A PHONE CALL tonight from Esto reminds me to wish a Happy Father’s Day to U.T. Kirkland, who was a father figure to many of us Esto boys. That’s T, as we knew him, in the middle with (from left) Wesley Brockway, Stevie and David Godwin, Charles Crutchfield, Dean Newman and Ray Reynolds.
Esto native E.W. Carswell wrote a respected history of Holmes County.
Dear Mrs. Tison,
I was sorry to read in your column in the April 12 Advertiser that you’re without a copy of Holmesteading, my pal and fellow Esto native E.W. Carswell’s history of Holmes County we published in 1986. So I’m sending you one of my two copies from the second printing in 2003. I hear a third printing may be in the works, and I hope it happens.
Judge would be pleased his book is still being read and discussed — especially by one of his kinfolks in Noma, Bill Tom Gavin, who cited it to you. The book was the culmination of his lifetime of listening and learning about the county’s history from people who were there when it happened. As we said on the dust jacket of the first edition: “It captures both the facts and the feeling of life in Holmes County. Few places as small and rural as Holmes County are fortunate enough to have a native son like E.W. Carswell to bring their history alive and record it for present and future generations.”
We typeset and pasted-up that first edition after hours in the backshop of the Advertiser. Judge’s wife Catherine — who taught me to type — was our ace proofreader and indexer. The Advertiser helped us spread the word about the book, which got rave reviews and soon sold out.
Even after Judge died in 2001, his book was still in demand. When the county library got down to a single copy — “People would check them out, but they wouldn’t bring them back,” library director Susan Harris said — a second printing was arranged. Esto’s own Joe Bob Clark raised the money and made it happen as head of the library board. (Joe Bob always laughed that nobody in Bonifay thought people from Esto could read and write well enough to publish a book, much less set up a library — and then he spearheaded the project to create a library annex and got it named for another of Esto’s finest, A.J. Dixon, the county’s first rural mail carrier.)
Holmesteading was our last project before I moved temporarily to California 30 years ago. I keep my autographed copy near a picture of Judge at his Royal typewriter. He wrote a beautiful inscription recalling our “publication adventures” that concludes: “And it has been fun. My best wishes go with you always.”
And they have. He still smiles down on me every day. I hope the library is able to arrange a third printing of his book.
VIMEO | E.W. Carswell talks about Holmesteading, his history of Holmes County, in an interview with Florida Public Radio.
Inez Wells Hampton had a ready smile.
INEZ WAS ONE of Esto’s Wells sisters. “She always wanted to give,” remembers her sister Jeanette. “She had a big heart.”
I remember her big heart and big hug, which usually came with a big smile and a raucous laugh. But not the day she came to see my mother lying in the intensive care ward. Only family members were allowed to visit, which didn’t concern Nez. “I’m family,” she said, and walked right in with me.
Mother had been there a few days by then. She’d had an aneurysm in her brain and was showing no signs of recovery. The doctors acknowledged she sometimes moved her arms and legs, but said it was involuntary. As Nez and I stood by her bedside, Mother seemed to grab at the arm of my sweater.
Nez assured me: “She knows who you are.”
Mother died before the end of the week. But I never saw or thought of Nez again without remembering that kind moment in the intensive care ward. I always hoped to see her when I came home to Esto. One visit she’d heard I was in town and stopped by early in the morning to say hello. My sister-in-law told her I was still asleep.
“Well, wake him up,” said Nez.
I’m glad she did.
HOLMES COUNTY 4-H’s most seasoned member — longtime Esto resident Sybil Miller Taylor, 91 — showed an apron she made to 4-H agent Niki Crawson at the Holmes County 4-H Extravaganza at the Ag Center. She learned how to sew in 4-H and made the apron out of a flour sack in the 1930s when she was 10 years old.
Esto’s Lizzie Pearl Watford Wells and James Omer Wells on their 50th wedding anniversary
THEY SOLD THE FAMILY HOME after their mother died at age 87, only a few years after they’d lost their father, also at 87. And the nine children in Esto’s Wells family always regretted it.
“Well, we all had houses,” said Frances Wells Kirkland. “We did the wrong thing — we sold it. Then we wanted it back as soon as we sold it.”
“Even after we sold it, we just couldn’t let it go,” said Jeanette Wells Berry.
They watched the house waste away, in recent years sitting empty and silent, without the life and laughter of their big happy family or any other. By then the two Wells sisters lived together next door in a modern brick home. When the opportunity to buy back the house unexpectedly came along last year, they did not hesitate.
Their brother Billy, now 79 and the baby boy of the family, stopped by one morning, as he usually does, and announced the family home was for sale.
“So me and Frances high-tailed it down to Bonifay and bought it,” said Jeanette. The listing price on the home was $10,000, but they got it for $9,000. And then they faced the daunting task of what to do with it. “It was filled with trash from the front to the back,” said Jeanette.
A neighbor got to work and made restoring the house his pet project, refusing pay. Their sister Louise Wells McGowan, 80, volunteered her son, a skilled carpenter, to help out. Jeanette, 84, cleaned up the outside. Frances, 76, and a nearby neighbor did much of the inside painting.
“This was my retirement project,” says Frances. “We had to put in new everything. And we had a good time doing it.”
Other neighbors chipped in. Some donated furniture. Their preacher and his wife gave some things. Another sister, Martha Sue Wells Register, 86, persuaded her son to bring over a piano he’d bought for his daughter.
“We never ate by ourselves when we were growing up,” said Jeanette. “Everybody came by.”
And now they do again. Although there’s still work to be done, and no one actually lives there, the family home is once again a gathering place. On Tuesday nights the ladies from Esto Baptist Church get together there. The sisters also host game nights, with the card game they call 3/13 a favorite. The extended family will come for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
When a neighbor stopped by on a recent Saturday night, she gravitated toward the piano and sat down to play the old hymn, “What a Day That Will Be.” Jeanette and Frances sang along. “That’s the song y’all sang at mother’s funeral,” the neighbor remembered.
“It’s like being at home again,” said Frances.
“Life has been so good for our family,” said Jeanette. “You may remember: We had a good mama and daddy.”
A HIGHLIGHT OF trips home to Esto is a visit with a favorite teacher, Beth Gavin, who lives nearby. She taught 10th grade biology — and so much more.
ONE OF OUR Esto neighbors is the choir director of a nearby church. For Easter this year, she decided to add some extra drama by re-creating the empty tomb from which Jesus arose. She got a big cardboard box used to ship a piano, painted on rocks, and added a few sprigs of ivy. Before the choir began its Easter alleluias, a young boy she recruited was to look into the empty tomb and announce, “He is not here. He is risen.”
The moment came on Easter morning. The little boy ran up the aisle, looked into the empty box, turned and announced to the congregation: “Jesus ain’t here.”
A TRIP HOME to Esto always reminds me that some of the finest people in the world come from my little hometown of 215 people. I’ve had an opportunity to travel and meet many interesting people. But I’ve still never met a finer man than U.T. Kirkland, nor a kinder person than Jeanette Wells.
Jeanette Wells
U.T. Kirkland
IN LIGHT OF recent positive developments with our neighbors to the south in Cuba, we turn to Esto’s own Joe Bob Clark for his recollections of local sentiment during an earlier time.
Founder Lisbeth Kidd welcomes young patrons to Esto’s Little Free Library.
WHEN ESTO RESIDENT Lisbeth Kidd read an article about the Little Free Library movement — a drive to create book exchanges around the world — she knew she wanted to participate.
After all, she lives in a small community without a library, treasures books and has been a major promoter of children’s books among her circle of family and friends.
She enlisted the help of Jodi and Connie Moore, who are fellow members of Union Hill Baptist Church, where Kidd is music director. The Moores donated their time and labor to build the library, which is an impressive double-walled, weather-proof wooden box.
The little library — registered as charter number 12,475 in the Free Little Library movement — was officially opened with a gathering of neighbors and friends on August 9, 2014. A highlight of the opening was a time of reading stories to the children in attendance by Esto residents Betty Treadwell, a retired Holmes County assistant librarian, and television executive Ben Tew.
“One of the stated missions of the Little Free Library movement is to ‘foster a sense of community and connection as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations,'” says Kidd. “With my brother Gary Jacobs as my chauffeur, I gained a bit of that connection while spreading news of the library throughout our community, greeting old friends and meeting new folks who were excited about the library and donating books.”
She was especially moved by a neighbor whose grandson, battling health issues, loves dinosaurs.
“I came home and discovered a book filled with dinosaurs hiding behind moveable flaps that open to reveal a T-rex, pterodactyl and friends,” she says. “I can’t wait to deliver that one.”
The world’s newest Little Free Library is located in Lisbeth Kidd’s back yard on Fourth Avenue North in Esto.
Photographs by Sara Heijkoop
Read More: “The Low-Tech Appeal of Little Free Libraries”
The Esto Herald 