Old Man Status Quo must have been In the driver's .sent for true along Greenville’s main-drag in the years immediately subsequent to 1910.
For it was about that time that the Crouch-Meisner Grocery Store went out of business, and the building it had occupied stayed vacant for quite a spell. Vacant, that is, except for such seasonal entertainment as glass-blowers, monkeys, trained-seals, dancing dogs, voracious boa-constrictors and, on one occasion, "The Ossified Man".
For such a site to be empty (about where Abraham's Ready to Wear is now situated) over a period of years would indicate status quo to the point of stagnation, but we kids didn't bother our heads about that at all. On the contrary we reveled in the artistry, the small-scale menageries, and the freaks which made one week stands in the vacant store, from time to time, and which we might ogle, to our heart's desire, for the tenth part of a dollar.
We can see the glass blowers now, blending, wind and flame to spin molten glass into masts, and spars, and rigging for a barkentine in miniature. And as we watched, we offered silent prayer that the price range of the finished product would be within this boy's reach. (It was, and we swapped a week's allowance for one more dust-catcher.)
We can still see the big snakes too, but turned our back, like any other sissy, when the attendant tossed a couple of live Pekin ducks into the cage at feeding-time.
The various animal shows were also good, and held our interest for hours on end, but it was the ossified, or man of bone and stone who made imaginations race like horses on the way to a three-alarm fire. He sat inside an enclosure, in a straight chair which was braced, so the barker said, to accommodate his excessive weight. During each spiel, a few spectators were invited inside the ring for a closeup of the exhibit, but Old Stuff was never included in that wondrous tour. Those who were included said the man's legs were hard as rock, for he let them feel calves and ankles but, after all, he might have been wearing leather puttees inside his pants. (Such cynicism could be just another slant to "sour grapes", we know.).
At any rate, the ossified man in the vacant grocery, circa 1911, has been much on Old Sluff's thoughts at late because, for the last three weeks, we've had a bursitis on our right hip, which is another way of saying a calcium- deposit or, in other words, their was a trend toward ossification.
We say "was a trend" advisedly, because Dr. Berry seems to have blasted the unwelcome formation with one punch of his magic needle. Thanks, Charlie, and but for you we might have spent our last years in a freak show. Meanwhile, there was little or no sympathy wasted on Old Stuff's plight.
"He can't be all that bad off and still square dance", said Johnny Murphy, who didn't realize that it was all we could do to stand erect, when we had our picture taken with the Fauntleroy collar and Judith Stanley.
Apropos the "Henry Frank", and the record-breaking load of cotton- bales (9226) which "she" carried downriver to New Orleans, we are reminded of something Mr. Henry Starling once told us about Argyll (hog-eye) Landing.
Argyll was the next landing upriver from Greenville, and the Vicksburg-Greenville packets called there, though they were scheduled to go no farther north than Greenville proper. But there was always freight in quantity to be picked up as well as put ashore at Argyll.
The round-trip passenger fare was fifty cents, and a heap of folks made the trip, especially on Sundays, not only for the ride but also for the dinner. The boat usually departed for Argyll at noontime, just before dinner was served, so a round tripper over that four-mile course got plenty for his four-bits.
We are pleased to report that our friend Mrs. Clarabel Massey, Assistant-superintendent of Nurses at Kings Daughters Hospital, is doing nicely as a patient there herself. Anyone who has ever loitered in any of the four corridors out there has heard Mrs. Massey being paged over the "Intercom," (or squawk-box as it is called at the Delta Democrat-Times).
In fact, you don't stand over a minute or two, without hearing "Mrs. Massey please, calling, Mrs. Massey". Which means that Clarabel is V.I.P. We are glad she has had a rest, hut will gladder stilt when she's back on the Job, (and the air).
BC.
