We watched the old year out, while parked on some of Miss Susan's needle-point at Crosby Hall, and surrounded by old friends singing “Auld Lang Syne”
And now It's 1957 but we aren't deep enough into the New Year to venture an opinion. So, we'll turn back, which Is our specialty anyhow, after noting that this column Is ten years old thls week.
One of the first articles we turned out dealt with Granville Stanley and his Kings Daughters Hospital and the way the two of them had served the needs of health and sickness in the Delia country. And we are pleased to note that both are still in business at the same old stand.
About a week later we spilled a lot of ink about the Battle of New Orleans, and ran Into a little friendly criticism from some history-minded employee at the A. G. Paxton Cotton Co. We were still wondering If the General himself didn't supply the ammunition for that skirmish. Maybe that was when he first labelled us as the possessor of a "dangerous memory."
Came April of '47, and we launched our '27 flood-series which some readers tired of before the "water went down" In July. After that we politicked for a while, on the side of law enforcement, getting nowhere but still believing we had something.
However, the above are twice- told tales. And if we Insist on going backwards, it might suit Toots Davis better If we backtrack only so far as that Saturday night at Cleveland Country Club, In the wake of the State-Ole miss football game at Oxford last December first.
In reporting the Incident, we mentioned someone whom people addressed as "Murf", and Quoted ills statement to the effect that he was going 'to that annual ball game until State won It, even If it meant he'd be so old and infirm that they would have to haul him there on a stretcher.
Toots Davis read that column because the quote from Murf coincided with his own sentiments (and Old Stuff's) has since wondered just who he was. All we could tell Mr. Staleman Davis was "Murf" no more no less.
Now along comes reader Edna Scott (Mrs. Zan) Bostlck. Did you know who Murf was, she asked? He married Mary Bond (Mrs. Cal) Busby's youngest daughter Nell, said Mrs. Bostlck, thus answering her own and Toots Davis question, and his name Is Murphy. We don't know Nell, but we remember her mother, Mary, very well, and we went to A&M with Mary's uncle Percy Bond. Mary used to "make" all the Greenville dances and was very popular, as pretty girls and good dancers have a way of being.
The Bonds live at Pace, on "The Peavine" railroad between Rosedale and Boyle, and the thought of Pace Station brings some more folks in mind. In the late summer of '30, when we were returning to the stales aboard White Star Line's "Adriatic", there was a very clever Britisher aboard named A.C. Layton Newsom. He worked for John Wannamaker Stores, and sort of commuted between London, Philadelphia, and New York. When he learned that we were from Mississippi, Cliff Newsom recollected making an ocean-crossing with a married couple of whom the wife admitted, being a native of Pace, Mississippi. Our British friend couldn't remember the lady's sir-name, either before, or after marriage, and the names we called out (like Rogers, Varner, Bond, and Mann) rang no bells for him.
Not long after we reached Greenville, we met Lucille Rogers (Mrs. James) Berry in the Wallace Arnold Store. (We must have gone in there to discuss England with our future mother-ln-law Mrs. Herbert Eskrigge and the future Dove.) We told Lucille about meeting Newsom, and about his meeting the lady who hailed from Pace on an ocean-voyage, asked If she had any Idea who it could have been. "It's bound to have been Lou Souter," replied Mrs. Berry, "for she's the only person from Pace who's ever been on anything bigger than the "KATE ADAMS."
Lucille was right too, for years afterward a lady came to the door at Peacedale and asked, in a decldedly British accent, if she might use our telephone. She was having car-trouble, she explained, and was returning it to someone in Greenville. She introduced herself as Mrs. Wade, and said she used to live in Pace.
Yes, she was the one our steamshlp friend had known, and was indeed Mamie Lou. and Miss Emily Souter, who's picture appeared quite recently in this newspaper, as a bride-to-be, is sure to be blood-kin folks lo the lady who came to our door.
—B.C.
