Mike Jones
By Justin Jarrett
When Rev. Mike Jones recalls his childhood growing up in Beaufort, it’s easy to imagine the scene playing out on the pages of one of his old pal Pat Conroy’s books.
He paints a vivid picture of downtown Beaufort in the late 1940s and early 1950s – his “playground” as a child – with the Breeze theater, the Ocean View Cafe, Luther’s Pharmacy, and “a small establishment which will remain anonymous where you could buy cigarettes for a penny apiece.” His dog, Tyler, found his own kind of trouble on Bay Street, rifling through trash cans behind the local meat market and occasionally bringing home a cow femur or pig shank to gnaw on the porch of the big brick house on the corner of Bay and Carteret streets, where the family lived upstairs and Jones’ father operated his medical practice on the first floor.
“It got to be sort of a joke with some of dad’s patients,” Jones says. “ ‘ Hey Doc, we saw Jim Jackson enter your office, but we never saw him leave.’ ” Jones jokes that he taught Conroy everything he knew about writing – “how to split infinitives, dangle participles, and totally mess up tenses with the best of ‘em” – and given his knack for storytelling, it’s easy enough to believe. Then his equal knack for self-deprecating humor rears its head.
“I grew up with some of Beaufort’s more notable sons – Ray Williams, Larry Rowland, Jim Thomas, Rick Pollitzer,” Jones recalls. “They have all excelled in their respective fields. I still live in their shadow and have a terrible inferiority complex.” In reality, Jones stood out among his peers. He was the president of the Beaufort High School senior class of 1961 – an honor he insists will be carved on his tombstone – and a co-captain of the football team, albeit one that won only a single game his senior year.
Jones returned to Beaufort High as a teacher in 1967-68, manning the same classrooms as Conroy, George Garbade, and Bernie Schein. That quirky quartet traveled to Europe together in the summer of 1968 and stayed close over the years. Jones even presided over Conroy’s funeral. Just as Conroy was called to write, though, Jones was called to the pulpit. He was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1970 and served numerous churches in the Carolinas for 35 years, save for a three-year stint in Newfoundland, Canada. “I was very happy and fulfilled being a priest,” Jones said. “I wanted to play shortstop for the Cardinals, but God did not give me the talent of hitting a curveball low and away so I made do. Where God shuts a door he opens a window, it is said.”
Now retired, Jones spends most of his time rocking on his porch in Sylva, N.C., clipping coupons, watching birds, and occasionally puffing on a cigar or sipping a mint julep. He’s proud of his four grown children – a school headmaster in San Francisco, a nurse midwife in North Carolina, a nursing home activities director in Massachusetts, and a Montessori teacher in Tennessee – and enjoys the time he gets to spend with his four grandchildren (with a fifth on the way). “Children, you know, are the clearest proof of the theory of evolution,” Jones said. “Each generation improves on the one that went before. That’s certainly the case with me. My children are smarter, better-looking and far more accomplished that I am.”
Although life has taken him away from Beaufort, Jones says the Lowcountry always stays in your blood, “like a contagion.” “Even when you’re not there physically, you’re there in your mind, in your heart,” Jones says. “I still dream of Spanish moss and pluff mud sometimes. For those of you fortunate enough to live in the Lowcountry, carpe diem. Go stand on a mud bank and inhale deeply. Pull down some Spanish moss and rub it all over your face. Feel the soft, lacy texture of it. Appreciate its subtle thread-like lushness. “No. On second thought, don’t. Redbugs.”