Birney Imes: Birthday ruminations

A birthday is a time for reflection. I hope you will indulge me.

Growing up in Columbus, my favorite pastime as a kid was cruising all over town on a bicycle. Across the river was off limits, so naturally, that’s where we went. In those days all the honky tonks and beer joints were over there. We were more interested in the curb markets that sold firecrackers. I still fancy myself an explorer.

Birney Imes: Life lessons from a bricklayer’s son

Jerry Rice had some poignant things to say the other day. As he was being inducted into pro football’s hall of fame, Rice admitted he has been consumed with fear throughout his football career.

Birney Imes: Some like it hot

Monday afternoon I felt like Harry Dean Stanton in the movie “Paris, Texas.”

Birney Imes: The road most traveled

The other day someone was talking about the proposed Highway 45 Bypass and how it might not be the great thing everyone seems to think it will be.

Birney Imes: A man to call when you lose your cool

Friday afternoon while waiting on traffic at the intersection of Military Road and Highway 12 John Lancaster takes a call on his cell phone. It’s just after 4 o’clock, and, depending on whose thermometer you’re looking at, the air outside is triple-digit hot.

Birney Imes: Honey, please do something about those barking raccoons

One night a couple weeks ago we were awakened at 3:30 in the morning by a clatter from the back porch.

Birney Imes: To Kill a Mockingbird

Tommy Nettles’ Southside home with its white picket fence and parlor with antique dining table, family portraits and overstuffed bookshelves reaching to the ceiling could have been a set in the movie, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

A cold case heats up: Local mother finds justice 17 years later

Wednesday morning Muffie Ellis of Columbus got the phone call she’s been waiting on for 17 years. On the line was a San Diego district attorney with news police had just arrested the man they think murdered her son that many years ago.

Birney Imes: Allegra’s next balancing act

If anyone can restore harmony to The W’s fragmented, disaffected and, in some cases, embattled community, it is this former student, faculty member and administrator.

Birney Imes: The first day of summer

In the heat you can smell the honey and beeswax 10 feet from the hive. As our grandparents did in summers past, the bees escape the swelter by clustering outside on what is equivalent to their front porch. There and on the sides of the hive boxes they will remain making their low hum throughout the night. If the morning is cool, they will have retreated back inside by the time I return with my coffee.

Birney Imes: In search of a shade tree mechanic

The other day I got to wondering if there are any shade tree mechanics still around. You know, a fellow in an oil-stained T-shirt who works on neighbors’ cars in a makeshift backyard shop or even in the shadows of a broad-limbed shade tree. He might have a jacked-up car or two in the yard and a motor hanging by a chain from a rusting swing set.

Birney Imes: Don’t worry what the neighbors think

Saturday Felder Rushing introduced the crowd at the Hitching Lot Farmers’ Market to Don Featherstone. Gonzo gardener, radio personality and author, Rushing is something of a rock star on the gardening speaking circuit. And, on this morning he showed why, going full tilt for two hours in front of a standing-room-only audience, most of whom wore smiles the entire time.

Birney Imes: Sticky business

By the time you read this — assuming you’re reading the print edition on the day it is published — I’ll be in the middle of a heist.

Birney Imes: Blues travelers

“Much obliged.” It was an expression I heard my father often use. Friday afternoon I heard the term directed toward Andrew Murphy, a barista at Kudo’s coffee shop. It came from a bent, elderly gentleman nattily attired in seersucker pants, a white knit polo shirt and gray New Balance running shoes.

Birney Imes: My old school

More than 100 people took the opportunity Friday to go back and walk the halls of their old school one last time. The school, once Lee High, now Lee Middle, is closing its doors on what will be its final full school year.

Birney Imes: Market Street stories

Frances Hairston’s great grandmother, Anna, moved to Yazoo City from Germany during the Civil War. No doubt it was an inopportune time and certainly it was an unlikely place, but the young girl was intrigued by stories told by visiting relatives who owned a store in the Delta town. Somehow Anna managed to convince her parents the move was a good idea.

Birney Imes: One mother in law’s take on city planning

The other night, my mother in law, who has a genius for distilling a complex issue into its essence, said as she was polishing off her daily Dispatch crossword, “Columbus has too many people finding fault with it instead of finding good.”

Birney Imes: Charles Lindbergh lands in Maben

“No attempt at jokes today. A . . . slim, tall, bashful, smiling American boy is somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where no lone human being has ever ventured before. . . . If he is lost it will be the most universally regretted loss we ever had.”

—Will Rogers

Birney Imes: Snapping turtle for supper

Every week or so Ed Phillips hosts a wild game feast at his shop on Old West Point Road for a group of men that include lawyers, businessmen, tradesmen, landed gentry and the occasional ne’er-do-well.

Birney Imes: Furor over dustup much ado about nothing, says Amos C.

The other day over a late lunch I asked my friend Amos C. his thoughts on the city hall dustup between Mayor Robert Smith and Councilman Kabir Karriem.