A HIGHLIGHT OF trips home to Esto is a visit with a favorite teacher, Beth Gavin, who lives nearby. She taught 10th grade biology — and so much more.
A visit with a favorite teacher
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He is not here
ONE OF OUR Esto neighbors is the choir director of a nearby church. For Easter this year, she decided to add some extra drama by re-creating the empty tomb from which Jesus arose. She got a big cardboard box used to ship a piano, painted on rocks, and added a few sprigs of ivy. Before the choir began its Easter alleluias, a young boy she recruited was to look into the empty tomb and announce, “He is not here. He is risen.”
The moment came on Easter morning. The little boy ran up the aisle, looked into the empty box, turned and announced to the congregation: “Jesus ain’t here.”
Return to Esto
A TRIP HOME to Esto always reminds me that some of the finest people in the world come from my little hometown of 215 people. I’ve had an opportunity to travel and meet many interesting people. But I’ve still never met a finer man than U.T. Kirkland, nor a kinder person than Jeanette Wells.
Jeanette Wells
U.T. Kirkland
When Esto worried about Cuba
IN LIGHT OF recent positive developments with our neighbors to the south in Cuba, we turn to Esto’s own Joe Bob Clark for his recollections of local sentiment during an earlier time.
Esto gets its own little library
Founder Lisbeth Kidd welcomes young patrons to Esto’s Little Free Library.
WHEN ESTO RESIDENT Lisbeth Kidd read an article about the Little Free Library movement — a drive to create book exchanges around the world — she knew she wanted to participate.
After all, she lives in a small community without a library, treasures books and has been a major promoter of children’s books among her circle of family and friends.
She enlisted the help of Jodi and Connie Moore, who are fellow members of Union Hill Baptist Church, where Kidd is music director. The Moores donated their time and labor to build the library, which is an impressive double-walled, weather-proof wooden box.
The little library — registered as charter number 12,475 in the Free Little Library movement — was officially opened with a gathering of neighbors and friends on August 9, 2014. A highlight of the opening was a time of reading stories to the children in attendance by Esto residents Betty Treadwell, a retired Holmes County assistant librarian, and television executive Ben Tew.
“One of the stated missions of the Little Free Library movement is to ‘foster a sense of community and connection as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations,'” says Kidd. “With my brother Gary Jacobs as my chauffeur, I gained a bit of that connection while spreading news of the library throughout our community, greeting old friends and meeting new folks who were excited about the library and donating books.”
She was especially moved by a neighbor whose grandson, battling health issues, loves dinosaurs.
“I came home and discovered a book filled with dinosaurs hiding behind moveable flaps that open to reveal a T-rex, pterodactyl and friends,” she says. “I can’t wait to deliver that one.”
The world’s newest Little Free Library is located in Lisbeth Kidd’s back yard on Fourth Avenue North in Esto.
Photographs by Sara Heijkoop
Read More: “The Low-Tech Appeal of Little Free Libraries”
The blueberry patch
Dear Mary,
WHEN I WAS A LITTLE BOY growing up in Esto, there was a blueberry patch down the hill and across the highway that ran in front of our house. It was on land owned by U.T. Kirkland. Those initials were all the name he had, but he was a kind-hearted, hard-working farmer whose wife Delma — I called her Big Mama — kept me in the years before I started school. (She also taught me some of my most important early lessons. When I turned 5 and got one of those sit-down blackboards, I sat right down and wrote my first word: S-H-I-T. She wouldn’t say it, but she frequently spelled it, and apparently I had been paying attention.)
T and Big Mama were all-important to me. My mother left early every morning to drive across the Alabama line to work in the Van Heusen shirt factory in Hartford, and my father died young just as I turned 4. I loved T and Big Mama. And blueberries always bring them back to me.
Thank you for that perfect blueberry flip you shared last night — and for the memories that came with it.
Sybil Taylor honored on her 90th
ESTO’S OWN Sybil Taylor, a longtime supporter of Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama, was honored in the school’s chapel on January 30, 2014, her 90th birthday. She received a proclamation from President Billy D. Hilyer proclaiming it Sybil Taylor Day on all four Faulkner campuses. “Thank you, Mrs. Taylor, for your unwavering support of Christian higher education and Faulkner University,” he said.
Sybil Miller Taylor was born near Esto and lived on Highway 79 just south of Miller’s Crossroads, which was named for her family. She was active all her life in the Esto Church of Christ. In recent years she moved from Esto to a new house built for her on Alabama Christian Drive on the main Faulkner University campus in Montgomery.
The perfect gift
Two-Toed Tom staple puller
“How Great Thou Art”
THE NEIGHBORS stop by on a Saturday night to sing favorite hymns.
Esto gets a dollar store
The new Dollar General store is on Highway 79 in the heart of Esto.
NEWS FLASH: A new store has opened in Esto. Other than a handful of grocery stores and gas stations, this is the first commercial establishment in Esto since the days of the “old brick stores” by the railroad tracks 100 years ago.
Photographs by Sara Heijkoop
The Esto Herald 