Stories about Ourselves and Others

Tonight I heard Jo Carolyn Beebe read stories passed down from her parents and grandparents about life in Mississippi before Jo Carolyn was born. She is a genealogist and says that when she is writing she wants to research a person and when she is researching she wants to write a poem or story. The two go hand in hand. My writing is usually character driven and I have some interesting characters in my family background just as many of you. One of my favorite stories was about my Uncle Lewis Hobby.
It is said that during the Great Depression when jobs were scarce, Lewis bluffed his way into a good paying job. He noticed some men working for the Florida power company and thought to himself, "that would be a good job." Having no experience in working as a lineman, Lewis faked it.
He talked with the workers and pretended he knew what they were doing. He asked how he might get a job with Florida Power and was directed to the man he needed to see. Lewis was hired. While others struggled through the depression, Lewis received a regular salary with a guaranteed income.
Lewis lost an arm in an accident, but he did not lose his job. He became a "desk jocky" and there he stayed until the day he retired. He raised a son and lived a comfortable life.
Lewis Hobby had determination and would not accept no for an answer. After he lost his arm, he learned to do everything with his other hand. "The only thing he can't do is button the cuff on his sleeve," his wife Lillian once said. I doubt he ever spent a minute feeling sorry for himself.


Jo Carolyn's stories are much like my stories as we both grew up in the rural south. I remember the ice man coming to put the fifty pound block in the ice box. Ours was a white square appliance that sat on the back porch or in the kitchen.


With her 90 year old mother telling stories of the past to Jo Carolyn, she has a vast store of material for her deep south memoirs. "Special Delivery" is one of her personal essays I like. I'm not sure if it has been published, but it should be.

Every year in Wakulla County Florida, Crawfordville, to be exact, at the old home place of the Council family, a reunion is held. It is the Council Family Reunion where all those who are related to John Cecil Council (1833-1910) are welcomed with a fish fry on Saturday night. The mullet is fresh from the nearby bay or gulf, cooked by experts and served with good coleslaw, grits and hushpuppies. I haven't been there in quite a few years, but if I close my mind I can still smell those fish frying, the aroma filling the sultry evening air even though it is October.
I remember the tales my father told about the fish fries of his youth on the beaches in Florida. Fishing was and still is a mainstay of the lifestyle for those who live along the coast.
My great grandfather, John Cecil Council, a member of Captain Milton's Independent Cavalry Company, Florida Volunteers, was captured by the Union Army October 19. 1864 while fishing off the coast near St. Marks.
His duty was to help supply food to the soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy.
He was taken to Ship Island off the coast of Missippi where he was held as a prisoner until the end of the war. He walked all the way back to his place in Wakulla County.