Clyde's place, Highway 4 west of Jay
A blue tinged cloud of cigarette smoke hanging in the air; as a juke box cranks out a Lefty Frizzel tune against the faint glow of a dimly lit dance floor. Cars parked out front proudly displaying their tail fins as their long, shiny frame casts silhouettes against a moonlit night. If you found yourself at a place like this; it might be the 1950s in our area and a weekend night. Farmers, Chemstrand workers, servicemen and others would be making the rounds from the South Flomaton bars, to the Sandbox in Jay and to the historic white, wood framed building known in the 1950s as Clyde's.
Yet the time when Ms. Clyde Thorpe ran the location turns out to only be part of a bigger story. According to Lewie Joe Smith, the store and the building goes back to his great grand father Thomas Joseph Smith.
"Thomas Joseph Smith, was also called Peanut Smith, in that he is said to have been the first to bring peanuts to Santa Rosa County," stated Smith. He says his great grandfather came to Jay in the 1920s from Alabama and was attracted to the fertile, beautiful farm lands of the area.
The old store sold many items during its time of operation, beginning in the 1920s or 30s, and was a fixture in the area. The store also sold a brand of beer which is all but forgotten today called Spearman Beer.
Spearman Beer was brewed in Pensacola, Florida following the end of Prohibition in the 1930s. It was named for Guy Spearman who moved to Pensacola from the Tallapoosa, Georgia area in 1929 and founded the Crystal Ice Company. As the Great Depression spread across the country, Spearman made trips to Monterrey, Mexico to see the Carta Blanca Brewery. It was here that he developed his plan for crafting his own beer in Pensacola.
On May 15, 1933, Spearman became a distributor for Budweiser and Schlitz. His ice plant at the corner of Barrancas and Government, was one of the few facilities that could handle draft beer because of the need for constant refrigeration. The brewery used the slogan, "The Pure Water Does It." Water was pumped from beneath the brewery at 1000 gallons per minute. Customers said the local water gave the beer a "unique, foamy, but tasty carbonated flavor."
Spearman was sold at the tiny Jay store. According to Lewie Smith, "My great grandfather would pick it up in the back of his pick up and bring it to the store to sell," he states.
Small rural stores are always vulnerable to robbers and Smith's was no different. Lewie Smith recounts a story told him about a robber entering the store, "The man entered and pulled a shot-gun, or a pistol, on my great grandfather, who had a pistol beneath the counter. My great grandfather grabbed the man's gun and the man pulled the trigger except the robber's gun failed to fire and my great grandfather chased him from the store."
By the late 1950s, the store still sold groceries in the front, but also had a bar area and a dance floor, according to some familiar with those days. By this time Ms. Clyde Smith Thorpe was running the establishment. Clyde was the daughter of Thomas Smith, she had a brother named Oliver Mitchell Smith, who was the father of Lewie Frank Smith; the father of Lewie Smith quoted in this article.
"My great aunt Clyde and her husband never had children, but she helped raise her nephew Lester Stokes, who lived on the property for many years," recounts Lewie.
Today the iconic wood frame building still stands along Highway 4 just up from the Jay bridge. My mother, Helen Driskell McKinley worked in the store during one summer when she was a young girl but, being homesick for Flomaton, she left Jay and returned to her parents home on what is now Pecan Lane in Flomaton. Her father, Allen Driskell told her "she couldn't get the Flomaton sand out of her shoes," a reference to her missing home. While she stayed in Jay she rented a room at the white, wood framed house next to the present-day Jay Hospital.
Clyde's closed in the 1960s, around the same time Spearman Beer was bought out and shut down by a big conglomerate and within a decade most of the bars of South Flomaton had slowly met their demise and the tiny town was annexed into Century. Time changes all things, but I have a feeling as the dust beams dance across the sun lit floor of the old wooden building on Highway 4 there's still a touch of those old memories to be found attached.
Coming soon: Shadows and Dust III-view the trailer on Canoe Civic Club's Facebook Page.
