I would like to show you a clearer shot of the Rocket '88 we used to growl in, but this is
best I could find. However, having our uncle Bennie Robbins in the foreground means much
to me and my family. Aunt Dora and he were visiting from Warrenton on the Sunday before
New Year's in 1959.

Back in the 1970’s, the state highway folks decided to bypass Winton. US 13 would no longer run across the old bridge, past the courthouse and make the s-curve onto Main Street. Life in Winton would slow down a bit more and the dogs would have more asphalt to sleep on. The bypass would meet up with the south part of US 13 past Bluefoot Road and cut into part of the Oak Villa community – long the home of many a Jones.

Jesse and Vertly Jones’ house was demolished, but Jack and Pocahontas Greene decided to move their house to the Wats Greene farm on Bluefoot where Jack grew up. A few years before that move, a couple of things happened at Jack and Pocahantas’ house.

My father, T.W. Jones, a trustee of Pleasant Plains Church, and Jack Greene, a deacon of the same, attended joint Deacon-Trustee meetings held monthly on Friday nights. One rainy meeting night after adjournment, Daddy discovered that his gleaming white-on-purple 1958 ’88 Oldsmobile four-door hardtop was missing. With its huge engine and abundant chrome, it was a car that suited my acceleration-inclined mother. Daddy and Talmadge Reid, his friend and fellow trustee, scoured both sides of Pleasant Plains’ lot. They were the only two people left at Plains Church. Remaining on the lot was Tal’s 1964 Buick Wildcat and a 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air they had never seen before.

Tal drove T.W. to the Sheriff’s office to report the missing car, and they decided to have one more look at the Church. The mystery Chevrolet was still there. The two sharp-thinking men, trustees and businessmen both, suspected an upstanding member of the church leadership had just bought the car and, in the dark, took Daddy’s Olds by mistake.

Tal owned a garage and knew that Daddy’s ’58 Olds and the ’58 Chevrolet, being made by General Motors, used the same key blank. Tal also knew that springs in the ignition locks would weaken after several years and other GM keys could be used.

So, T.W. drove the Chevrolet home. In the house garage, he showed us the car in the light. Water pooled on the obviously well-waxed body and the engine was spic and span. T.W. thought that car had only been two days off the dealer’s lot. It was now a matter of waiting.

The next morning, at the Green house on US 13, Mrs. Pocahontas Hare Green noticed through the window that her cousin T.W.’s car was in the driveway.

“Jack, is Tupper here?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Then why is his car in the driveway, and where is your car?”

Jack made the phone call and everything was settled.

Pocahontas in polka-dots: Mrs. Pocahontas Hare Greene seated between her cousins, the eternal and venerable Alice Jones Nickens and Alice's sister Sally Jones, at Pocahontas' Waters Training School fifieth class reunion. Sally was a classmate. Miss Poca usually sported a sweet smile. The photograph was made around 1969 by Winton photographer, teacher and later, C.S. Brown principal, Matthew D. Jarmond, Sr.

We, now, progress from that year to a later one on another rainy Trustee-Deacon meeting night when the steering linkage on the Rocket ’88 broke, and the eight-year old car crashed into the ditch in front of Jack and Pocahontas’ house. The insurance company declared T.W.’s car a total loss, and soon it was replaced by a plain green 1966 Chevrolet Bel Air four-door sedan which did not suit my mother at all.