Letter To The Editor – March 27, 2014

    Alexe, both Elsie and I are really enjoying your cookbook.  We quickly observed, of course, that it is much more than a conventional cookbook.  Your accompanying stories are interesting, entertaining and very well written.  We hope all Water Valley folks will appreciate as much as we do (as part-time citizens, but with deep roots in the Valley) the positive attention you and your enterprise have brought to Water Valley.
    Please share with Dixie our appreciation for the host of great recipes in the book.  We’ve tried just one, so far (the catfish gumbo recipe), and it is great.  We started there because we have catfish in the freezer from our little lake, and we’re always looking for ways to use it other than frying (which we love but recognize that its not the most healthy way to enjoy catfish).  We look forward to trying more and more of the recipes.
    Unrelated to the cookbook, please share with Kagan our appreciation for his (and, of course, your) investment of time, financial resources, know-how and assumption of entrepreneurial risk in the revitalization of Water Valley’s downtown.  And thanks also for unselfishly pointing up the attributes of other businesses in town–both old and new.
    Elsie and I, like too many of our generation who enjoyed their teen years in Water Valley, found it necessary to locate elsewhere after high school or college graduation in order to find rewarding employment.  In the ensuing five plus decades, there was little evidence of  resurgence in the hometown we loved so much as teenagers.  But our love for Water Valley nevertheless  endured through the years, and we wanted to make accommodations that would allow us to come back after retirement and spend some time where we met, dated, fell in love, married and enjoyed some of the best years of our lives.     
    That desire prompted our decision to build a small lake and a small house in the Sylva Rena community on land that had been in Elsie’s (and Dale Tyler’s) family for a century and a half or more.
    You and Kagan, and a number of other “newcomers” to Water Valley are adding appreciably to our enjoyment of coming home.  And, importantly, you are giving us reason to remind our relocated classmates through social media that good things are happening in our old hometown.
    We extend to you, Kagan and Dixie our hearty thanks and an enthusiastic SALUTE.  All the best for B.T.C. and your future endeavors.
    We’re copying Herald Editor, David Howell, in hopes that he will share it with Herald readers.
    Gaylon and Elsie Booker