On this nice, slow Sunday with its drizzly rain, I'm waiting on my two sticks of butter to soften. Why am I waiting on butter to soften? In order to whip up this weeks baking challenge that I'm participating in. So, while I've nothing to do but wait, we can take a miniature tour of my hometown. Earlier this week I found that I had time to drive around before returning to pick The Sister up from work and I envisioned that if I were taking friends on a tour of my hometown it would be a lot of "this used to be...", as I have little to no real memories in the current places of my former stomping grounds. There's only seven places, so let's get going, shall we?! I drove through campus (the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi), which is something that my mom always did when I was a kid. It was different then. It's still a small university, but it was smaller when I was younger than when I actually attended in the late 90s and early 2000s. Traffic, pedestrian or automotive, wasn't an issue back in the 80s, but grew progressively worse so that by the time I was no longer at uni, a lot of the roads were closed to automotive traffic. My parents bitch about that, but having lived through the hell of trying to bicycle or walk that campus, I think it's a super fab idea that they made it more pedestrian/bicycle friendly. One can still drive through it, but it's not like it use to be. Anyways, so I was leaving by the main entrance/exit to the university and that brings us to the first location on our little driving tour. That blank parking lot between those cars waiting at a red light and the Checkers drive through used to be a building. It was a small theatre long before my time, not directly associated with the university, but basically in existence for the students. It sat vacant during my childhood to then be turned into a coffee house/band venue in my late teens. It's not that I loved it there or found it to be a safe haven or cool, regular hangout, but it was a place to get away from home. The Mercury Coffee Theatre (though not a theatre, just a nod to it's predessasor) was started by the same guy that started The Wag, which was a local scene newspaper. In 1997, my mom and The Sister opened a coffee house in our basement named The Cubbyhole. There weren't any coffee houses in my town except places like Waffle House or IHop, and certainly none which stayed open late or served espresso based drinks. So, that was us. Right around the same time other places sprung up right after us. Rumours abounded through the town that we forced all of them to close shop by threat and other ridiculous notions. One, which was located down the street from this corner closed because no one was coming in (not by our doing) and the people were from New Orleans and already had a place down there and this just wasn't worth it. I know, because I'd visit all the new places to show support and I talked to the owners in comeraderie; which was helpful because I always had the truthful answer to knock down those rumour-mongers. So, the guy who created The Wag. He created that newspaper first, then opened the Mercury as it was called. The article above was the first time we were mentioned or featured in The Wag (April 1998). If you can read the print, the author keeps stating things like "a long time ago when I first heard" and "Years later, upon hearing...", which he must be exagerating for the sake of the article because we hadn't even been open for one year at this point. 15. August 1997 to April 1998 a year doth not make. (Hint, it's 7 months). Also if you can read "Handy-man Paul" is my dad and not just the mere handy man, but I digress. The author is not the creator of The Wag or The Mercury and is why I can not recall his name. He would come in a lot actually, the creator, not the guy who wrote the first article, and he loved our place. Said he was thinking of opening something kind of similar, but more edgy; so strictly bands and coffee and no books and board games, not as cozy. We were happy for him and said that sounded like a great idea. Because he asked if we would mind; him kind of zoning in on the very non-existant coffee thing. Yet, when The Mercury closed down, we were deemed responsible, when no such thing was truth. He was moving him and his family away because he'd been offered a really great job, basically a Wag newspaper that paid well. So, I didn't mind going here, I did like the owner even if most of the time the clientelle were bitches to me, because I wasn't deemed cool enough to be there; but I did see my perma crushe's band play here once and it was a place to go when I wanted away from the house, so it would definitely be on my list of places to remark upon. Driving east on the main thoroughfaire in town, Hardy Street, it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from The Mercury, over HWY 49, to this spot right here. It is not a brand new building containing Goodwill, but originally it was an apartment building (with a lobby and access to the apartments from the interior), built in the 1960's. By the late 70's the apartments had been converted into businesses and my dad moved his jewelry store into what is now that parking lot. Roberts' MFG Jewelers (MFG = Manufacturing) was my dad's business from 1975 - 2001, though prior to 1978, he'd been working out of a shed in the backyard of their old house on Grace Avenue. They were selling the building, which is why dad had to move out when he did, and thus ended his jewelry career. According to him, it was time to end anyways as the minute attention to detail in the work was getting difficult for him with his shaky hands and poorer eyesight. I've already written a blog post all about it at my old blog, which you can read here. There's a lot of time and memory spent there, now contained in that parking lot. From helping dad clean jewelry or the cases, assisting customers, being bored and exploring the rest of the building and sneakily watching other people in their businesses so I wouldn't be caught, to picking dad up on Christmas Eve or meeting him for lunch and we'd walk across the (then not busy) street to eat; choosing a booth where we could see the store. It's weird every single time that I drive by here, much less on the rare occasions that I find myself pulling into a park space knowing I'd be crushing the display cases or parking in the desk or work bench. Even though I have memories and memorabilia (no photos), it's almost like I dreamed all of it and it never even existed in the first place. One block down from my dad's old business is this building. I do not know what it originally was (a grocery store perhaps?), but it was empty in my childhood and then was where I attended dance classes. My teacher would move a lot, so I know there was also a place in petal and one further down this road and off a little, but this is where I have most of my memories in what is now T-Bones record store and cafe. Which this store started out as only a record store about 10 or 12 years ago and now has food and coffee. And a comic store has been next door for at least the past five years. I don't spend much time in here, though I have ordered coffee before, traded in old CD's on occasion and parused their records, but the workers were always rather rude and snarky, so I generally avoided it, and still do. She stayed in this building for several years, unlike other places where she stayed only one. There was a lot of costume fittings and plié's (plee-ays) and revelé's (rev-elle-ays), and dance routines... also a lot of me watching the traffic go by out of the large picture windows. Go down (east) three or four blocks and you come across this weird building. I say weird because it was just a modest house from the fourties and then was later extended a lot to the left side (which you can partially see in this photo). Past my use, it became an upholstery store, then later a coffee house cafe which either never opened or was only open for a short time. We somewhat knew the owners through mutual friends and that was a lot of bad personal business and yeah, she left the country and sold the business. If it was open, it didn't make it a year. Then it was some bar and now it's a BBQ place. And it's weird that this is where I was examined by my doctor as a small child and had all of my immunizations. She was an odd woman, Dr. Mary Clarke. She was not bad or scary, but she wore very outdated clothing from a bygone era (the early 1970s and pant suits) with those black, thick boring nurse work shoes. And she seemed very, very, very ancient. She was really nice though. Just she seemed odd because I'd never encountered anyone as seemingly ancient as she was, nor wearing those clothes. Looking back though she's extra awesome because she became a doctor when most women weren't technically persuing that and dressed more like a man (pants and not skirts) so as better to make it in the medical doctor world of men. That's pretty bad ass, though as a small child it just seemed odd. Our final stop along Hardy Street takes us much further down towards the end of the road to this strip mall here. Specifically what is dubbed Laser Mania and the second two brick spaces in between the end and the green bit. I never went to Laser Mania and it is now shut down, though it started up in the late 90s. No, this spot is special because it used to be a movie theatre. Though I have more memories at the movie theatre located within our first mall and at the movie theatre located slightly out of town; both of which also no longer exist; this is the first movie theatre that I remember going to. The Sister, being older, has more memories here of various films she saw like The Empire Strikes Back being one of them. I remember coming here with my family, being in the theatre, but of no real memory which films we were watching. One memory of seeing Earnest Saves Christmas because a family friend took her daughter and I to see it here. And then of my fondest memory, but could have been more than once, of me sneaking out of the theatre to roam the main corridor where the ticket and concessions were and sneaking up the stairs to the projection room. I was between the ages of 3 and 5 and really you couldn't keep me from sneaking out and sneaking around that very small theatre. And I mean it was small. There were only two, possibly three theatres in there and they probably held 20 people each? We have taken the second to last turn off of Hardy Street, which is not far from the other theatre written about above, and driven just a little ways and over the railroad tracks to this building here. This used to be a station of the Mississippi Power Company, but was abandoned during my childhood. Currently, I'm assuming that they've taken it back over, because small trucks adorned with the company name and logo are always on the property. But back in the late 80's and for maybe on that one year, this building was repurposed into a learning camp called The Interaction Factory. They offered a program about space sciences, where the t-shirt was red and featured a pegasus, and one about marine sciences, where the t-shirt was blue and I don't remember the animal. I wanted to take the marine science one and was enrolled in the summer program. I was even interviewed, along with other students in both programs, and it was shown on the nightly news. It was basically a gutted out factory and some places were left as rooms where classes were held. I barely remember much from that month there except that I got to touch a shark (a preserved specimen), where we were encourage to pet it one way and then another to see the difference and the texture, being interviewed and the t-shirt colours; however it was actually a really fun program and it's why this building gets included on the list. A few blocks down the road from the last place is this one. My former, partial grade school, Sacred Heart. A private, Catholic school, that when I attended was only grades Pre-K to 6th, though now they have a high school and it is in a building just before the last one.
This is merely the side entrance, but is where a lot of memories, all of them unpleasant, took place. The dark space is a flight of steps up to the side entrance with the principles office to the right and classrooms straight down the hall. To the right of that, is a smaller building now, but it was all play yard. To the left is the basement on the lower level, and then the door with the ramp is the gym. I'm supposing those windows are part of the stage area. I'll not go into specifics as that really needs its own post and I'm not ready to hash out those details in all of their goriness yet. But this school was a torment for two years of my life, in 5th and 6th grade, 1991 - 1993. And that concludes the short tour of some places in my hometown. It has also stopped raining and my butter is probably soft enough now. Hopefully it is, because the dough made from it will have to be chilled 4 - 6 hours before I can use cookie cutters on it and bake the lot. Eep!
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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