Hill Country Living
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
I’m sure I speak for a lot of regular North Mississippi Herald readers when I say that we were very happy to see the return of Dottie Reed’s Water Valley history column last week! I learn about 50 new things every time I read one of her local histories. Perhaps my favorite aspect to it all is that the histories are effectively crowd sourced. They are often first second-hand accounts of lives lived and they are often told through the admiring and loving eyes of friends and relatives.
More often than we may realize, this is the only way to document many histories. This direct human contact is something that histories often lack or intentionally ignore, and I believe this personal touch makes for a more thorough documentation. I surely appreciate getting to know more about where we all are, who we all are and how we all got here.
Speaking of contemplating life, mine flashed before my eyes one afternoon last week when lightning seemed to have struck somewhere near Main Street. I was sitting alone in my building, quietly sewing on a quilt, when the sky clashed so harsh and loud that my soul left my body for a second. It was like some mean person banged giant orchestral cymbals together inside my brain. The fact that the lights in my studio flickered on and off added to the feeling that I’d possibly reached the afterlife.
I did survive but the cars parked on Main Street almost did not. I ran out of the front door of my building when the lightning struck to see what was up because my nosiness always overrides any sense I may have for personal safety.
It was a torrential monsoon out there. So much water was dumped on Main Street that the cars parked in front of the building were coming dangerously close to having water seep into the floorboards under the doors.
Every time a car drove by it sent a giant surfing-sized wave through the air and I saw a lady running around Main Street barefooted. She had her jeans rolled up to her knees and was trying to swim to her minivan. I hope she made it!
The school year is wrapping up and the kids are all in a tizzy. The high schoolers are busy finishing final projects and throwing parties that I’d rather not know about. My youngest child’s main plan is to get a buzzcut on the last day of school. It’s his one haircut a year. A single buzzcut to start the summer. I respect the simplicity.
All these kids are about to be let loose in this town for the summer and I sure do wish they all had a local place to cool off. I’ll never stop my campaign to one day have a public pool or public splash pad. Voting ‘yes’ in the upcoming Tourism Tax vote is a good place to start. These cents go toward improving our town parks.
Summers here are long and hot. I hope that one day our kids won’t have to depend on a storm to bring the temperatures down and that we can build them a splash pad without all the lightning.
