Forty years ago, in 1976, Patricia McKenzie of Atmore was sworn in as the first woman mayor in Escambia County.

She urged citizens to put aside their grudges and bad attitudes, and work together to make beneficial changes.

Brooks Memorial Church, which was newly completed, held an open house and drew some 500 visitors.

I noticed that The Atmore Advance was adding a little bit of color by highlighting the sports scores with red ink. It surely worked to draw the eye to the scores without having to search for them. Color was still not available to be used too much. In fact, there are only certain pages that are done in color even today.

Here is one of my favorite facts in these old books. The prices of things as compared to the prices today are interesting. Advertised at Piggly Wiggly was ground beef for 79 cents a pound, chuck roast for 59 cents a pound and fryers for 39 cents a pound. In the same week Winn-Dixie had coffee for $1.39 a pound, pork tenderloin for 79 cents a pound and fryers for 39 cents a pound.

My husband was a grocery store manager almost his whole working life. Even he could not adjust to changes in prices.

When we first got married in 1959, we had a budget of $15 a week for groceries. Years later, my husband would ask me why we were spending so much on food and I would have to remind him that prices were going up. I remember that anytime he thought we were spending too much, I would cut back by cooking ground beef and chicken all the time. When he got tired of eating those, he would quit complaining and then I would go back to planning my own grocery list. You would think that he would be on top of that with him being in the business, but he wasn’t.

An Atmore woman was flim-flammed on the streets of downtown by someone who showed her a lot of (what looked like) money that they had “found.” She was talked into splitting the money and in the process lost $800.

They still try that trick all the time, so we should be very leery of things that look too good to be true.

The city of Atmore raised the price of gas while Alabama Power raised their rates.

There were several notices in the newspaper about upcoming flu clinics. I don’t know if this was normal or if it was thought that it was going to be a bad year for the flu. It’s that time of year.

Downtown merchants were set to hold a fall festival. Part of the street was closed and lots of entertainment, food and crafts were planned.