This year, we spent a long Easter weekend in Macon, Mississippi, where my parents live, and it was a nice opportunity for family time, rest, and enjoying holiday traditions. On Saturday morning, the kids slept late, and I had a hankering to get out of the house. So, I took some time to wander around town on my own. I have lots of memories of Saturdays in Macon. When I was a child, I spent weekends on the farm at Busy Bee, and often, on Saturdays, we would drive my grandmother into town for her 3-11 nursing shift at Noxubee General Hospital. When I was very young, before grandmother had a washer and dryer at the farm, those trips also involved taking laundry to the laundromat on Pearl Street to wash, and in later years, we would wander around the little shops downtown – “Mrs. Claire’s”, as I called the book store, TWL dollar store, Klaus’ dress shop. Sometimes we would pick up food at the Dairy Dream at one end of town or drive up to Burger Wheel at the other end.
Some Saturdays I would come into town with my granddaddy, riding or standing beside him in his old green pickup truck. We would stop by Flora’s Grocery at the south end of Jefferson Street. Now, it sells office supplies. I remember the concrete floors, the chairs lined up opposite the counter, where folks would sit and “shoot the breeze,” the shelves, the gas pumps out front. Granddaddy would talk to the men about what was going on in town, and mostly about dogs for rabbit hunting. I would sit there, a short squat in the middle of the old codgers, and enjoy a bottle of Nu-Grape and a package of salted peanuts. I was likely the only little girl to frequent the place.
These days, downtown Macon is dying, really. Like so many small, rural towns, the storefronts are mostly vacant, and the road signs are more a memory of a place at the crossroads. Many of the quaint druggists and dress shops are replaced by quick cash exchanges and a few offices. The state re-routed Highway 45 to by-pass downtown several decades ago, “progress” that created a nice four-lane road, attracting fewer and fewer travelers through town. Dollar stores, a few fast food chains, new businesses and even a motel have cropped up over the years on the “bypass” while many of the local shops and restaurants along Jefferson Street have disappeared. Senter’s is still there, offering furniture and hardware in the same location since 1913. Weathering the changes to a small Mississippi town for over a hundred years is something. And Mimi’s, the dress shop. Tem’s, an independent grocery store, has expanded, and I think the laundromat is still in the same place. A couple of other small gift shops and florists punctuate the few blocks of downtown, and in my mind, they’re mixed in a jumble of new merchandise and what used to be. And having never actually lived in Macon, forever entwined in those childhood memories of Saturday mornings visiting my grandparents.
So, I wandered on the Saturday before Easter, stopping here and there around several blocks to capture how time has treated some of my memories. To find the painted signs and empty buildings, the letters and words I tend to seek out. And, even a few back streets I don’t think I’ve ever been on. I know I was an oddity. The girl in the mommy van with her camera. A couple of people stopped to ask if I needed help. Most just looked with curiosity. It felt unusually quiet, being a holiday weekend. A marching band played at some outdoor event a few blocks away, and a few folks in their Sunday best gathered outside one of the storefronts on Jefferson. Plenty of cars filled the old Texaco station and the discount place that replaced Bill’s Dollar Store. I know it’s an injustice not to capture the historic stores that are still busy, if not thriving. The community that still happens every day. Sadly, for me, it’s impossible to capture downtown Macon without the bittersweet memory of what’s no longer there.
Hello & welcome! I’m Haley Montgomery, and I’m the designer and owner of 
[…] my last Frog Kisser post, I shared some photos and Southern memories from a Saturday morning spent wandering around Macon, Mississippi. There’s something fun and […]