Society

Shepherd’s Daylily Farm is up and running for their weekends in June sale. We went out Sunday afternoon to acquire some more daylilies - it seems once you get started, you can never have enough! Rows and rows of gorgeous blooms filled the countryside. It is always a treat to get to visit with the staff, who are courteous and very knowledgeable about the daylilies! If you haven’t had a chance to get out there yet, be sure you set aside some time to go. Not only do the daylilies add beautiful color to your garden, they spread like mad! Last year, I went to their website, www.dayliliesonline.com, to pick out what I wanted once I got there. The website, which is most informative about every type of daylily Richard Williamson carries, shows pictures of each variety. Although the pictures are real, it is nothing like driving out there and seeing them in their magnificent beauty on a gorgeous day! This year, there is a little addition to the farm - a true outhouse. That may not be the most important thing for some, but for those with small children, it would certainly come in handy! It not only has running water, it also has a great tin roof!

Vivian Smith, Vicki Webb and Kay Wheeler visited with Joyce Beck in Corinth, Saturday. The ladies enjoyed a fun afternoon of catching up and shopping.

Kay and Laura Wheeler had a nice visit last week with Nancy Fant Smith at her home in Oxford last week.

A big thank you to Coach “Xa” and the Lady Hawks of Holly Springs High School for having a wonderful basketball camp. During the week, the campers learned many valuable skills, the most important of which was teamwork. The Lady Hawks helped the youngsters with their stations each day, under the direction of Coach Xa. At the end of the week, the parents were treated to a nice presentation announcing the winners of individual achievements for the week and also team awards. There will be more basketball camps offered this summer, so keep an eye out for the posting!

Martha Thomas returned recently from a weeklong trip to Texas. She traveled to Greenville, to pick up her sister-in-law (Donna Hamberlin) and continued to Fort Worth, Texas, to visit with her sister and brother-in-law (Carol and Vernon Lee). While in Texas, Martha and Donna assisted with an after-graduation party for her great nephew, Kenneth Lee, who was valedictorian of his high school class of over 800 in Arlington, Texas. Approximately 150 people enjoyed finger foods at the Lee’s home. Sunday, the family was invited to another after graduation party held in Arlington, Texas, for several of the senior class members. While extremely hot, they visited the stockyards in Fort Worth and watched a cattle drive down the middle of a street - from the cool air conditioned car! A wonderful time was enjoyed by all!

Grace Bonds and Chad Brownlee professed their love for one another and joined their families in marriage Saturday in Hot Springs, Ark. Wynne and Dunn Boatwright happily accepted Brileigh Brownlee into their family as a sibling. Kay and David Brownlee and Kathy Cockrell and daughter, Paris, also attended the ceremony. Everyone enjoyed Magic Springs and having family bonding time together. Congratulations to the happy couple!

(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).

Willie and Barbara (Wells) Rayford of Victoria are proud to announce the engagement and forthcoming marriage of their daughter, Takita Lashae Wells, to Dametrius Fitzpatrick, the son of Donald Fitzpatrick and Vickie and Jamie Woods of Moscow, Tenn.

The bride-elect is the granddaughter of Annie (Wells) Kizer of Cayce and the late Jessie and Edna Rayford. She is a 2008 graduate of Byhalia High School and she attends Mt. Newell MB Church.

The prospective groom is the grandson of J.C. Hodge and the late Jennie Hodge. He is also the grandson of Annie and the late Floyd Fitzpatrick.

He is a 2008 graduate of Fayette Ware High School and he attends House of Faith church.

The couple will exchange vows June 18, 4 p.m., at Mt. Zion Taska in Cayce. A reception is to follow at the Eddie Lee Smith Multi-Purpose Building in Holly Springs. All family and friends are welcome to attend.

Birth

Smith

Stephen and Elizabeth Smith of Holly Springs joyfully announce the birth of their second son, Robert Leo Smith. Leo was born on April 9, at 10:33 a.m. at Germantown Methodist Hospital in Germantown, Tenn. He weighed nine pounds, three ounces and was 21.5” long.

Maternal grandparents are Ann and David Miller of Ripley. Maternal great-grandmothers are Nancy Jumper of Ripley and Barbara Miller of Ripley.

Paternal grandparents are Harold and Marilou Smith of Cordova, Tenn.

Leo is doing very well and was reluctantly welcomed home by his big brother, Gus Smith, who will turn 2 on July 4.

This is a report I gave the Memphis Book Club and thought you would enjoy it, too. At the museum we have several new books. One is my daughter’s, Melody Golding’s new book, “Panther Tract.”

She called me a year or two ago and informed me that she was writing a new book on hog hunting. My reply was, “Melody, what do you know about hog hunting?” It seems hog hunting is a new sport here in Mississippi. When I was growing up there were no hogs, except domestic pigs. When the Natchez Trace was built in the 1930s, wild boar from Russia were imported and placed on the Natchez Trace. Today these wild boar have multiplied and are running rampant over Mississippi until last month when probably some drowned from the floods. Anyway, boar hunting is in a class of hunting by itself. Dogs are used to locate the cunning boar, and once located, everything goes wild. Melody is a renown photographer and took all the photos. She asked each contributor for a hunting story. She asked me to write my hog story and the only thing I contributed was a recipe on how to make country hams. Melody is having a book signing Wednesday, June 15, 5-6:30 p.m. at Silky Sullivan’s on Beale Street in Memphis, Tenn. She will have one here later in the summer. Melody’s book is a colorful assemblage of beautiful photographs and tales of American history in the making. It is a book that reveals that boar hunting is a treasured regional tradition in the Mississippi Delta.

Melody turns her book signings into ‘happy times.’ She invites all the contributors to be there, including me, and we sign the page our story is on in the books. She brings the boar head, the sage grass and other props. She wrote a book before this on Katrina. She also does a film with her books and brings all this to the book signings so you can have it all, a first hand taste of this, and incidentally, this new old sport has also reached us here in the hills. The Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., asked for her Katrina exhibit and it will be there forever more.

The second book is a new book, “Ledgers of History,” William Faulkner, an almost forgotten friendship, and an antebellum plantation diary.” It is written by Dr. Sally Wolfe King, vice-president of Emory University in GA., where both she and Dr. Eddie Francisco work. A lot of Faulkner’s imagination came from Holly Springs diaries, records and newspaper happenings. It’s called “Legends of History.” Faulkner used these characters to become some of the most loved in American literature. It intrigues me to think that I knew some of the people that Faulkner was writing about. Eddie Francisco was four years younger than I and he was in on these Faulkner visits to Holly Springs.

Eddie’s father, Edgar and Faulkner were boyhood friends. They went to each other’s birthday parties. The friendship lasted for many years. Their mothers were childhood friends also. Nearly every week Faulkner came here to visit Edgar. He was intrigued with Edgar’s Grandfather Leak’s diary and ledger books. Faulkner transformed these stories into symbolic and mystic literary works of art.

Miss Pearl Badow was Eddie’s and my teacher and lived next door to Eddie in Strickland place (now gone). Miss Pearl had a mentally disabled brother named Frank. Even they make it into those annuals of literary history. Miss Pearl’s mother was a Leak so she was kin to Eddie.

Frank was used in Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” as Benjy, who became inebriated with champagne at the wedding and fell down the hill as his mind spins and swirls. Miss Pearl was in the book too, where it tells of her trip to Europe with Mr. Badow. Strickland’s pasture was in Faulkner’s tales too.

In several of his books Faulkner’s characters would go to the spring in the afternoon because it would be quiet there then, with the water bubbling up and away and the sun slanting quietly through the trees. Faulkner used the names of the Leak slaves, Old Rose, Ellin, Old Toney, Granny or Candis to become some of the most admired characters in American literature.

(Not in Faulkner’s book) Once I ran away from home and went to the spring. I sat there by the spring for probably an hour and began getting hungry and thinking that Julie Ann (our cook for 56 years), would probably have dinner ready by this time. Our dinner was always at noon. I went home and nobody knew I had been gone or even missed me.

In Faulkner’s “Absolom Absolom,” he listed verbetum the material for the plantation house and he used Mr. Leak’s list of supplies at Salem. Salem was a fantastic little town built by the early Virginians who settled here that was located about ten miles northeast of Holly Springs and Mr. Leak’s plantation was there. The little town had a really famous resident, Nathan Bedford Forrest. He claimed it as his hometown. Consequently, in 1863 the Yankees burned the town and literally wiped it off the earth. The only remaining thing is the cemetery. We’ve had historic tours and there’s not even a brick left.

In “The Unvanquished” Faulkner writes about the upcoming Civil War and what happens when the Yankees invade your yard. Faulkner uses all the names in the diaries and ledgers and uses the incidents but sometimes rearranges the sequences or the outcome.

In “The Reivers” it tells of an automobile wreck similar to one in the diary. They wanted my son, Randall, to be in the reviews and I wouldn’t let him, as he was in the seventh grade and supposed to drive from Memphis to Oxford to an old whorehouse. I didn’t want to contaminate him.

Eddie donated a window from his house “McCarrol Place” to us and the dedication was May 15. Written on the window is “Ludie”.

Ludie Baugh was a beautiful teenage girl. Her father was Richard Baugh, Memphis mayor from 1857 to 1862. Baugh’s wife was killed in a tornado and he was rearing Ludie alone. He asked if she could live with cousins in Holly Springs at the Franciscos’ as he couldn’t run Memphis and take care of Ludie at the same time. As Ludie watched the Civil War soldiers march down the road in front of the house, she etched her named into the window with her diamond ring. One of the soldiers came back after the War and she married him and left, never to return. Faulkner used this story in three of his stories, “Intruder In The Dust,”, “Requiem for a Nun”, and “The Reivers.” Faulkner always looked to Ludie and would say, “she’s still here.” Faulkner used the fluidity of time and existence and said time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary waters of individual people.

As a matter of fact, most of Faulkner’s stories came from Edgar Francisco’s grandpa’s ledgers and diaries. So maybe Holly Springs was Faulkner’s “Yoknapatawpha,” not anywhere else. The Ben Ingram from Warsaw, south of Byhalia, story happened here and Faulkner wrote it up as “Intruder in the Dust.” He also wrote about Eddie Francisco in several books. The window with the inscription was Faulkner’s favorite.

You are missing some summer fun if you don’t come to the museum and spend the day. We are steeped in Marshall County and Holly Springs history and have it here for you to see and savor. We are here five days a week and sometimes six. Call us at 662-252-3669. We are located at 220 East College Avenue.


Thursday, June 16, 2011
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