Hill Country Living
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
Merry post-Christmas-New Year’s to everyone! This column won’t reach many readers until after New Year’s Day when all in the world will feel clear and new. But I’m writing the column in the hazy days between Christmas and New Year’s. This is the “lost week” in which finding out what day of the week it is always reveals a surprise (Really? It’s Friday?!) and carrying out responsibilities beyond cookie-eating and wearing new Christmas socks around the house is an elusive pursuit. Taking out the trash was my most adult task of the week. And I got somebody else to do it.
Christmases get easier the older my kids get. While it’s very hard to shop for a teenager considering their Christmas wish-list items of “money” and “letting me stay out all night” cannot be ordered from Amazon, they do have low expectations in terms of festive production. There’s no month-long creative odyssey of elf relocation and, most importantly, there’s absolutely no family-oriented living room meetings happening pre-dawn. In fact, several of my friends (myself included) were up and ready to roll on Christmas morning well before the household’s teenagers. If there is one thing a teenager loves to do, it’s make you wait on them – both in terms of service and time.
By the time this article comes out, the great New Year’s Ever Crappie Drop of 2025 would have already happened. I hope everyone attended and that everyone had fun! Barring some natural disaster or wild accident, I predict now that it will be a terrific Crappie Drop and possibly the best one yet! I base this prediction on all the past terrific Crappie Drops we have had here in Water Valley that have continued to out-do the year before. The Crappie Drop does nothing but improve.
The Crappie Drop is delightful for several reasons but I would argue that the main reason is because its beginnings were so completely organic. People around town took a distinctive quality about Water Valley that already existed and owned it with humor to the point of it becoming a beloved caricature. That is how a good mascot is made. No expensive outside marketing team could have come in and said “Here’s an idea! Take that fish from that sign in town and drop a giant handmade sculpture of it from a building at midnight!” Only townfolks about three drinks in at a porch party could have thought of that. And porch-party ideas either turn out to be really bad or really good. In this case, the fates landed in our favor.
Lastly, it’s New Year’s resolution time for those who practice! For years, I haphazardly made New Year’s resolutions just for the fun of it and then inevitably failed about a week or two into January. The failing never bothered me and seemed like a natural part of the resolution-making process. But last year, I made a New Year’s resolution and, in some unusual twist of fate that I’m still trying to interpret, stuck to it. I accomplished my goal and beyond. What a surprise! So, in case someone is looking for resolution inspiration – sometimes they work! Who knew?!
Happy New Year, Water Valley!
