The Old Country

2016

A Drive with Dad

Dad at Shiloh Methodist Church Cemetery

In Dad’s later years after Mom had died, I would visit Dad for a few days and he would invariably, usually on a Sunday afternoon, ask me if I wanted to go for a drive out to the “The Old Country”, as he called it, meaning the Flemington area where he grew up.  Dad had always driven until one Sunday as we stepped into the garage, he says, “Here, you drive.” I had never felt so happy, honored, and trusted, that Dad would let me drive him around. All I could manage to say was “Okay” as I took the keys from his hand.  We got into the car, I adjusted the seat, which was necessary as I am three inches taller than dad. With seat and mirrors adjusted, I carefully backed Dad’s car out of the garage under Dad’s watchful eye. “Wow, Dad actually let me drive him.”, I thought, it felt good. We headed south out of Gainesville taking the old US 441 route, if it was just me, I would have taken the faster Interstate 75, but Dad had been taking 441 since he first started driving back in 1934 and I wasn’t going to change that. Leaving Gainesville we immediately cross Paynes Prairie with Dad telling me he remembered when it was a two lane road. I had my own  memories, like crossing one night coming back from Grandma’s and the road was slithering with live and half dead snakes that had been run over.  Crossing the prairie, we passed Lake Warburg which was owned by the University of Florida where we sometimes went swimming since Dad, working at the University, had access to the lake. Passing by the  turn off to Wacahoota road which takes you by Levy Lake where Moses Levy had a settlement back before Micanopy was called Micanopy.

Old photo of the Feaster Building in Micanopy
Looks pretty much the same today

We continued on 441 a few miles where we turned off to Micanopy, slowing to twenty-five miles per hour as we drive through town with Dad narrating as I drove.  “That’s where I would wait Mom.”, pointing to a parking spot. I knew what he meant, him and mom before they were married and dating, him implying that that is where he parked and kissed, Mom mentioned it in her diary, but that’s not something he would say. I knew the route, having taken it for sixty years with Dad driving but I knew what was coming, “Turn here”, he said, at what I would later learn was the Feaster building.  I smile, I think Dad liked giving me directions like I was a boy and driving the route for the first time, even though I’m now sixty and had been in the car with Dad driving the route a thousand times. I turn where Dad directed, heading west on Second Avenue and in a couple of bocks Dad says, “The Micanopy cemetery is down there, there’s some Mixsons buried there.”  After another block we pass the house that when I was a boy back in the 60’s had a most spectacular light display every Christmas. We always made an extra trip to Grandma’s just to see it. 

The 1937 Feaster-Mixson Reunion

Speeding up as we head west out of town on county road 234, Dad points, “That is where Buddy use to live, his ex-wife still lives there.” Buddy is one of my cousins. Buddy, my brother and I used to spend a week together in the summer at Grandma Mixson’s when we were kids. It was one of those summers that Buddy taught my brother and I how to play chess. That and the farting incident. The road makes a broad turn and heads south, crossing the county line into Marion county where it  turns into Highway 329 and the community of Shiloh. After a passing several houses Dad and saying, “That is where such and such” or “So and so, live.” or now more often “lived”. As we pass Betty’s daughter’s house who Betty has lived with since Billy died, he says, “I wondered how Betty is doing.”  More of a statement than a question for I sure wouldn’t know. Betty and Billy were Mom and Dad’s oldest friends. A mile down the road we come Betty and Billy’s old house where our family spent cherished times visiting, there son Tim lives there still. Across from Betty and Billy’s is the old Feaster homestead where the Feaster-Mixson family reunion has been held most every year since 1937, the old oak tree is still standing today although the old house is long gone.  Mom and Dad’s long-time friend Betty’s mother was a Feaster whose grandmother was Mary Telula Mixson, my grandfather’s sister.

The old Zetrouer Store in 2024

A mile down the road Dad says, “Thats the old Zetrouer store.” I remember walking there with my sister when we visited Betty and Billy when we were kids. I thought it was the coolest old store, I could have spent more time looking at all of cool stuff, farm goods, hardware, as well as groceries, they even had a cage with baby chicks. Mom would give us a dime to get a coke or ice cream, I always got a coke, a cold bottle pulled out of a chest cooler with Coco Cola in bright red lettering on the side. My sister got ice cream, I was tempted, in a time without air-conditioning, it felt so good to feel the cold air welling up out of the cooler, I wanted to stick my head in it to cool off. 

A  mile or so after passing the Zetrouer store we come to a four-way stop, a decision needs to be made. I know the options, having made the trip countless times all my life, which I mean quite literally, although I don’t suppose I remember those times as a baby, but hey, maybe as a baby I developed an instinct like a homing pigeon and always know the way back to the old country.  Approaching the crossroad I ask Dad, “Do you want to go to the cemetery?”, letting him know I know where we are.  “Yeah, let’s do.” Dad replies and I turn left onto Highway 320.  We are in the heart of Shiloh now, although there are no clear boundaries between Shiloh and Flemington. I think it had more to do with what church you attended at the time. I knew of two neighbors who had adjacent farms, one went to the Shiloh Methodist Church and said he was from Shiloh and while his neighbor who went to the Flemington Baptist Church said he was from Flemington.  A story of a land can be told by its churches and cemeteries.

In about a mile, we come to the Shiloh Methodist Church and cemetery where many of the family are buried including Grandpa Junior who, oddly, was the minister at Flemington Baptist Church at one time. Mom is buried there with a headstone with Dad’s name and birthdate pre-carved in stone like it was waiting for him to die.  I didn’t like seeing it, Dad was still alive, he was sitting right there next to me. Seeing his name carved in stone seemed like he already had one foot in the grave.

Dad with the Gopher Tortise

The cemetery lies behind the church, I turn in and park near the cemetery gate. It is a bright sunny day, warm but not hot. We get out, Dad rather slowly but he still gets around quite well for being ninety years old. We walk slowly through the cemetery scattered with familiar names, Feaster, Dixon, Zetrouer, Beck, Geiger, Leitner, and others until we come to the area where our family lay. There’s Mom and Dad’s childhood friend Billy whose tombstone has Betty’s name and birthdate but awaiting her death date. There are a few Mixsons, Grandma and Grandpa Junior, and other family members which number seems to grow with each passing year. We come to Mom’s grave and pause, Dad stares at her grave not saying anything, his eyes starting to mist up… mine too. I don’t want to see his name carved there with no death date, what is he thinking as he looks at it?  He doesn’t speak. I look up, there a few yards past the cemetery fence is the old Shiloh two room school house where Dad was the last first grader to attend.  Not wanting to look any more, I turn and to my surprise I see a tortoise, or gopher turtle as we call them in Florida and say, “Hey Dad, look, a gopher.”, to get his, or more so, my attention away from the sadness of the grave. Dad turns and perks up a bit as he sees the gopher and we weave our way through the graves to see it. “Do you walk over a grave or not? Is it bad luck?”, I always think when I’m in a cemetery.  The gopher is a good size, ten or twelve inches, it doesn’t seem to mind us as it makes its way through the graves. “I hope he doesn’t have a burrow under a grave. That would be weird.” I think. Dad says what he always says when his sees a gopher, “We use to eat them when we were little.” They are a protected species now; we leave it alone to continue its walk amongst the buried souls and we return to the car.

Flemington Baptist Cemetery

Returning to the crossroads I turn left again on 329, heading south towards Flemington. Since we went to Shiloh cemetery I figure Dad is in a visiting cemetery mood, so I ask, “Do you want to go see the Flemington cemetery?”, and he says “Sure.”, and we continue down the road arriving at the cemetery in a few miles. I pull in and park at the front gate. I always liked the Flemington Baptist Church Cemetery, it has always given me a sense of calm and a place to rest in peace. Situated on a slight hill, you can glimpse a small lake through the ancient oak trees draped in Spanish moss. The cemetery is as old as Flemington itself, with the oldest graves being Civil War veterans. It was there I went to my first funeral for Grandpa Mixson, when I was eight. Grandma Mixson wouldn’t follow for another forty-two years when she was 103 years old.  I always found it odd that Grandpa Junior wasn’t buried at Flemington cemetery, after all he was the minister at the Flemington Baptist church and was instrumental in building the current chapel in which he held its first baptismal service, but that is a story for another time.  There are several dozen Mixsons most related to Dad in some way through his aunts and uncles of his father’s five brothers and six sisters. There’s Dad’s mother’s parents Tobias and Fanny Anderson. Like Shiloh there are many familiar names, some the same as found at Shiloh and some different, separating the Methodist from the Baptist.  Dad knew many more than I did. As we wandered around, we would stop at a headstone and Dad would tell me it was so and so, an aunt, uncle, cousin or someone related to someone or another. No visit to the Flemington cemetery would be complete without looking at the little dog by the gravestone. The story goes that after the man died his loyal dog sat by his graveside every day for several years until he finally died. After Dad had seen enough, we got back into the car. I considered asking Dad if he wanted to go look at the Flemington Baptist Church which is a half mile down the road, it was the church where he met Mom when Grandpa was the preacher there, but Dad had been there just a few weeks before at a funeral of someone he knew. I think it was the third one this year, most of Dad’s generation were gone.

Just past the church is the Flemington general store which has been there since the 1840’s and was once the center of the Flemington community. The store is quite quaint, looking like something out of Mayberry in the Andy Griffith show with its old signs and a large, faded Coca Cola sign painted on the side. The store was used for one of the scenes in the Michael J. Fox movie Doc Holiday which my nephew had a small part in, but it got cut from the final movie.  But we were not going that way today.

Great Grandma Anderson holding me

I pulled onto the road and drove back the way we came on 329, coming to the road leading to where Dad grew up.  The sign says NW 193rd St, it didn’t have a sign in the old days, it was just “the road to Grandma’s.” It is paved now, I remembered it being a dirt road all those years when we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s when I was little.  Dad continued his commenting, “There’s were Otis Feaster lived, he was a barber his whole life.”, “There’s were so and so lived, his wife was a Mixson.” We came to where the road ends and stop at the sign. The corner lot Dad tells me like he had many times before, “That’s where Grandma Anderson lived and later Bill Anderson.” Bill Anderson is Grandma’s brother. Dad never knew his grandfather Tobias Anderson, but he did know his grandmother who lived to be ninety-eight. There is a family picture of her holding me as a baby. About a mile or so we come to the old farm, Grandma and Grandpa Mixson’s place, the house where Dad and his brothers and sister were born and raised.

Wilbur and Rosalie in front of their house

Grandpa, with the help of his older brother Gilbert, built the house in 1924 from boards they got from the old barn on the Sistrunk farm.  We pulled into the driveway and park in front of the gate that, when I boy, I would jump out of the car and open so Dad could drive the car through. No one lived there now, we could barely see the old house being so overgrown with weeds and small trees. Dad’s eyes misted up seeing it in such a condition or from the many fond memories of growing up there, probably both.  It made me sad.  We return to the car and continue with Dad telling me about an uncle or aunt living at one place or another. Coming to the stop sign we turn left coming to where Dad’s Aunt Alice and Aunt Lois lived together after their husbands had died. I remembered visiting them as a boy and Aunt Alice telling me how she shot a snake out of the tree the week before with her shotgun. A bit further we come to where James Gilbert Mixson lived. James’ grandsons, James Gilbert Mixson and Wayne Clark Mixson own it now.

After a couple more turns, we come to the old Mixson farmstead where Dad’s grandfather, James Darlington Mixson raised his twelve children. The farm was passed down to the youngest of the twelve children, Maxey Mixson, then to Maxey’s son James Darlington Mixson. The Mixson’s had a thing about naming sons. I’m Larry Morris Mixson, my father is Morris Darlington Mixon whose father is Wilbur Darlington Mixson, son of James Darlington Mixson, you get the idea. I actually lived in the old house for a couple of years back in the mid 70’s.  James Darlington Mixson (the grandson) lives there now with his wife Sue who is my mom’s sister. Dad and James, or Jimmy as we called him, were lifelong friends having grown up together and, like Dad, met Sue at the Flemington Baptist Church.

Sometimes we would stop and visit them for a while, but they didn’t seem to be home today, so we continued on. Reaching the main road, we turn left heading west on Highway 320 with Dad telling me about who lived where as we pass by old houses or a driveway where the old houses were no longer standing. Several miles further we come to the Williston Road and turn right heading back toward Gainesville where we make one more stop at the Wacahoota Methodist Cemetery where Dad’s grandfather, James Darlington Mixson was well as several other Mixsons are buried. As we walk amongst the graves, we see the same familiar names and a few different ones with Dad telling me about them, who they were and who they are related to.

Returning to the car we continue north passing the dirt road that goes to the Wacahoota Baptist Cemetery where a dozen or so Mixsons are buried including Archibald Kirkland Mixson and his wife Rachel, the brother of my great-great-grandfather and one of the four brothers that settled Marion county back in the 1850’s resides there. There also lies John Fleming, the nameright of Flemington. Archibald, John, and their wives were long time members of the Wacahoota Baptist Church and were neighbors and friends.

In a few miles further we turn east onto Wacahoota Road. The Wachoota Road is one of the oldest roads in the area predating the coming of white settlers. Following what was originally an Indian trail, it travels along the south side of Paynes Prairie and passing by Levy Lake named after Moses Levy who was one of the first settlers in the area. In a few miles we turn north onto US 441 where we were at the start of our trip, having made a complete circle. We both sat silently as we crossed back across Paynes Prairie heading north, each deep in our own thoughts about our venture to the old country, Dad likely remembering times as a boy growing up on the farm, me remembering much the same, the wonderful times as a boy visiting Grandma at the farm. 

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