Birney Imes: Magnolia Bowl on Christmas morning

The presents had been opened and the grown-ups were sitting around talking in the easy afterglow of a Christmas morning.

An uncle was absorbed by a modern-day version of a Tinkertoy set and an aunt was helping a niece come to grips with a pair of sparkly gloves that can freeze people. A couple of us stepped outside with one of the kids, who wanted to show off the scooter Santa had brought.

Birney Imes: A Christmastime ramble

While dining out with friends Friday evening, the husband let it be known he would like to have a Corvette. We’re about the same age, well past the mid-life crisis marker. It’s not a crisis if it’s something you’ve always wanted, I suppose.

Birney Imes: Kendall Graveman takes the mound

If Kendall Graveman’s baseball career continues its present trajectory, he’s going to turn at least one cliche on its ear. Nice guys can do just fine in the Majors, thank you.

Birney Imes: 50 years on the campaign trail

Friday afternoon Adrine Younger welcomed me into her tidy kitchen and offered me a glass of tea and a piece of Italian cream cake. The grandmother and widowed mother of five lives in a pleasant one-story farmhouse about a mile down a gravel road that bears the family name. I had come to talk politics.

Birney Imes: Coffee run evokes memories of days past

Friday morning started out with a small crisis. We were out of coffee and I had a gathering to attend before 7. The downtown shop I frequent doesn’t open until 7:30, so I headed out 45 for a national coffee chain that takes its name from a character in Moby Dick. (The company, I learned on the Internet, was almost named for the whaling ship in the story, Pequod.)

Birney Imes: Trees from acorns

In 1953 the French writer Jean Giono published a thin volume, titled, “The Man Who Planted Trees.”

The story’s narrator, hiking alone in the south of France, comes upon a desolate, treeless valley covered in wild lavender. The year is 1910.

Birney Imes: Carry me home

A good tonic for the weekend: Have Friday lunch with two or three friends who enjoy laughing with each other. Sounds easy enough. The morning of, a friend sends an email: “So and so and I are going to be at such and such restaurant at 11:45. Be there.” I was a little late for the gathering having gone to hear Kate Sweeney at the Rosenzweig talk about a favorite subject, cemeteries.

Birney Imes: Building bridges of hope

Are you a teen mother and trying to find job and a place of your own to live? Homeless and needing a place to get out of the cold? Glenda Buckhalter could be your new best friend.

Birney Imes: Watching the Bulldogs from afar

Seems a little odd to be sitting in the living room of friends on the other side of the country watching a football game in Starkville. Nice to see we’re getting rain — it’s cool and clear here — but better if it would wait.

Birney Imes: National Newspaper Week

Maybe this has happened to you. You drive past a stand of trees in a field or down a particular city street — you’ve been going that way for years — and then one afternoon after a late afternoon rainstorm the warm light and clean air transforms the familiar into something magical and almost unrecognizable. It’s like being reintroduced to a person or place you haven’t seen in a long time. Happened to me recently.

Birney Imes: The moon winx at Glenn House

Sunday afternoon, a week ago, the idea entered my head I should ride over to Gordo and look in on Glenn House and Kathy Fetters.

Birney Imes: Childhood

It was Hemingway, I think, who said the best early training for a writer is an unhappy childhood. While I expect there is some truth to Papa’s observation, it is not the training regimen any of us would choose for ourselves or our offspring.

Partial to Home: Baseball, anyone?

When our almost 8-year-old grandson, Benjamin, announces he’s ready to go to Dudy Noble, he initiates a time-honored sequence of events. He goes and gets a metal bat and a small cloth bag containing six to 10 worn-out tennis balls, and I begin looking for my shoes.

Birney Imes: Gifts all week long

Wednesday in the aisles of Kroger I ran into a high school friend I had not seen in years, Joey Hendrix. As a civil engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers, Joey’s career included postings in Vicksburg, Baghdad and New Orleans. He is now retired and has come home to take care of his mother, who lives in New Hope.

Birney Imes: An open letter to Mayor Smith

Mr. Mayor, do you have any idea what effect your actions Wednesday have had on the people of Columbus?

You are the face of Columbus. Friday your face appeared in the state’s largest newspaper under a headline proclaiming you had given yourself a $10,000 raise after a discussion of the city’s budget deficit.

Birney Imes: Email inquiry triggers flood of memories

Donna Grant deserves a byline on today’s column.

Several weeks ago someone mentioned Al Puckett had been named distinguished hospital trustee of the year for the state and wondered why it hadn’t been in the paper.

Birney Imes: Summer rain

When it started raining I walked down off the railroad tracks through briars into a dense stand of sweet gum. This will be just fine. Just like the deer I had seen near the trestle would likely do, I’ll wait out the storm here under the trees.

Birney Imes: Just RipStiking around

It was 94 degrees in the shade, a scorcher of a Saturday afternoon. Slim Smith and I were standing in the alleyway behind The Dispatch talking about the next day’s paper, taking refuge in what little shade there was.

Freeze Frame: Watermelon memories

Just before 2 o’clock Tuesday afternoon, a car carrying four people pulled into the drive of Johnny Gilmer’s watermelon stand on Wolf Road. Two men

Freeze Frame: Harvey’s last day

On the way back to town Monday morning after photo shoot for Catfish Alley, the following text beeped in: Cousin. Do not know if it