News from town

I GOT A special bonus when the Holmes County Advertiser arrived this week. Tucked inside was a copy of The Graceville News, including a special section congratulating this year’s graduating classes at the local schools.

The paper was intended for Roy Price, who lives just down the coast. Before I sent it on, I took a look. After all, people in Esto often went to Graceville when we “went to town.” It had the closest Piggly Wiggly.

I especially enjoyed a column headlined “The Graceville I Knew,” which described pretty much the same Graceville I knew — the soda fountains at Service Drug Store and Cash Drug Store, the Jones Theater, the American Legion pool. Added columnist Bill Clark: “Once in a while we got to travel up to Dothan for special outings” like bowling or a big-screen movie at the Martin Theater.

That was “going to Dothan,” 30 miles over the Alabama state line, rather than “going to town,” which to those of us in Esto usually meant Graceville or Hartford, Alabama, both about 10 miles away.

A lot of the advertisers in the special graduation section were familiar: the Pig, Circle Grill, Rex Lumber, Woodham Peanut Plant, West Florida Electric, the churches, the politicians and the funeral home. Some mainstays were missing, including Henry Arnold Ford and Jones Motor Co., which sold Chevrolets and Cadillacs. Graceville had its prosperous side and was said to be the smallest town in the country with a Cadillac dealership. I used to walk into the showroom and dream. One time a salesman told me I had good posture, which made me stand up even straighter, then and now.

This year’s graduates look full of promise in their senior pictures, formal in black dresses or tuxes with black bow ties. I was surprised to see an identical number of students graduating from both Graceville School and from Poplar Springs High School, which has doubled in size since our growing-up years. Graceville’s graduates are now mostly black, Poplar Springs’s still almost all white.

I mailed his paper on to Roy Price in Ventura with a note confessing I’d taken a look. I told him: “Perhaps like you, I’m happy to live in California, but still consider the Panhandle home.”