Thirty-five years ago, in 1982, several things caught my eye in The Atmore Advance.

The Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity was to have a “pretty baby contest” and photographs sent in to the newspaper would be used to choose the prettiest baby. This was all to raise funds for scholarships.

I saw where there were some house plans in the newspaper. They weren’t all that fancy, and maybe someone bought them. This made me think about the television channel “Home and Garden.” I love to watch it, but sometimes I want to throw my shoe at it. Those people are looking for a new house and boy are they picky. They have to have the perfect flooring, stainless steel appliances, and my goodness, they must have hardwood floors. We had hardwood floors, but couldn’t wait until we had carpet. Our floors had knot holes so big you could see the ground.

I can remember a time when we had no bathroom in the house and that is something I don’t want to even think about. We had to go draw water out of the well. In the house we had to drink from a water bucket with a dipper, which I still have today. People are crazy now-a-days. I would have been happy with any of those things I see on the show. Let them worry about not having two or more bathrooms; I would have been happy with just one.

Piggly Wiggly had bacon for $1.39 a pound, four pieces of fried chicken for $2.19, 16 ounces of salt for 5 cents, and strawberries for 99 cents a pint.

As personnel at the hospital scrambled, I-65 was shut down for several hours and the staff expected a lot of patients. It turns out that 11 vehicles wrecked just south of Atmore. But, God was with them that day. Some had cuts and bruises but the worst that happened was a broken leg. It could have been a lot worse.

There was a big ad in the newspaper to let people know that construction was done and Best Western was open for business.

John Wesley Vickery, 87, was one of those who fought with the 167th Infantry, Rainbow Division in World War I. This is the same division that had seen battle during the Civil War. Representatives from First Baptist Church was visiting to thank Vickery for his service.

A storyteller was coming to Flomaton High School to tell ghost stories to show the art of story telling. At one time it was very popular to tell stories, but the art is on its way to being extinct.

I remember when I was a child, there were two or three really good story tellers in my community. I have sat on the front porch and been enthralled by one of them telling me tales that we all knew were not truthful, but we still loved to hear them. Another storyteller was the grandfather of my best friend. He had regular characters in his storytelling. My how that “Little Sister” could get into trouble. My mother was also a good storyteller. But time erased her stories and when I asked her about them later, she couldn’t think of what I was talking about.

Robin Hood was playing at the Strand Theater. This was the Disney version with cartoon characters.