusion has never done that to your columnist. Women could increase their bust lines, remove wrinkles, be slender, rid themselves of superfluous hair, strengthen their blood, completely cure their "pelvic disorders", remove goiters, straighten kinky hair, and control fits simply by answering the ads and receiving, first, a free sample. Gentlemen could revitalize themselves with the genuine Sanden Electric Belt, or, if they preferred, could find a quick cure for those "despondent conditions" in Cumberland Chemicals. That last ad was buried in the personals. Of course, Just like today, everybody could get rich, get lucky in love, or buy anything with no money or with, at the most, a dollar. There was a plethora of "unsolicited testimonials" proving the efficacy of the advertised products and services. To which, this column states caveat emptor, cum grano satis, and baloney. Come to think of it, maybe this was the wrong decade to hold up as a shining example of how nice we once were. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 13, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Historical potpourri Religious toleration has never been a strong point of religious people (please don't equate the words "religious" and "Christian" because, although Christianity is a religion, religion isn't necessarily Christianity. The pantheistic Romans chunked Christians to the lions. Jehovah's favored Jews thought nothing of slaughtering entire cities and selling the survivors into prostitution and slavery. Roman Catholics tortured Jews and staved Anabaptists to death during sieges, and Protestants seemed to delight in burning and beheading dissenters. Wasn't much different here in enlightened and God-fearing Baker County back in the good ol' days. Sometime back during the time of the turn of the century when the Mormons were getting started around Sanderson, one of the early converts, Dan J. Mann, received the following note from "The Committee": You and Wester has run Sanderson long enough now. We give you but a short time to get of Sanderson or you will have it to do." (sic) In March of 1898 the Mormon Elders at Sanderson were notified by presumably the same anonymous committee: "We have notified you damn rescals once to vacate this county and you haven't done so. Now you infernal dead beats let this be the last notice. We will give you all until Monday, March 28th and if you poor ignorant villains are not gone by that night, we committee of 8 will go up to Sanderson sometime and cowhide every one of you. Especially a certain man that is encouraging and feeding you dogs. Now remember this will be your last notice." The committee of 8 was McClenny-based and was composed of relatives of Mr. Mann. Canova was later shot to death. Although members of his church quite naturally believed that it was the result of his belief, others claimed that it was either envy of the man's wealth or dislike of his business practices. Olustee's Civil War battle (more properly known in the past and here in the area where it happened as "the Battle of Ocean Pond") is one of the three affairs, so we've been told, that is re-enacted annually on the actual authenticated spot on which it happened. A battle in Tennessee and the one at Gettysburg are the other two. * * For those who thought the Baker County High School began only with consolidation of the county's three high schools in the 1960's, here is an interesting note. The class of 1923 of The Baker County High School announced its commencement exercises for Friday, 11 May, at 8 o'clock in McClenny. The motto was "Be square" (what a change from today's mottos of arrive stoned, get strung out, be laid back, and kinky forever). Class colors were green and gold, the flower was the white rose, and the graduating class consisted of Rubye B. Rhoden, Mary A. Williams, and Emma L. Powers. B.J. Padgett was the principal. The McLean House in Appomatox in which the terms of surrender were signed signaling the end of the War Between the States began suffering an ignominious end immediately upon the end of the quiet and sad (Jubilant to many others, we might add, on both sides) ceremony. Union officers began crassly bargaining for pieces of the furniture, and the owner crassly sold. Much was removed without benefit of sale typical of "liberators" the world over. Captain M.E. Dunlap of Niagara Falls purchased the house in 1894 and tore the house down with the thought of reconstructing it at the Chicago World's Fair or for display in a Washington City museum. The plans did not materialize, and the house went piece by piece to souvenir hunters and decay. By the end of the century, 1848 structure was gone without a trace, and a dense thicket had overtaken the site. Soon, the entire village of Appotomattox was gone, prey to progress and convenience. What one sees now is mostly reconstruction. Small wonder the PTA has all but fizzled out (please don't write in to disagree unless you were around to see the auditorium full of debating and earnest parents and teachers tending to the business of educating children) a copy of the MacClenny Elementary Parent-Teacher Association's by-laws claimed its purpose was to "promote the welfare of children and youth in home, school, church, and community." Can you imagine any self-respecting liberal allowing a group to be concerned about kid's welfare in respect to his church? Or accepting the fact that any group could meddle in the affairs at the kid's home? Or caring whether he was involved in his community as long as he was well adjusted with his peers, could work with a computer, and tote a protest sign when he grew up, took a job, and struck? J.M. Willson of the Seminole Nation of Florida wrote to Adjutant General J.B. Christian in May of 1917 that he and a goodly number of his tribe wished to be inducted into the American Expeditionary Forces for the purpose of fighting in World War I . Mr. Willson said, "They know how to shoot and I confidently believe could be of much service to our country in this crisis, and they want to help." President Woodrow Wilson and Florida Governor Sidney Catts extended appreciation to the Seminoles for their interest, patriotism, and offer. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 20, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber More.....potpourri We had quite a batch of stuff left over from last week's column, so we thought we would clean out our files a bit more and print the left-overs this week. Most folks have heard of James Bowie of the old wild west and of the legendary knife fame. But what most folks don't know is that he was born in Burke County, Georgia, along with a great many of the old-time Baker County families' ancestors. There is some disagreement on his actual birthplace, but the older heads there remember a house reputed to be that of his family home. Bowie was born sometime between 1796 and 1799, and when but a small child his parents moved to Louisiana (some think Missouri). As a young man he migrated to Texas, married the daughter of the Mexican governor, and was elected to the Texas legislature. Born also in that county and about the same time were William W. Alexander, Sr., and Mose and William Barber, Dan J. Mann (there is some question on Mann's birthplace), J.H. Davis, and John Harvey...all Baker County pioneers. The association doesn't make them any better, it just makes for interesting reading. * * Clem Worley was a barber by trade in McClenny, and was from South Carolina. He married Harriet Bair, daughter of an Indiana German family. He was a dashing popular young man who married into a small fortune (by Baker County standards) and managed his affairs well. Alas, while celebrating New Year's a little early-30 December, 1919-he entered into an altercation with John McClenny, nephew of the founder of the city, and died of a blow on the head from a Coca Cola bottle. * * Some historians are now beginning to believe that not all the American Revolutionary War activities in Florida were from the present Callahan eastward. There is a distinct possibility that Colonel Thomas Brown and his Florida Rangers (Loyalists),numbering around 150, scouted the upper Saint Mary's River into the present Baker County area in early 1778. His action along the river prevented the Rebels from crossing for a while but his troops were finally outnumbered and he withdrew. * * "The man who boasts only of his ancestors confesses that he belongs to a family that is better dead than alive." J. Gilchrist Lawson. "It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors." Plutarch. * * Until as late as the youth of this writer, there were unexplained open areas in the woods of Baker County. Up North they would be called meadows. Here they were known simply as "open places." Farther south they would be called prairies. The areas were usually a bit boggy and ringed by a heavy stand of cypress, cedars, and long leaf pines. They were hosts to flowers and ferns of a greatly different sort from that of the neighboring countryside. They have been attributed possibly to filled-in sink holes or dirt-filled pockets in underlying rock. Both might be correct, but a more plausible theory has come up...perhaps they were the results of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of years work by beavers. Beavers dammed up streams, lakes were formed) the beavers eventually moved on to other areas when the trees gave out, the dams broke, the lakes drained, the site filled in with rich dirt (often too much for some of our Florida trees), and thus our miniature prairies were made. * * The Florida Agricultural College at Lake City (a parent of the University of Florida) was established in 1870. Many Baker Countians attended there. It was later made co-educational, and in 1905 it was consolidated with other schools into the University at Gainesville. * * Yellow flags were hoisted at the edges of the cities which were in throes of malaria in 1888. After the fever epidemic, the Florida Medical Association was founded in 1889 in the home of Dr. A.S. Baldwin of Jacksonville. The city of Baldwin had been named in his honor when the railroad was built through there in 1859. The City of Baldwin was one of the hardest hit by the yellow fever. * * Your writer is fascinated by the idea of some folks setting themselves up as critics of the creative results of others. He is even more fascinated by the fact that there are those who will pay these folks to slice, chop, and crucify their works. (Your columnist is a frequently paid critic of art, but that is beside the point). * * From the Household Magazine of March, 1941, comes these comments from movie critic Leonard Hall: "Disney tried an even more grandiose stunt combining eight of his Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies as pictorial evocations of eight hunks of 'classical' music, some first-rate, some downright cheesy...so jumbled in quality and so hashed in mood and direction that they first floored us and then sent us wailing or screaming into the night. Small wonder that once their storms had subsided we welcomed with holy glee as entertaining a list of movies as Hollywood has ever shipped us..." What we beg and holler for is good entertainment...FANTASIA is a desperate adventure...I strongly advise you to take along a jug of Peruna if you ever attend this musical monstrosity...in this pompous attempt to fuse music and the screen old Walt has sacrificed his greatest charm, talent, and gift. I wish to Heaven Disney had never heard of Art with a capital A." Hall was speaking of, as we mentioned in the last paragraph, FANTASIA, one of the greatest filmfares ever given to us. Wonder if Mr. Hail is still around and would like to buy back all the Household Magazines of that issue and destroy them? Or he might do as many of the movie critics do now...just change from crucifixion to praise as soon as the public takes a movie to its heart. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 27, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber 'Ain't no boogers tonight On a recent evening your columnist sat alone at the edge of his yard waiting for the very delinquent demise of a brushfire built earlier for the entertainment of guests. Hammocky woods towered in an interesting color combination of rich black and subtle oranges, all intensified by narrow stripe of foggy silvery moonlight. All was quiet as only fall can be. The last carload of merrymakers had been gone for a length of time sufficient to enhance the silence. There is no quiet like that created by the departure of revelers. The close air, yet to be touched by chill, was redolent with slow burning dead oak and pecan wood. A black and tan cur named Dee Dee cuddled up on the bench to gulp down bits of left-overs. Her coat was a microcosm of the surrounding night colors. A last cup of warm cider in the hand...your columnist was happy. He was programmed to reflect and dream. This was the time of year we used to rake the first fall leaves discarded by venerable giant grey trees preparing for their winter naps. Neon blue ribbons of Smoke would rise from dozens of small trash fires and join above our heads in a flattened diaphanous canopy. We roasted pecans and chestnuts in the dusty coals. We heard them pop loudly and dared each other to rake them out with our hands. The temporary burns were worth the rich flavor of the nutmeats and the admiration of our companions. Roasting pecans and chestnuts was an activity for gluttons. It wasn't like being rationed on baked goods or home-made candy - so many pieces per person, and then it's all gone - no, one could have as many nuts as one would gather and toss into the ashes. One could also have as big a bellyache as one would want. We made little pots from clay dug from a nearby road cut and baked them in the fires. It was an incentive to continue raking and piling leaves onto the fires. The pots usually broke in the flames, or, at best, they melted with their maiden filling with water. This was the season we played a hide, seek, and chase game called, in a chant of exaggerated meter, "Ain't no boogers out tonight; Daddy killed them all last night." Of course, as the last word was sung out, we either waited or advanced nervously, anticipating that deliciously surprising moment when the "boogers" would rush with wild and frightening growls and screams from behind trees and out of other imaginative hiding sites to capture us and make us part of the boogers' side. The game would continue until the boogers had swallowed up the very last of us intrepid non-boogers. Then, your columnist moved up North where he discovered those folks in their well-meaning way had vulgarized the word booger into something of a sexual aberration (that we Southerners had applied the same term to nasal excretions that little kids insist on removing with their fingers in the presence of company is beside the point). There were games of "Pleased or Displeased." In addition to being dirty-minded little brats ("I'm very displeased. I want Henrietta and Marvin to go to the very end of the lane and kiss one hundred-times.") we hoped the scaredy cats among us would panic when confronted with the prospect of being sent into dark and spooky woods. We usually insured at least one case of cardiac arrest a night by arranging for a "booger" to secretly station himself in the weeds near the couple's destination and then fling himself into their presence with all the fervor and sound effects of a dyspeptic banshee. The surprising part of our Pleased or Displeased game was that some of the little idiots sent on our sadistic tours of duty would actually kiss and count. However, we sometimes realized with disgust that some were growing up and moving out of our sphere when we noted that they cut the number of kisses down considerably and gave much more time to each one. We didn't play with them anymore. There were often plays written and Produced on the spot, all with ghostly theme. Costumes were planned for the upcoming Halloween carnival, and they were always elaborate beyond our actual means and intelligence...and energy. For a romantic like your columnist, the ghost story telling was the best part of an evening around a fire. There were tales of what we Crackers call "traveling lights" (elsewhere they are will o' the wisp or ignis fatuus), ol' rawhead and bloody bones (he ate bad children), witches who couldn't get back into their skins after a wicked night out because their skins had been peppered and vinegared by their mortal husbands, footsteps of the dead in houses, folks being buried alive, freaks of divers shapes and diabolical personalities, and other good ol' fashioned, clean cut horror subjects. As your columnist sat musing, he came to a sad and illusion shattering conclusion: there ain't no such things as ghosts. If there were such beings, and, also, if there were such beings as creatures from outer space, a romantic such as your columnist would be the most natural one for them to approach; he would welcome them...he would believe in them. But, alas, they've never appeared to the most likely sympathetic earthly mortal-your columnist-for afternoon tea (or for a midnight fright session either). And, if they've never visited him, they've never visited anybody. Or perhaps it is as your columnist's friend captain Will Hardy once offered: "Maybe, they've stopped by, but you; weren't home." _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, November 3, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Crackers & nature's signs - PART ONE This week's effusion addresses itself to our ancestors' relationship with the plant kingdom-a mystical, beneficial, and sometimes dangerous relationship. Southern frontier folks were a primitive people, only slightly removed from their nature revering ancestors. Like primitive peoples everywhere, they were keenly observant of nature and wondered about her. They stood in awe of the heavens, spoke in whispers of things suspected but unseen, and they felt a strong kinship with Mother Earth and with her other offspring, the plants. Times to plant, even times to first break the soil were determined by signs. from very distant space. The New Testament admonition against the use and study of "signs". was largely ignored when it came to working with dirt and plants. Deep South Crackers liked to plant white potatoes when the moon was in the sign of the twins to insure a fuller or double crop, and they hoped that the time coincided with the darkening (waning) of the moon so that the richer growth would be underground rather than above. A compromise date of February fourteenth was chosen in the 1600's, adding the generosity of Saint Valentine to the crop (in many and sundry matters, old timers never left the Mother Church any more than they left the more ancient mother faith of Earth worship). Old tales among Deep-South blacks spoke of Br'er 'Mater Bush and Br'er Sweet Gum. They, like many American Indians, especially of the eastern and southern attributed physical feelings to plants. Br'er 'Mater Bush complained that her hair was beinq pulled whenever someone plucked a tomato. In this columnist's youth, he heard the older heads caution younger ones against cutting holly trees or planting cedars. They offered no reasons about the holly cutting except that it was unlucky, but they had solid cause agains planting cedars; when a planted cedar had grown to a height to cast a shadow sufficient to cover the planter's grave, the planter would surely die. Uncle Hance "Hayball" Raulerson reluctantly placed a cedar Christmas tree in the corner of this columnist's parents' yard in the early forties. Uncle Hance said, "Well, I'll do it, but I'm a' sealing my fate." The cedar has been topped often by the electric company (and threatened for removal in the past by the same folks) and severely abused by crews building highway 228, but it is still thriving. Uncle Hance has been gone many years. Your columnist recalls when he, as a very young child, walked in the hammock behind his grandfather's house with old Aunt Julie and heard her speak of plants. Aunt Julie was a tiny negress of wizened face and stooped shoulders. She attributed her long life to sipping sweetened water that had to be made from the crystals of cane syrup (she just poured water into the syrup bottles empty except for the bottom sugar crystals) rather than that imitation stuff bought in stores. Aunt Julie claimed that her sweet'nin' had to come from the sugar cane plant to do any good. Aunt Julie also doted on strawberry wine. "If you got a enemy," she advised while fondling the leaves of a sprawling shrub, "you jes mek eem a tea a' leavs fum dis myrkle bush, an' if you say deh rat (right) wuds over eem, e'll die f' sho." Aunt Julie spoke of the wax myrtle (Myrica cerifera), sometimes known outside this areas as bayberry (of candle scent fame). Here, it is called myrkle. Whether or not myrkle leaf tea is deadly with the proper incantations remains moot. Nothing about M. cerifera is listed as poisonous in the botany books we searched, but a Florida Department of Agriculture bulletin (No. 14, "Important Medicinal Plants of Florida") mentions its bark as a minor medicinal ingredient. The product of another plant did poor Aunt Julie in forty some-odd years ago. She had a weak heart and needed the boost of a bit of strawberry wine (made by Grandmother Barber for the Baptist Church's Lord's Supper..Oh, no, we haven't always used Welch's grape juice). The wine had turned to vinegar and Aunt Julie drank her fill. That night she passed away. Grandmother Barber never made another drop of wine. That might have been the start of Welch's grape juice in our church. Next week we'll go nostalgic and treat that good ol' subject of purgatives and fever-breaking. Small wonder we've never been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, November 10, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Crackers & nature's signs - PART TWO As your columnist took leave of you devoted readers last week, he mentioned the prospect of treating the subjects of purgatives and fever breakers. No doubt, the more astute among you, in the midst of clinging to the edges of your seats waiting for the next exciting installment of this topic of Southern folk and their relationships to plants, wondered why those other two of the mighty quartet of frontier folks medicines-vermifuges and tonics-were omitted. We have a very good reason for that-stupidity. Old-timers were strong on purging everything and everybody in the spring, a sort of pagan annual purifying process. They had plenty of plants sitting around willing to do the job-aloe vera (although some swore it had the opposite effect), several of the cassias (kin to the common pea and bean), castor beans (who doesn't remember the sadistic glee with which mamas and grannies forced the evil smelling and tasting viscous stuff down us with either root beer or orange juice making us hate both the chasers for life?), flag (wild iris), pennywinkle (periwinkle or Vincarosea), and plantain seed (sometimes called rattlesnake plant and still used today in some commercial laxatives). If things got out of hand (and they always did) when purging, an anti-diarrhetic dose of tea made from bear grass roots (related to Spanish bayonets) did the trick. Bear grass roots were steeped in whiskey to give the whiskey an anti-arthritic power also. Not only that, but bear grass was also used in leaf form to hang hams in the smokehouse or to plait into stout ropes. We've even heard of a candy made by boiling the roots in sugar water. After a good purging (was there ever such a thing as "a good purging?"), it was time for spring tonics. Made from a variety of barks and peels, they toned up the blood and added life to sluggish children. Bitter orange peel, certain soft-prickled thistles, greybeard root, partridge berry, queen's root, and wild cherry were among the most frequently used. Two other abdominal problem's - worms and gas - were addressed by older heads with a variety of plants. Many of the mints, including catnip, took care of uncomfortable gas. They were either chewed or brewed into teas. In olden times they were called carminatives. One of the best vermifuges was Jerusalem oak. Not an oak at all but a weed of open fields, and it was possessed of a foul odor. Old-timers boiled down the millions of tiny green seeds each plant produced with sugar into a syrup or until it became a hardened mass of candy. It did the job and acted as its own purgative. Root and stem bark of pomegranates were used as remedies for tapeworms, and the very attractive fruits were believed to have an aphrodisiac effect. Several plants were known as fever-breakers, but sassafras was the most famous among Crackers. A tea brewed from the root bark was used to bring the measles to the surface. It suited this columnist just fine when the 1960 possible-cancer-from-a-substance-found-in-sassafras scare laid that tea to rest. The best thing about sassafras tea was its rich orange red color. Other fever-breakers were bone-set, prickly ash, and wild cherry bark. Wild cherry and several products from pine trees went into colds and coughs medicines. Turpentine, in the form of a few drops on a spoonful of sugar, halted coughs, removed small worms from the stomach, and opened the respiratory system. Kids chewed the exudations from wild cherry and pine trees just for pleasure. Older folks smoked certain weeds (the names of which we shan't reveal here) for their euphoric pleasure. Everybody, in the absence of tobacco, smoked Indian- cigars, the seed pod of catalba trees, for what little high they could drag from the cussed things (they wouldn't stay lit). Ink was quickly made from pokeberry juice, but it wasn't permanent. A better ink came from boiled pine knots smut gathered from the back of the fireplace. Moss (called Spanish moss elsewhere) went into mattresses and other upholstered furniture, and it made for little comfort. Cornshucks made better mattresses, and they were light and bouncy in ladies bustles. Coffins were fashioned from chestnut, cypress, and cedar, most folks picking out their favorite wood long before their passing on time. While they were living, they used furniture made from the white oak, hickory, and heart pine (all three almost exterminated from this county). Ladies chewed oak branches as snuff sticks or to clean their teeth after enjoying the delights of the brown powder. They parched acorns or corn for a coffee substitute. They also grubbed such grasses as 'Mudy (Permudy or Bermuda), smut, carpet, and water from their yards, and swept down the sandy yards with "fresh" brooms made of gallberry stalks. And, they knew that when the dog fennels began blooming (as they just did here back around the fifteenth of October), the first freeze was but six weeks away. Better get your wood in now. Maybe you can make some ink with the smut your fireplace will collect. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS Thursday, November 17, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Boost Christmas downtown We've written our columns at home, on the beach, in coffee shops, in the woods, and in other divers places, but we had never composed one while situated in downtown McClenny until this one. We had begun a subject quite different from the one you are about to read. Circumstances sent us in this direction. It was Sunday afternoon, and the weather had gotten down to some serious chilling. Hunting season had started and football season was still in full swing (does it ever end any more?). By all intelligent reasoning, these facts should have led one to the conclusion that there would be practically no one stirring in town. Therefore, being possessed of halfway decent reasoning ability, we concluded that. Wrong. We've seen less yellow jackets at a cane-grinding than there were joy-riders along 90 and 228 Sunday afternoon. There were even people walking! These thoughts came to mind:(1) if the economy is bad, it doesn't apply to McClenny; it's just going in a different direction, and (2) there is no reason why McClenny, and especially downtown McClenny, cannot be a center of prosperous activity. There had to be no less than three-quarters of a million dollars represented in chrome-embellished low-slung or high-riding vehicles, gasoline, beer (we're certain it was purchased quite legally on the Saturday before and kept for Sunday afternoon),designer jeans, mudgrip tires, and gentlemen's coiffures. And it was all riding and riding and riding. Your columnist has said it oft before (and has been totally ignored as many times)...the market, both in number and dollars, is here (riding and riding) and the only ingredients we need more of to capture it are imagination, cooperation, effort, sometime, and community loyalty that transcends basic individual greed, i.e. each merchant and purveyor must be willing for other merchants and purveyors - even his or her competitors - to make some money too. You can see that the whole thing we're leading up to is impossible before we begin. We shall pass out some Daisies to Downtown Doers because many business folk joined us in a cooperative sale during the recent centennial celebration (the weather, however, did not see fit to be clement that day). Others, bless their civic-minded hearts, spent small fortunes on renovations and cosmetic work on their business bulidings. Seems, then, what we need is a frequently recurring excuse to pull our efforts together in attracting local patronage, and then must make certain our customers are happy about what we're attracting them to. We can not crowd too many centennials into a short span of time, but we can use other ready made occasions -Shine Day (we've heard the rumor that it might be moved, happily, to some time other than the Fourth of July weekend), fair days (oh, when, dear Fair Association, will you move the fair back to fair season - the fall- when most people want it?), birthdays for some of our other little communities, and the spring arts festival. Now, you public-purchasing-types, don't wax overly snide over our remarks about merchants; we have a few questions for you: Why do you drive sixty miles round trip to a Red you-know-what chain restaurant for seafood when several local establishments have repeatedly tried to serve you seafood that is comparable to, or better than, you can purchase at most restaurants in Jacksonville (not to mention a whole heap cheaper)? How come you drive out of your way to out-of-county chain filling stations to save a couple of cents when the lack of regular attention your vehicle receives makes for a much more expensive experience later at the repair shop? Why is it you pass by local auto dealers in order to save a few (alright, maybe many) dollars but cut your own throat when you've knocked a local out of a job (all our jobs here at home are interlocked), and that whizbang, advertise-on-the-TV, liehole of an out-of-town dealer you bought from refuses to repair your vehicle? We could go on for hours but we know the common answers to all the questions along this line...lack of community loyalty, refusal to believe anything from home is any good, an all consuming desire to knock anything and anyone who was here before you arrived, and the wish to be among the glitter of our sister city of Jacksonville where you hope the excitement will rub off on you. We hear you preach a great shop-at-home sermon, but we just don't see you practice it. A great opportunity to introduce and re-introduce folks to the pleasure and economy of shopping at home is upon us, and it isn't too late to jump on it with concentrated cooperative effort and all four feet - the arrival of Santa Claus in Downtown McClenny. Last year, the old fellow and his assistants stirred up quite a storm of happiness as they blew down the main drag. Then, it was over. Simply over. Sadly, anticlimatically, duddishly, dead over. People (and there were many) stood around on the streets for awhile, and, with nothing to do, drifted away right past stores, both open and closed. All that ready-made market just...went...home. We could have kept the spirit alive...cooperative Christmas sales, concerts in Darbyville Mall, dancing in the bank parking lot, of Saint Nick hanging around and talking with the kids, and just one heck of a Christmas kick off. It isn't too late to toss it together. It. would take time, effort, and...but that means being away from TV, a little less boozing, exhibiting an interest in one's town...oh, well, forget it. But, it was a good idea. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS Thursday, December 1, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber The Tarnished Tinsel Trophies Seems as how every organization or person of any importance (both genuine and self-claimed) assumes an annual privilege of passing out awards to other organizations and persons of importance. Senator Proxmire, for instance, has been giving out his Golden Fleece awards to governmental agencies who throw away the most money or spend money for ludicrous reasons. It was, we believe, Esquire magazine that passed out Dubious Distinction labels. And, of course, every one of the entertainment and news media has its big night of scores of awards. Well, sir (or is that "well, person"?), this column wishes to place itself in the above mentioned august company by doing something on the same order. We shall push the Christmas season a bit (actually, we're a couple of months late, by today's standards and practices) with our Tarnished Tinsel Trophies. Our first Tarnished Tinsel Trophies go to the merchant who puts up a Christmas tree on the earliest date and the radio station that first begins playing holiday music. Other TTT's go to the ad company thinking up the most tasteless suggestions for Christmas gifts, putting up the earliest holiday billboard (we don't think August has been used yet), or touting the most horrid smelling men's cologne. A big TTT for the family that most believes the invented quaint Christmas customs from America's past or from foreign countries as pushed by the ladies monthly magazines or the family section of the Sunday newspaper. An even bigger TTT for the family that uses the invented quaint Christmas customs. Another TTT for the creator of the most tasteless jokes about Santa, the three wise men, or the virgin birth and still another for those who re-tell the same old tired ones for the most years. A very special Tarnished Tinsel Trophy is waiting for the creator of the most repulsive doll this season, and there should be separate categories for most repulsive appearance and action, i.e. "Precious Poo Poo, Wanda Wee Wee, and Tessie Throw-up" or something either named for a fruit or supposedly coming from a vegetable patch of some sort. How about a Tarnished Tinsel Trophy especially blessed for those who refer to Hannukah as "the Jewish Christmas" the churches who rail against Catholicism but who work hard to emulate that church's Christmas practices more and more every year, and churches who refuse to cooperate with other religious bodies in the celebration of the birth of the one they all claim to be their founder. A TTT for those who complain that it doesn't seem like Christmas without snow. Tarnished Tinsel Trophies for the most ridiculous "decorator" Christmas tree, the use of any combination of holiday colors except red and green, and the earliest decorated residence. Tarnished Tinsel Trophies for the most effective means of erasing names from last year's Christmas cards which will be re-signed and re-sent to friends of the "erasor", those who can for the most years get away without criticism for sending Christmas cards made from paper torn from Reader's Digest, and people who can send the most Christmas letters with homey little bits of news such as how they repaired the chicken coop last July to the most people they hardly know. More TTT's for people who have a goose rather than a turkey for Christmas and then talk about it for months at their cocktail parties boring the most people, people who brag about the size of their last year's tree, and those who send the most holiday cards accompanied by the most griping about the cost of postage. To the network with the most depressing (they'll call it "heartwarming") special on TV, a great big tear-spattered Tarnished Tinsel Trophy TTT's to the deprived family who begins calling the earliest to the most organizations for requests for Christmas baskets and then follow them up with the most calls of "when are y'all going to get here?", to the deprived family that gripes the most about having its beer-drinking and TV watching interrupted by the basket-deliverers who were so thoughtless as to stop by during prime time, and to deprived families who give their kids computers for Christmas. A few TTT's are left for those who complain (really "boast") about what their kids insisted on having for Christmas, people who spend as much or more on the wrapping as the gift, and folks who tell you what they want for Christmas. Our last Tarnished Tinsel Trophy goes to the newspaper column that gives you its first Christmas effusion at the beginning of December. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 8, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Edging into Christmas Bare pecan trees and open grounds are teeming with thousands of raucous robins. The first Japonica blossoms have eased out of their year-long hiding sheaths. Home chain saws whine throughout the neighborhood. One cannot get onto Interstates 75 and 95. And your columnist's electric blanket has quit working...ah, the sights and sounds of the true arrival of winter. Bake sales are proliferating around the bank's entrances. Yard sales spring up even on non payday weekends. Fruit vendors have multiplied. One cannot get to a cash register to purchase even a pound of nails or a can of pork and beans because of the onslaught of shoppers. And your columnist cannot find his treelights...ah, the sights and sounds of the true arrival of Christmas. Which brings us to another, but related, subject of the "seems like your ol' columnist has done it again" theme. There were those who took umbrage at his Tarnished Tinsel Trophies effusion of last week. Now, we ask you: has every vestige of a sense of humor vanished out there in newspaper reader land? Has the reading public just totally evolved into a pile of paranoia that waits around in hopes of being offended? Doesn't anybody understand wit that's possessed with a slight edge to it anymore? Some nice folks asked, "Don't you ever do anything outside of tradition at Christmas, O self styled arbiter of excellence?" To which we were forced to answer, "Well, yes." For a starter, we send out tacky home-made Christmas cards once in about every twenty years. We don't eat fruitcake unless all the citron, citrus peels, pineapple, cherries, prunes, raisins, cocoanut, and currants are totally removed. We hang up socks on the mantle for animals (you hang up socks for your animals...pardon us...children don't you?). Also, we never search out the perfect Christmas tree, but, rather, choose the one that puts us in mind of Thelma Mae Hunklemeir from back in the fifth grade...lop-sided and wanted by nobody. And we sic the dogs on anybody who stops by our house to sing Christmas carols (first time your columnist went a' caroling, somebody did the same to him, and he has thought of it as such a neat idea ever since) Referring back to paragraph three, we continue. Seems like we cannot write about the crass and gross commercialization of a holy day (it has become bad taste to do so), so we shall go on to a subject that usually elicits much less response (in fact, just about none), i.e. what shall we do about downtown McClenny? Your columnist harkens back to his effusion of two weeks ago and the subject of the Santa Claus parade. Even if the time is too short for an organized cooperative sale and really big function to be staged, this column challenges each individual merchant to plan and publicize his own holiday sale to coincide with that Jolly occasion. There is a strong rumor that Saint Nick will be stopping by Darbyville Mall behind Bob Moskovitz' Raynor's Pharmacy at the end of the parade. Rumor or not, this column hopes so, and it also hopes locals will stir around that day and give their hometown merchants a try...they might be pleasantly surprised at the selection and cooperative service (although they shouldn't be, because we're talking about McClenny folk). And, in time, perhaps the cheerily decorated Darbyville can be the setting for a combined church choir or a succession of individual church's choirs. It can happen. It just takes doing. Late Flash: There will be a free concert of the old-fashioned country type on stage in Darbyville Mall at the end of the Santa parade Thursday, December 15th, Come down and re-live the old days in good Christmas spirits. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 15, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber The Yule tree ordeal Your columnist really has nothing against Christmas trees. He harbors no ill will toward them. He does not, in spite of rumors to the contrary, wish to have them declared illegal. He does view them with a Jaundiced eye. Consider how much of a person's life during any one year is taken up by Christmas trees...to the exclusion and sacrifice of everything else. Average time spent... -searching for a tree in the woods-4 hours, -searching for a tree on the sales lots after you've discovered all the good ones have been cut from the woods-6 1/2 hours, -removing ticks after having been out in the woods searching for a Christmas tree-2 hours, -putting the tree into the Christmas tree stand (including the time spent sawing off the bottom, bit by bit, making it fit and cussing)-3 1/2 hours, -searching for another tree after getting carried away with the above-5 hours, -filling empty spaces with the superfluous branches you've lopped off-1 hour, -finding and buying another tree to replace the one you've lopped too many branches from-2hours (by this time, the entire process has become tedious, and you don't care how it looks), -finding Christmas tree decorations stored in a place where you just knew would be convenient to find come the jolly Christmas season-4 days, -untangling Christmas treelights-2 weeks, -testing and getting all the strings to burn-never (you wind up-tossing all of them away and buying new ones), -testing and getting all the new ones to burn-4 hours, -hanging the silver icicles-15 seconds, or less, -replacing bulbs to keep all the lights burning throughout the season-4 hours, -being optimistic that you can find the burned out bulb-4 hours(this can run concurrently with hunting the burned out bulbs), -replacing bulbs to keep all the lights burning on those tiny Japanese jobbies throughout the season-18 hours, -remembering Pearl Harbor-days and days, -replacing fallen ornaments throughout the season-2 hours (you finally just let them lie there under the tree and let your guests believe your tree was done by some wierd interior decorator from over on San Jose Boulevard), -vacuuming up broken ornaments and replacing fallen icicles-4 1/2 hours, -wondering why you do this to yourself every year-8 hours-(this can run concurrently with vacuuming, picking. up, and replacing things), -chunking the whole thing out (lights, ornaments, the works) the door as soon as Christmas is over. (or maybe before), 8 seconds -vacuuming and picking up tree needles, 8 months, -removing silver icicles from the lawn and shrubbery-13 months, -vowing to never again put up a tree-8 months (can run concurrently from when the ornaments began to fall until picking up the last needle from the carpet). Your columnist has always heard it said that if one doesn't put up a Christmas tree, one will have bad luck. Your columnist shudders to think, considering all of the above (taken from this own experiences), at the risks he would be taking by not having a tree. If you will pardon him, he is off to the woods to search out a tree. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 22, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber The 'magic' of Christmas We think it is high time we settle down. and become serious about the holiday season. Sometimes, however, it is difficult to get serious about an event that has evolved into the world's most widespread and longest running carnival. But buried deeply within this veritable orgy of spending, and garish spectacle is a magic that cannot be denied. It is the magic that turns a Scrooge into a person of concern. It is the magic that makes even the most insensitive grouch leave his fireside to traipse through the cold to a church pageant with an unruly cast of scores of primary Sunday Schoolers. Those, of us who are old enough remember the magic that made good women like Aunt Leona Knabb and "Miss" Ida Knabb into saints at Christmas (actually, no more so than through the rest of the year) as they furtively delivered ample baskets of food and toys to people for whom misery was a daily way of live (for those of you who bemoan the current deprivation and, poverty, you don't know anything as compared to the old days in Baker County). We recall Uncle Clem Frasers secretly buying Christmas dinners for his old WW I veteran buddies who were down on their luck. We remember the magic when Granddaddy Barber spent heavily on candy and toys for the kids of impoverished sharecroppers, but, he never allowed them to know from where it all came. There was magic when Mr. Chessman opened the doors of his movie house to the poor kids (even at nine cents a ticket, many never saw a movie except at the annual free Earle Theater Christmas Parties). Shopkeeper Uncle Charly Hodges displayed some of the Christmas magic when kids buying presents for their mothers were a little short of cash and he said, "That's okay, Here, take it and go on." The local lions Club continue to practice the magic every year as they fete the kids with Santa and fruit. We personally know of one ol' Scrooge, who has been leaving grocery bags of junk for not particularly poor kids, but for kids whose parents never understood that a kid needs magic, junk, and frivolity at sometime in his life and that Christmas is about the best time for it. These were, and are, not the only ones; they were, and are, representative of many. And we can say with firm conviction born of experience that the magic only brings out what is buried within those folks already. We experienced some of the magic this morning in that people who usually avoid giving greetings of any kind gave us a nod and a smile...hesitantly and nervously, but it happened. We feel the magic of Christmas when your writer who, as a rule, is a respectable self-centered (to the extreme) type, begins to melt at the sight of a kid selling mistletoe outside the doors of big department stores, a little ol' lady peddling her handmade dolls on a street corner, a smiling old gentleman pushing hand-made toys...and it is even more effective if the merchandise is poorly but sincerely done. It's the one time of the year when your columnist becomes a Salvation Army member. The magic of this time of year makes us nostalgic. We remember the few skimpy strings of lights in downtown McClenny and Baldwin at the city limits and at the center of town. We recall tinfoil and cellophane wreaths. We remember when a white paint sprayed tree was just about as uptown as one could get, but we still put up the same old fresh green type each year. We've gone on for years at this time of year about Christmases past in Baker County, and anything we say this year would be redundant to the point of boredom. But one thing which we recall and report cannot be, and never will be, redundant or unnecessary, or overly country, or mushy. It is when we hear over and over, and when we return..."Merry Christmas." Your columnist has counted it among his greatest pleasure to have written for you this year. Thank you for reading. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 29, 1983 THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber Thoughts on the new year This end-of-the-year effusion marks eight and a half years we have been at what began as a Bicentennial year project of local historical columns. We have brought you all the historical dirt that was fit to print (and some that wasn't). We have continually hoped to help you kind folks become aware of your rich heritage as Americans, Southerners (and those of you who were intelligent enough to have become Southerners by choice), and Baker Countians (after reading about us and our area it's easier to see why everybody wants to become one isn't It?). We have written from the perspective of being a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant of a somewhat conservative nature. Our thoughts have been modified by those genetic memories of our distant AmerIndlan and Mediterranean ancestors, our root in the Mother Church and the high church of the Anglicans. We have tried to write with the view that our heritage is also rich with the influences of our black friends. If It seems that we sometimes write from out of another time, it is probably because that is exactly what we are sometimes doing. We still have stacks of historical material, and there is little danger of running out any time soon, but we sometimes like the respite from the past that commenting on current events and attitudes gives us. There are few subjects we don't have an opinion on, and there are few topics we won't tackle...and there are very few we know anything about. This week, as is our wont at the end of the year, we shall comment on the year past, make known some of the better reviews from our readers (you don't, for a moment, entertain the thought that we would tell you of the bad ones?), and leave you with a touch of kindly homespun didactic philosophy. Nationally, all went predictably. Critics from the opposition nitpicked about the man in the Big Office making slips of the tongue and fibbing about dyinq his hair; bleeding hearts cried loudly about man's inhumanity to man as the law and courts sent a murderer to the chair, but the bleeding hearts remained strangely silent about the murderer's act and his victim; terrorism increased at an alarming and understandable rate as the country continued to soften attitudes toward terrorists; and the economy took an upswing, but only in the media. Internationally, all went predictably. The U.S. was damned if it didn't and damned when it did. How unusual. Statewide, things were as dull as ever. Florida's population continued to explode, costs to take care of the ever-expanding population soared, most of the newcomers preferred a free ride, and Governor Graham looked as undignified as ever. But here in the county...ah ha...the past year was another matter. While the county hospital controversy raged on, businesses folded up, new businesses gave it a short try, and sour grapes persons chuncked rocks at self-sufficient little Glen Saint Mary...all quite predictable ...some things were happening in a little-dreamed-of way. For instance, George Hodges Road got paved. Hallelulia, perhaps we have heard the last of that for a while. This column couldn't think of a project that needed attention more than that one, but we wonder at how much sooner it might have gotten done had there been a bit more civility between the parties involved (firmness and shouting are not the same). McClenny and a handful of its citizens, most of whom had never been involved in any kind of civic work, tossed a gigantic one hundredth birthday party for the little city and bravely faced down adverse weather, some initial inertia, and even a bit of opposition (anything worthwhile must have opposition to help prove its worth). Out of that celebration came a renewed look for downtown McClenny and a renewed effort to salvage downtown. It is continuing. The spirit is not dead. The award-winning- television documentary "McClenny-A Place in History" was an artistic piece" that gave stronger definition to the word "heritage" and also made us aware that TV does not have to be the boring and insulting wasteland it tends to be. And one small incident which has been untouted and might be seemingly insignificant for 1983 is especially meaningful to your columnist-McClenny was chosen to be the site for one of the deep South's largest arts centers. Since his beginnings in art twenty-three years ago, he has hoped, against all reasoning, for this event. Dear readers, we have also had comments directed toward us. As we think we declared last July, putting stuff together for the ol' column sometimes gets old... tedious even...and we have edged a tad toward thanking our editor and hanging it up, but along comes someone like, for instance, Jimmy Hartley who says, unsolicited, "I sure enjoy reading your column. Don't ever stop." Then, we put the ol' felt tip to the old bond paper (or napkin, or paper sack or back of a cash register slip) whenever inspiration hits us and knock out a few more articles. In fact, his statement was so good, we think we'll stop while we're ahead and not quote any more. We shall instead, wish you a good and peaceful 1984.