Please STOP For The Crosswalks
Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
The summer weather is getting warm and we’re almost done pre-heating. In a few weeks the oven will beep and we’ll be in full-blast, scorched-earth mode. Speaking of summer and scorched earth, I’ve been doing some summer reading in the form of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Not really a feel-good story, per se. The book has an old-timey structure I enjoy where the writer lists all the major upcoming events in short phrases right at the beginning of each chapter. Traditionally, this might be to keep track of events but, in the case of this particular book, I think it’s so you can prepare yourself mentally for what’s coming. This structure reminds me of how I outline my column in my Notes app on my phone each week. If Hill Country Living were a chapter in a Cormac McCarthy novel, then this week’s chapter would be subtitled: Supper Service, Puppies Living in the Sewers, Crosswalks.
Big Water Valley news this week is the new supper hours for two of our town’s favorite restaurants. Courthouse Café and BTC Grocery answered the calls of many townspeople and tried out nighttime service last weekend. I went to the BTC on Friday night and was happy to hear right when I walked in the door that the catfish special had sold out!
That’s what we want, y’all. We want our business leaders to try something new (and that we asked for) and for so many of us to support the endeavor that they have to adjust and go bigger the next time. I ordered a beer and a salad for supper which is a very balanced choice, if I do say so myself. The salad was giant, totally delicious and covered in tiny, edible flower blooms. My husband, who works in Oxford every day so can’t try all our great lunch places in Water Valley, was thrilled to get to have a sit-down meal that wasn’t entirely frozen margarita focused. This week’s upcoming supper date: Courthouse Café’s flower-covered patio for happy hour snacks with the gals.
I was on one of my morning walks this past week when I saw two cute little puppies playing in the road between First Baptist and Base Camp. Imagine my surprise when, a few minutes later, the two puppies popped up in front of me on the sidewalk by the Water Valley Church of Christ! They hadn’t run there. They just appeared like Cheshire cats —except dogs. They did the same thing again a few minutes later. It was so confusing, these disappearing and reappearing puppies. The mystery was solved when I saw one dart into a sewer. These two puppies are living in the sewer system below the city blocks around Nallie’s Eggroll Place! Hopefully, by the time this column is published, they’ve found a steady place to live that is not under our town.
Lastly, the crosswalks have arrived! This is a reminder that drivers are lawfully obligated to STOP their vehicle at a crosswalk when there is a person on it. Doing otherwise is dangerous, rude and makes you look uncivilized. Let’s make a town-wide concerted effort to pay attention to and, better yet, take pride in our crosswalks! Let’s recognize the good things when we get them and not have our streets be so unfriendly to walkers that they take the sewers instead.
Workers spent last week repainting crosswalks along Water Valley’s Main Street corridor as downtown improvement efforts continue. In the background, renovation work remains underway on the former FNB Water Valley building.
