Fifty years ago sounds like a long time, but today, on my birthday, it really seems like a long time. It reminds me of a saying my mother used to have. She, unlike many of her day, was always proud to tell her age. She said you are as old as you are and lying about it won’t help matters. Believe me, I am proud of each and every one of my years and as my Aunt Lois said when she was 95, “I guess I might as well try

to make it to 100.”

She almost made it. She was just a couple of months short of 100 when she died.

Fifty years ago in Atmore, two area residents, Hooper Matthews and Ralph Durratt, purchased the Pipkin Bottling Co. The new company was to be called Gulf Pepsi Corp.

Something that must have been of great interest was the upcoming sidewalk sale merchants were throwing. Ads filled The Atmore Advance and everyone seemed to be participating.

A bit of good news noted that Escambia County jobs were up 100 from a year ago.

Construction was moving fast on the new Masland Mill in Atmore.

A&P was selling chuck roast for 49 cents a pound; West Brothers had fabric for 50 cents a yard, zippers for 10 cents and “never press” fabric for 79 cents a yard.

Coonhunters were planning an event for July 4 and one of the contests was to be a “Coon on the Log.” If you know what that is, you know more than I, although I did go on a coon hunt one time. It only took one and I never asked to go again.

Apparently growing peaches was a big thing at one time in this area, but in 1967, the biggest orchard left in Escambia County was on the W.D. Purvis Farm in Salem.

An Atmore storeowner shot and seriously wounded a fleeing robber who got $48.50 for all his trouble.

There was a lot of excitement at Greenlawn Hospital when an army helicopter landed to pick up a wounded soldier who had been shot while absent without leave.

It was a bad time on the highways of Escambia County. Three were killed and seven injured in area traffic accidents.

If if was a movie that caught your eye, “Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die” was playing at The Strand Theatre.”