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Society

City Personals
Mary Clay Brooks

Joneses enjoy ski trip to Utah

Nancy and Ki Jones and children, Mary Neely and Jake, just returned from a ski trip to Utah. The group enjoyed the slopes and good times with friends Jo Linda and Edward Rather, as well as Ben.

Jennifer and Jody McMinn and daughter, Hailey, and Tina Joyner and son, Kros, had a wonderful vacation at Disney World last week. While there, they took in all the sights and rode all the rides, enjoying beautiful weather.

A big Holly Springs welcome goes out to George Hurt and Bob Mackley, who have both recently decided to make our quaint town their home.

George has been very instrumental in bringing recycling to Marshall County. He moved down here from Tennessee.

Bob moved up here from Gulfport to get away from the hustle and bustle of big city life. He is a jack of all trades and can fix just about anything!

Congratulations to the Marshall Academy Lady Patriots on a wonderful season! It was so fun to watch y’all play ball! Seniors Megan Anderson, Callie Clanton, Lauralee Fant and Kelsey Shaw left their mark on gymnasiums all over this area. They will be missed next year, but will blaze a path to glory in their quest for higher education!

(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

Wintertime – brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Once I moved to Minnesota. It was Labor Day and it was hot! When I got there, it took me several days to get straightened out from the move and about a week later it snowed seven very wet inches of snow. I had a well house for water.

The wet snow broke down my electric lines and cut off the electricity and worse still, cut off the water. It put me in shock that Minnesota wasn’t prepared for this. Down South this happens all the time.

So, a week later when recovery had set in from the latest dilemma, I drove into Minneapolis. Our little town was part of the huge metropolis of Minneapolis, which was 20 miles away.

While there, I bought three fur coats with hats to match. Little did I know that I was getting ready for the coldest winter on record. It was a real adventure living in Minnesota on Lake Minnetonka through the toughest winter of the century. The lake froze over so solidly they moved houses across it as they did each wintertime because this was much cheaper than moving by land.

The actual temperature went down to 40 below zero. Vapor froze above the lake making an ice cloud, sometimes with little stalactites making icicles dripping out of the clouds. Fishermen had shanties they moved onto the frozen lake for fishing. In the shanties they cut away half of the floor so they could sit in the shanty and fish. In the shanty they had televisions, blankets and stoves!

A whole group of shanties would playfully be neighborly and form a temporary town complete with names and mayors. There was a town out from our house.

One afternoon after school, my grandson, Robert, went out to the shanty house to just sit and contemplate (remember there is a huge gaping hole across from the bench where he’s sitting.”)

All of a sudden with much fanfare and disruption of Robert’s reverie, an otter came zooming up like a rocket, and imagine his surprise to see little Robert sitting there.

The shock was mutual. Robert came flying out of there -- jet-propelled and quaking in his boots at the experience.

That’s a sport we can’t have here. Once in the autumn, the snow was slow to fall but the temperature went down to zero and the lake froze solidly. This was bad because the farmers need moisture for their crops. The cold formed something called “black ice.”

I walked out on the lake and it was like I was like Jesus, walking on the water! It was eerie. The ice was perfectly clear and everything we had lost last summer was lying on the bottom of the lake perfectly visible, but irretrievable as the ice was several feet thick.

Jorja and Michael went to Hawaii in January one year and on their return home, I was to pick them up at the airport which was an hour away in easy weather at 6 in the morning. My grandson asked if he could go too. I lived by the lake on a high hill. When the snow got two inches deep, I hired a snow-man (not that kind-- a real one) to come drag my driveway, which he did.

This particular morning, however, it had snowed several inches and the snow-man had not had time to plow. It was four in the morning. Grandson Mike and I went out to the heated garage to the heated car and started the downhill trek in the fresh fallen (not so beautiful) snow.

At the top of the hill we started to spin in circles several times down the driveway. We ended at the bottom facing the airport road so I just kept going. My grandson said, “Wow, Mamee’, let’s do it again. You can really drive.” I felt like A.J. Foyt!

The house I lived in had a woods behind it and all sorts of animals inhabited the woods. Pileated woodpeckers like the movie version of Woody Woodpecker lived there. They are on the endangered species and supposed to be extinct. They were huge, maybe 24 inches long. Snowy owls live there.

The man who lived in my house before me had planted edible mushrooms on the edge of the woods but to me they looked like toadstools and I never ate any. Once a porcupine was in the road and I had to stop the car to keep from hitting him. He put up his quills at the danger he was in and with the quills he was as tall as the car hood.

One day my dog came home crying and howling and suffering after she met a porcupine on his campground and she had quills in her tongue. I had to take her to the vet to have them removed and each quill was like pulling a tooth.

Super Bowl 25 was in Minneapolis. As pre-activities, a large “Super Tent” with a floor was placed on the snow-covered lawn. Entertainment was dog sledding across the lake and back plus a great vis-a-vis (French for face to face) sleigh pulled by great “super” horses was available, plus ice fishing through a hole in the ice, caribou and reindeer were there to look at. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Super Bowl 45 is now history and is a ritual we Americans enjoy. The only position I could ever have played on a football team would have been “drawback.” Those boys are tough. The announcer said one of the quarterbacks had suffered two concussions this past season. The Super Bowl is full of supermen!

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