Up & Down Commerce St. – Sept. 11

Published 10:15 am Monday, September 13, 2010

We acquired a heaping bag of peanuts from this year’s boil over in Crenshaw County. They had a nice taste to them, boiled to perfection, salted just right. The bag is still in the refrigerator and will probably last another week. You can’t go through the fall without at least one bag of boiled peanuts. Try them with a Dr. Pepper.

Nine years ago, we awoke like normal and hurried ourselves off to work only to find that our world had gone to hell. New York City’s famed Twin Towers were rubble, the Pentagon was on fire, and hundreds of American patriots were reduced to ashes in a Pennsylvania field. Today marks the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks against our country. Sept. 11, 2001 – like Dec. 7, 1941 – has become a date of infamy for all Americans, regardless of race, creed, color, or political beliefs. It’s one of those questions everyone that bore witness will be asked by one of the future generation: where were you? Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s death, and 9-11…tragedies that mark us like pinpoints on a linear map of our lives.  Men and women leaping hand-in-hand from burning towers, the race of the living from a monsoon of debris, battered and bewildered firemen…these are images that tear your soul.
And now, today, an evangelist in Florida was scheduled  to burn a Koran, the holy book of Muslims worldwide because of 19 Islamic extremists who shook the most powerful nation in the world to its core and subsequently launched our forays into Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether or not he does it is still to be determined, but that kind of hate and ignorance has no place in this world.
Civilization has yet to evolve into a society of the tolerant, wiling to accommodate the differences of the other man or woman. Utopia, still, remains the idealist’s fantasy.
Yet, the human animal perseveres. We stitch our souls together the best we can and continue along our merry way.

A couple of Greenville authors will be appearing at the Selma Public Library in the fall. Melinda Rainey Thompson, author of “I Love You – Now Hush”, and Dr. Betty Ruth Speir, author of “Come Cook With Me”, are scheduled for Lunch at the Library on Oct. 16 (Rainey) and Nov. 18 (Speir).

At the golf course this weekend, the Cambrian Ridge Junior Classic, part of the Southeastern Junior Golf Tour. The two-day, 36-hole event will feature 65 players from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. Competing: Greenville’s own Cam Norman, son of Todd and Ginger and an excellent golfer. But with that Norman tag, how could he not be?
Tee time is at 7 a.m. at the Sherling and Canyon courses.

You can order T-shirts now for The Great Greenville, Alabama Homecoming for Oct. 28-30. T-shirts are available in adult sizes, $8, $10 for a long-sleeve tee. Add $1.50 for sizes above extra-large. Deadline to order is Thursday, October 7. Call the Chamber of Commerce at 382-3251 or email: chamber@greenville-alabama.com.

Fort Dale Academy’s 7th annual deer hunt will be January 14-15, 2011 and is limited to 75 paid hunters.
The registration price of $700 includes two full days hunting in the Butler County area with local guides on private lands. For information, call 334-371-2345, or fdadeerhunt@camelliacom.com. All proceeds benefit the school.

Thursday marked our 38th year on this planet. We feel those 38 years and then some. In our feet, knees and back especially.
But we wouldn’t be here had the two best parents on this world somehow escaped one another. They will celebrate their anniversary in October, one day before we tie the knot with our significant other.
We wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Chamber of Commerce has chucked its Low Country Boil in favor for a “Whim Doozie of a Fish Fry,” scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 21.
Fried catfish, french fries, cole slaw, hush puppies, and hot tomato grits are the fixings. We’ve had cheese grits and buttered grits, but never tomato grits so we’re looking forward to sampling the hominy that night.
Tickets are $20 per person. Contact the Chamber of Commerce for more information.
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Courtesy of Angela James, we were able to get our hands on a couple of copies of Garden & Gun. We were entranced. Beautiful photography and excellent writing never fails to excite us. A true magazine of the New South.
Find a copy. Enjoy.

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