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Society

City Personals
Mary Clay Brooks

Mrs. Walker Hurdle returns from Fla. trip

Mrs. Walker H. Hurdle, Jr., has returned from a visit with her sister, Mrs. Norma Jane Bullard, and her husband, Al Bullard, in Ocala, Fla. She extended her trip to attend the concert of Andrea Bocelli at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa. Also featured were soprano Ana Marie Martinez, guest artist Heather Headley, conductor Eugene Kohn, the 60-person Master Chorale of Tampa Bay and the 71-piece Opera Tampa Orchestra. The concert drew more than 14,000. The two-hour show included Bocelli singing Ave Maria and soloing on the flute, followed by Amazing Grace. She met her friends Mr. and Mrs. Bill Grayson of Auckland, New Zealand, for dinner before the concert. After an extended stay with the Bullards, Mary Ann and her constant companion, Hap, returned home.

AnnYager and Alex McCrosky of Danville, Ky., and Bea and Drew Tolsdorf and daughter, Caroline, of Jackson, visited in town over the weekend.

Get well wishes go out to Norbert Barruel, who has had a recent stay in the hospital.

After attending Grady’s basketball game Saturday in Memphis, we decided to try a little restaurant and shop Gene was familiar with at the corner of Orleans and Madison. It is called the Trolley Stop Market and owned by Jill and Keith Forrester. If you have never been down there, it is most certainly worth the trip! I thought we had missed the place, as the street at that end seemed to be deserted. You actually take the little alley right past the Trolley Stop Market and park behind it. There is a wide variety of things you can purchase from local people. They have anything from pottery to goats’ milk soaps and lotions to art and, Grady’s favorite, rocks. The walls are lined with different vendors’ wares. They even have a huge refrigerator and freezer - you can buy grass-fed ground beef, fresh sausage and other scrumptious goodies!

They pride themselves on using locally grown produce and supporting local talent. Vegetarians would enjoy dining there, as they have vegetarian and vegan dishes. It is a wonderful place to go with great service, great food and great shopping; certainly something to check out if you are in Memphis during the holidays. Their unique gift items really make it worth the little extra time it takes to get to them!

(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 southreporter@dixie-net.com).

Museuming
Lois Swaney Shipp
Museum Curator

Remembering Christmases past

Christmas in Holly Springs of long ago was different from what it is today. Stores on the square stayed open until there weren’t any more customers, sometimes 9 or 10 p.m.

Shopping for Christmas was saved for the week before Christmas, unless you made homemade gifts.

In stores, I remember dried raisins came in barrels. I only remember them at this season. Oranges too, were Christmas items. Chocolate candy was in little mounds, wrapped in shiny foil.

Fireworks were also part of the celebration. The first sounds of Christmas were firecrackers popping. Our church didn’t have bells, but some of the others did. But I don’t remember bells at Christmas.

I once asked my uncle, Grover Bonds, about Christmas. He was born during the time of President Grover Cleveland. Uncle Grover was one of 13 children and he said, “Each of us received a shiny dime, an orange (a once a year event), and hard candy and nuts in a stocking. At the Bonds’ house in Waterford, on Christmas Day, 1907, there was a photographer who took a photo of the whole family in front of the front porch: children, in-law children, grand- and great-grandchildren and Uncle Joe Bonds, who had fought in the Battle of Vicksburg under Gen. Featherston’s unit. My great-grandfather had built the house of huge cypress, sawed logs. He stationed the posts of the porch to catch the sun, so he could tell the time of day by the shadows.

Weather is always important and long ago the weather was urgent. Houses had no central heat. Each room was heated with a fireplace for burning wood. Once in a while people heated with fireplaces with grates in them for holding coal, which was cleaner and less messy than wood. It was more expensive than wood. Sometimes a stove was used, but stoves took up lots of room and weren’t beautiful.

The winter weather of my youth was like the ice age and we dressed accordingly. I love winter clothes, especially fur.

One Christmas, I think it was 1963, we had snow on Christmas Day. It wasn’t as much fun, as it usually was, because there was so much to do and my family couldn’t come to my house because of the weather. The timing of the snow was wrong. In life, everything is timing, even snow.

In 1939, my mother was ill and couldn’t decorate for Christmas, so I and my friends did it. My daddy put up a pine Christmas tree; before that, they had all been cedar. Either one smells really wonderful. We made the decorations from scratch and we had popcorn, magnolia seed pods covered with colored foil, and holly berries. It was different but pretty. We whipped Ivory soap into a froth and made beautiful white snow.

Remember, this is the giving season and don’t forget that Jesus is the reason for the season. He’s what it’s all about.

P.S. Did you see the lunar eclipse Saturday morning right before dawn? It was awesome! And, did you see the “red moon?”

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