Day 2 of Florida

Bristol, Florida

The old family home-lovingly restored by Heywood Henderson

This will not be very interesting for most of you as it pertains to my interactions with family members you do not know. I am goin to post it nonetheless for preservation sake.

We started north plenty early, about 7am. First we found the Waffle House—YUMMMM! Then we tried to detange the freeways, not so free-freeways, via a map we purchased at the local gas station. Sorry, no State DOT maps to be seen anywhere.

We did pretty good until I (I am admitting to my mistake here so listen up!) thought we were on the wrong road and had Dad get off the turnpike. No road signs or Speed Limits to be found. They seem to skimp on signage to spurge on rest stops. Not to bad a trade off for a person who takes water pills.

Back to the story, The toll taker said we did not have the prepaid pass we were supposed to have . . .and made us pay. It was only fifty cents but now we are worried we may be running all the toll booths. We'll call when we get back to the hotel tonight. After we got off, found a place to ask we got right back on-we were on the right road. Turnpike to to I-75 North, under a different name and then on to I-10 West.

I started raining a bit before we arrived at John and Mary Kern's home, about 1:30. We'd been on the road for the best part of 5 hours. Mary's husband, John is crowding 70 and is the Young Men's President. He has a great workshop and 13 baby goats, one yet to be delivered and mommas feeding them. They had 17 acres of trees and ponds and a creek running through it. Wow, what a place-paid for too-they told us. They both worked and retired from being nurses. He had a funny personality. Ask Dad about his comment on Blogs. I will not dignify it with repetition.

We visited for a about a half an hour before her sister, Minnie came over. Minnie's husband is very sick with some kind of cancer and she can't leave him for long. She also strongy resisted any picture taking. But it was very good of her to take the time to come over.Minnie is an artist. You can see some of her work-some of it fractiles like John, on line.

Mary then played host and guide as we went to the Pleasant Hills Cemetery. It was renamed from Pea ridge. There was a nice fence around it and many of the trees had been cleared away to make a larger ares. I took pictures of the headstones. I will post my father's here. Most of his generation are gone now. Lorenzo Francis Henderson

was number 11 of 12 children and would have been 85 years old now.

We then went and saw my Aunt Tressie, she was married to Uncle Heywood, my father's brother. He too passed away some time ago. Aunt Tressie was always the hostess when we went north. I will always remember she fed us wild turkey stew, a turkey her son had shot right out back. When we took the kids back to Florida some 24 years ago we spent the night with her family. Their daughter Becky lives with Tressie but was at work att he time. Her older sister, Susie has a brain tumor, not like mine I guess. Tressie said she moves very slowly now and doesn't speak unless spoken to. She just isn't Susie any more. So we did not go up to see her.

Lake Mistic

We saw Like Mistic and took a few pictures. It is such a beautiful place! A litte lake and flowers in bloom everywhere, wisteria, azalyas, and camillias. Even the dogwood was in full bloom. The pictures doon't do it justice.

Lastly we visited with Sue and Ronald Williams and stayed there the longest. They had two boys, Robert and Randy, who were close to my age. They came down to Miami on vacation every other year or so. Thus, I got to know them better than the rest. Sue's father was killed in WWII so I never even got to meet him But Sue is a sweetheart and has always been good to me. They live on Indian Springs road and used to run a “fun” place. It had a roller rink, arcade games and a swimming hole with slides. I always thought that would be the best place on earth to grow up.

Ronald is the Ward membership clerk and a “hepper” in the High Priest's group. Their home teacher is Scott Bladen-from Logan 3^rd ward-nonetheless. Scott is in their Bishopric too. Robert had four children. One girl, Kim, married in the Tempe and lives in Saratoga Springs, three boys, one off his mission, one on a mission and one graduating for High school this year. Randy had two children, neither are members of the Church. The girl is a veterinarian and works at Cornell University in New York. The boy hasn't done much with his life they said.

I was told by a distant family member years ago that "the Henderson women were always faithful, the men well, they struggled." I don't know about all of my father's brothers, but Morton and Heywood were in the end faithful. As for the women. they married men, like unto themselves, faithful and dedicated to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Avery one we visited was active and serving in the Church. This is a priceless treasure to me, a heritage of faith among women like me, women that looked a bit like me, science and math loving, artistic and creative, women who had faced challenges and remained true to the faith.