Sopchoppy

There's a Worm Gruntin' Festival in Sopchoppy every year.
There's a potter. I met him. He gave me a bumper sticker.

I bought a pot I didn't need. I sent him a pamphlet
that said, "Been to Sopchoppy. Met the potter. Bought a bumper sticker."
He defaced it. Crossed out bought and wrote in the margin, "I gave it to you,"
and sent it back to me. I beg your pardon. Excuse me. Gets a little lonely
out there in the boondocks, does it?

I stopped at the Books and Art Tearoom
in downtown Sopchoppy and bought a copy of
Wacissa River Man: The Life and Times of Richard Aron Williams,
by Annie L. Giles, and two blueberry scones, for supper. On the CD player
was the Bottom Dollar Boys. I said, "I know them. I was just thinking about
Max Tillman's festival." The Wacissa and the Aucilla Rivers conjoin,
the Wacissa clear, the Aucilla dark, from oak leaf tannin,
not far from Highway 98, and flow to Apalachee Bay.

I stopped in Harry's Bar, in Carrabelle--a bar used to have to sell
hot food, and some of them were quite good with a limited menu--to eat.
The barmaid sent me down the street to Carrabelle Junction, where I got
a bowl of creole corn chowder and a TBA (turkey, bacon, and avocado)
sandwich with alfalfa sprouts. They were delicious. Like something you'd get
in San Francisco. I sat outside and watched the traffic pull into the post office.
Junction is from to join. The intersection of Highway 98 and Marine Street.
When I went inside to pay, the owner asked me how everything was,
and I said I didn't realize how big a bowl of soup was. I meant only to
explain my leaving half of it uneaten. "Well then we'll only charge you
for a cup," he said. I demurred, but he insisted. "We should have made it
clear," he said, "how big a bowl was." He said, "It's my movie."
I told him Harry's sent me down, and he replied, "I'll thank them."

I'm almost home,
I'm almost finished with
Book I of OLD FOLKS,
this weekend is the Davis Family Reunion,
Gerald's coming in, and will stay with us
in the old home place, I'll be hospitable,
we'll see nieces and nephews, grown,
with families of their own, aunts and uncles at
death's door. Born, died, in the service.
Trollope's chronicles have
a longitudinal dimension.