This is a different column than usual, but you’ll have to indulge me in this big flight of nostalgia. I’m kind of on a memory high.
Yesterday we pulled back into West Palm Beach after a week-long visit to the old hometown Columbus. Glad to be off the road, but sad to leave Possum Town.
Columbus has changed, like everywhere, but I was surprised how much the stuff of my memories still exist. If I close my eyes on Main Street and open them again, it’s almost like stepping into 1968. The names of many businesses have changed, but the buildings seem mostly there and intact.
And the Statue of Liberty still waves her torch on Main Street.
It was a great trip. Denise and I got to get together with fine friends both old and new and visit some of our haunts from the past.
There were a few kinks, but nothing too major. We always rent a larger SUV for long trips because we do NOT travel light and often need more room to bring back even more useless stuff.
The designers of this SUV must have been bored. They loaded the dashboard with unnecessary buttons and hard to figure controls. I wanted a car to drive, not the Starship Enterprise.
The first night we parked it we somehow failed to turn off the engine and it ran ALL NIGHT. Yeah, we’re old… but come on!
Met with Birney and Peter Imes at (our favorite newspaper) The Dispatch.
Who pops up working there but Mary Ann Hardy, the younger sister of our marriage witness from 1969. We didn’t know her from the “old days” because she was just a baby.
Thinking we might find some physical evidence of the old American Legion Hut, we wandered lost around Propst Park. I should have known what the answer would be to that. It was a pile of semi rotten wood 50 years ago! Guess I’m that eternal optimist everyone talks about.
Drove around at MSCW, or whatever they are calling it this week. We wanted to buy T-shirts at the bookstore, but the shirts with this week’s name hadn’t come in yet.
My Aunt Olean Salley was a counselor for the girls for many years there, and a very beloved person by all who knew her.
Air Force brats that both of us are, we went to the “Thunder Over Columbus” air show at CAFB. We first met there as teenagers in 1966. My dad was a U.S.A.F. fireman on that same flight line, and Denise’s father was on the hospital staff.
The temperature on that concrete runway was about three times as hot as a summer on a Mars desert… and no shade.
You’ve seen videos of people cooking an egg on the sidewalk? On that flight line you could have cooked Thanksgiving dinner. If you were careful not to burn it.
I’m sure it was a great show but we bought a few souvenir trinkets and headed back to get into the air conditioning.
We took a drive down past Starkville to family headquarters in Eupora. Went way out into the woods to the Salley family farmhouse and met with my cousins Joe, Billy, Kendall and cousin in law Cindy and performed the traditional ceremonies… chewing the fat about the “old days” and trying out some new guns. This is Mississippi. It’s kinda the thing we do.
One evening we had supper with our friends Carlos and Mahala Salazar and visited with them at their beautiful home. We share a hobby that only a few understand and that he is the king of!
Retired deputy Carlos’ old boss M.C. Edwards ran the hippy punks known as me and my brother Steve out of town back in ‘71. (The full story “My Brief Career as a Hippy” is available in The Dispatch’s online archives.)
More friends, Mike and Becky McCoy came up from Starkville and bought us lunch. I was supposed to come up and sing a couple of tunes with his Footloose Band the Friday we arrived, but I was late and I missed it by a couple of hours.
I’ve got to thank Jimmy Graham for letting Birney take us to his massive unofficial museum complex to see the memorabilia highlighting the history of Columbus and S.D. Lee high school. It’s incredibly impressive.
Arriving back in West Palm Beach after a week of traveling, Bella the velcro Jack Russell and Cleo the black halloween cat wildly greeted us as only they can. They get upset if you’re gone checking the mail for 5 minutes. Seven days is more than they can process.
Were we tired?
Spaced out, I fell back into my armchair, picked up a potato chip and stuffed it in my mouth. Tasted suspiciously like a dog treat.
Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
