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Society

City Personals
Mary Clay Brooks

Graham Miller honored with birthday brunch in son’s home

Big Graham Miller was honored at a birthday brunch Sunday afternoon to celebrate his birthday. The Miller children hosted it, using the home of Mark and Maia. Everyone had a wonderful time visiting with Graham and giving him plenty of birthday wishes! Happy birthday, Graham!

The 2010 graduating class of Marshall Academy has some fun in store on April 3, beginning at 10 a.m., with an Easter egg hunt. There will be lots in store for the little ones, including picture taking. Live entertainment is going to be provided for those who want to get out and cut a rug! The JV and high school baseball teams will be hosting games that afternoon, too, so it is guaranteed to be a jam-packed Saturday!

The best of the best will be Cow Patty Bingo!! Never heard of it? The premise is simple: an animal of the bovine persuasion will be turned loose in the fenced area at the Lady Patriot softball field at Marshall Academy. There will be squares sectioned off, representing numbers. When the cow makes a “deposit,” the number on that particular square will be checked, by someone wearing a face mask, I suppose. It will most certainly be a very entertaining event! The squares are $10 each and the prize, if all squares are sold, is $5,000! If all of the squares are not sold, the prize money will be 10 percent of the ticket sales. This event will begin at 3 p.m. Barbecue plates will be sold, so be sure to bring an appetite! If you are interested in purchasing tickets for the Cow Patty Bingo, dinner tickets or are just interested in finding out more information about the events on Saturday, April 3, please contact Jane Ann Autry at 662-252-3507 or Luann Gibson at 662-544-0369.

All proceeds from this will benefit Project Graduation 2010, which is a an event that is held nationwide following high school graduation. It allows graduating seniors an opportunity to celebrate their graduation with their peers in a safe, supervised, tobacco, substance and alcohol-free atmosphere. It began 29 years ago in Oxford Hills, Maine, following seven alcohol and other drug-related fatalities of teens in the graduation season of 1979.

The event is planned and funded through the valiant efforts of parents and our local community. Come on out and show your support for the Class of 2010!!

(To put your news in City Personals, please e-mail maryclayb@yahoo.com; mail to City Personals, The South Reporter, P.O. Box 278, Holly Springs, MS 38635 or call 662-252-4261.

You may also e-mail your City Personal news to south@dixie-net.com).

Museuming
Lois Swaney Shipp
Museum Curator

Daddy’s typical grocery store

Daddy

My daddy was Conway Warren Bonds. He was born in Waterford. His grandmother’s maiden name was Conway and Dr. Warren of Waterford had delivered him. He was one of the Bonds boys of which there were several. He was an avid sportsman. I remember him coming home from hunting and he would have quail. That was my favorite food (still is, but I don’t get it much anymore.)

He also brought squirrels and would cook them into a stew in a big pot in the back yard. His secret ingredient was cheese. I remember him as an avid fisherman, too, and coming home with lots of fish. He would go with his cronies to Moon Lake over by Clarksdale to hunt or fish.

Are any of you old enough to remember my daddy’s hamburger place? He was ahead of his day as a major portion of his grocery store was the hamburger shop. The hamburgers cost a nickel and a Coke cost a nickel so you could get lunch for a dime. His store was located where Jennie’s Flowers is today and for service there was a front window that slid open and shut. It was the only place in town to buy hamburgers or hot dogs besides the cafes.

The hamburgers were really delicious. The hot dogs were split open and fried, and to this day, I love them cooked this way. My brother, Jimmy, was often the operator. I was sometimes, but not too much.

I was running it one day and was in the store alone and a stranger came inside to the inside counter as there was this convenience also. He ordered a hamburger and a Coke then he paid with a crisp $20 bill. I had been hearing about counterfeit bills and I knew that much change ($19.90) would deplete my moneybox. I told the stranger he would have to walk across the street and get his bill changed before he could pay. He did and it was OK.

My daddy’s store was a typical grocery store of that period. At the same time in Memphis, Clarence Saunders was inventing the self-service, modern grocery store, but this was Holly Springs. The groceries and canned goods were on shelves with a counter in the front. You pointed to what you wanted and a clerk put it on the counter and sacked it for you. There was no such thing as “self service.” You were waited on by a clerk.

In the very back of the store was a butcher shop with a meat case in front. You decided what you wanted and Daddy would cut the meat you chose on the spot. There was no such thing as pre-packaged meat. It night ruin and that would be too costly. I remember going by the store one freezing winter day and Daddy asked me to stay there while he went to the bank. I was 15 and my older sister had given me her old fur coat, which was black sheared beaver. (it gave me a life-long love of fur coats and I’ve always had one or more.) Once I traded a Great Dane puppy for one. I would freeze in winter without one.

When my daddy left, I climbed up on the kitchen stool and prepared to read the newspaper while he was gone, but alas! Here comes a customer, right back to the meat counter. I “un-perched” myself and coming to the meat counter I asked, “May I help you?”

The customer looked over the meat and said, “I’ll take a pound of liver!” I pushed up the sleeves of my beautiful fur coat, reached in the meat case and took out the chunk of raw liver. I laid it onto the chopping block. I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing. I took the meat cleaver and went whack right down the middle.

Then I placed it on a scale, which was on the meat counter with the customer watching my every move. Exactly one pound! The customer says, “My, you can really cut meat!” I would have been in a dilemma if it hadn’t been right. It was the only piece of meat I ever cut! At least that kind of meat didn’t have bone in it, as that would have complicated the sale.

My daddy had a farm where he raised the produce, plus chickens for eggs and a dairy, complete with cows, with which he stocked his own store. He also raised cotton, had an orchard with apple, pear, plum trees, and I do remember him trying cherry trees.

He raised sugar cane on his farm and I remember him cutting me pieces of cane to chew and delight in. He also raised watermelons and cantaloupes.

All this from that farm which turned out to be a part of the city today. My daddy, did all of this and during the Depression he gave away and helped people keep going who weren‘t as fortunate as he.

At that time, a person could call his telephone number, which was 1-2-4, and place orders over the phone of what was wanted and he would deliver it to their door. He always had boys to help and they worked as delivery boys too. Daddy was a big jokester and had a delightful sense of humor. One day, to play a joke on Will Knapp across the square, he sent his delivery boy to buy some polka-dotted paint.

In the 1930s, Frank Strickland came in the store asking for a bone for his dog. Daddy knew Frank didn’t have a dog, that he and his sister lived in the past grandeur of the Strickland house and were on starvation row, so Daddy would cut them a bone and leave lots of meat on it for Frank’s mangy dog.

My daddy did all of this while being deacon in the First Baptist Church. He never missed a Sunday. When he died in 1950, the church was overflowing with people, black and white; all were his friends because he was a friend to so many.

Daddy bought the farm from Dr. Ira Seale. The last Indian in this part of the world lived on it. She came with the property as that was her home. She was very impressive and I remember her as being tall, stoic, and bronze colored. I went to the courthouse to look up the records on her name and was surprised to find that she never owned the land.

The year must have been about 1933 which was a hundred years after the Treaty of Pontotoc when the United States government bought the land from the Indians and paid each Indian for a section of land. They paid a widow with two sections of land. I don’t have a clue why she was here all alone nor why she wasn’t in Oklahoma where the government sent them in the 1830s. The royal Indians didn’t go until the 1840s as bad tribes were attacking the new settlers in Oklahoma.

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