Greenwood

FROSTOP




YAZOO RIVER BRIDGE




























Evelyn's Dress Shop
Naaman & Ola's
Goldberg's
Stein's Jewelry
Madole's Bakery
Steele Furniture Company
Midwest Farms Dairy
Abide's
Chaney's

Fishing

Summertime and Fishing! Oh what wonderful, stinky memories. Not only did we have trot-lines, we had boxes!

Since my daddy had no sons, we 2 daughters had to step up and get down and dirty. And we loved it. Never was there so sweet a time as being "one of the boys" on the river with daddy.

Now trot-lines are fairly common fishing tools, but we also has a secret weapon, which I have since come to learn was not exactly legal.

A baited box. In this you would place "stinky cheese". AND I DO MEAN STINKY. 

Since catfish are bottom feeders, the grosser the bait the better. Load this baby up, drop her in the water, anchor her down and come back in a day or two. 

There would be so many fish jammed in that box, my daddy would clean fish for hours. But all that cleaning lead to catfish in the freezer and fish frys!!

There is nothing better in the summer than a fresh fish fry with hushpuppies, french fries, coleslaw, fresh corn on the cobb and homeade ice cream!

That right there is a precious "Mississippi Sweet Tea Memory!"

Summer

Sparklers, bottle rockets, firecrakers, cherry bombs...... oh the sound of summer fun! This being the 4th of July weekend brought memories.

Fireworks still make me feel like a child. I can remember the Greenwood Christmas parade ending with fireworks on the river. I remember by daddy shooting bottle rockets from coke bottles in the driveway. How much fun we had with our Roman Candles and sparklers. We were such a big deal! Ha!

Another summer memory was after the flood of 1972. Crawfish were everywhere. The roads would look alive when they came out at night. At one point we strapped a 2x4 to a hoe and used it as a crawfish rake.

My daddy would just stick his and into the holes and drag them out. My sister and I felt to brave when faced with these irate critters! We would pluck them right up and drop them in the bucket.  

There was one weekend that included a slight mishap which would lead to CPS being called today.  My daddy took my friend and I out to an old gravel farm road. There we could scoop all the crayfish we wanted. While standing on the back truck bumper and holding on the tailgate we could see into the ditches and yell for daddy to stop.

After one such stop, we remounted and started off down the road. The truck couldn't have been going over 5 miles and hour, but the tailgate hadn't shut properly and soon she and I were on the ground being drug behind the truck. Screaming at the top of our lungs, but NOT letting go! My poor daddy. We let go, he stopped, we're all crying, she and I bleeding, the crayfish are snapping - It was a CIRCUS! 

Daddy checked our injuries, loaded us in the front of the truck and off we went home. I had scratched up knees. My friend had somehow flipped over and had scratched on her back! We never did figure out how she did that. We have more dirt and rocks than injuries. A little soap & water, peroxide and iodine and we were ready to go again!

I will say those were probably the best tasting crawfish ever eaten.

Impatience and Scars

Impatience rarely lead to any good end and I have a few scars to prove that. The most stupid scar I've given myself is on my right thigh. It was hot summer day in the early 70's. My mom was mowing and I wanted a pair of blue jeans cut off for shorts. I went outide to ask her to cut them and she said she would when she finished mowing.
Well, that wasn't good enough for me! I went inside, put on the jeans and proceeded to cut the off the legs. Oh, the widsom of a preteen. Yep, you guessed it, cut a chunk out of my thigh. But that wasn't the worst of it. I then had to go tell my mom, that I had cut my leg!
So off to the doctor we went. No stitches, but a lovely eye-shaped scar that is still here almost 40 years later.

Dirt and Locusts

This past week some friends and I were discussing weird things children do and I was reminded of my dirt eating days. Before you get the wrong picture in your head, let me explain, I wasn't eating handfuls. Since we lived in the country everyone had dusty taillights. Soooooo, when people would come to visit, I would "clean" their tail lights, one little finger swipe at time. I didn't branch out to headlights or mud pies and thankfully, my dirt diet didn't last very long! Especially after my Daddy explain that "nice girls don't eat dirt!" HA
Living in the Mississippi Delta afford a great opportunity to hear cicadas and to collect their shells. It was always so cool to find those tiny little shells attached to anything and everything. My sister and I would fill up coffee cans with those little shells. Don't know why we thought that was so intriguing. One of our collection expeditions led to a tetanus shot for me.
We had this shed in our backyard by a cottonwood tree. It was a great place to collect those shells. As we are happily removing shells from the shed and the tree, I managed to step on a board with a protruding nail. It pierce my foot, through my tennis shoe right between my first two toes on my right foot. I was so blessed it didn't crack a bone or ruin a tendon. Just another Mississippi Sweet Tea Memory

The Ghosts of Christmases Past

There is something about middle-age that causes us to reflect. The past few weeks I've been remembering past Christmases.
Except for the silver tinsel tree years, we always had a live tree.

I never knew there were artificial trees until I was an adult! Now having a live tree, didn't mean we always bought one. Oh no,  we went tree requisitioning. Many a tree found their way to our little house, from the side of the road, fence row, backside of a lonely pasture...it was an adventure!

We also had the obligatory silver star tree topper. What a thing of beauty!

Of the 20 Christmases spent in Mississippi, here are a few of the gifts I remember most:

1. Barbie dream house and white Go-Go boots (the same year!) SCORE
2. Banana seat bike
3. Cameo ring from my dad - still have it. Wore it on my wedding finder until I became engaged.
4. Sherlock Holmes style wool coat and fedora. (Don't ask, it was the 70's)

We also have crocheted stockings for a few years. Products of Mama learning to crochet. Do you have any idea how long a crocheted stocking will stretch with an orange in the toe??!

There were several years when Daddy would disappear for a few hours. When I was older I discovered that he was NOT helping Santa as I thought but was secretly delivering fruit baskets to several of the area widows.

Reflection on these years helps to keep me focused on CHRISTmas! They were simple, but filled with love!

THE CRYSTAL GRILL

There was never so magical a place as "The Crystal Grill" in Greenwood, MS.

The pies were to die for. Mile high meringue - coconut - chocolate. This is how I remember it. There haven't been many changes over the years. To enter the diner, you had to have this special card to insert into the HUGE door. There was a slot in the middle of the door in which you placed your card. I'm sure it was a discrimination issue in the begining, but as a little girl - it was so absolutely special!