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Oxford Alabama Centennial Celebration! |
Once upon a time Oxford
Alabama had a Centennial
Celebration which is to say that Oxford was 100 years old at
the time. The theme was pioneer days and all the guys,
anyway, grew beards. I don't know what the women did...Maybe
they cooked corn pone every day. See, that's the mystery of
the whole thing. I was a really young fellow at the time, So
I don't know any details.
That is a picture of me on the right with my dad. I
wasn't able to grow a beard at the time, but if you look
closely, you'll see an effluvious growth of face fuzz on my
father. I think he was very happy to get rid of it after the
Centennial was over, but being a patriot, he did his part.
Super contributor, and armchair historian Terry McFall
delivered a stunning photo to the GetCalhoun.com compound
the other day. It's a significant photo of the festivities
going on at the time. By the way, the memory I do have of it
is that everyone in Oxford took it fairly seriously and had
all the fun.
To further demonstrate my utter lack of information,
not only do I not know where the photo was taken, or who
most of the folks in the photo are...I don't even know the
exact date. I'm guessing from my size in the picture
above...maybe 1958.
Since the celebration was not a
secret, and actually a very popular thing, and since folks
are still around who do remember it quite well, I'm
going to be in hopes that some of them will find their way
here and write to GetCalhoun.com with the details. Who,
what, when, where, and do you recognize any of the folks in
Terry's photo? Write to
GC here with your recollections....
Here is what we know so far...
On the far left, the little fellow on the end who is smiling
is none other than Terry McFall. His mom allowed that he
sang, though he doesn't remember it...probably a church song
like "How Great Thou Art." Americans could still do that in
public in those days.
On the far right, the last fellow is Julius McFall, and
the person, third from that end in the bonnet is actually
Terry's dad, JC McFall, wearing his great granny's dress and
a bonnet. They were singing Blue Grass music, which, oddly
enough, at the time was less widely known and appreciated
than it is now. It would have been seen as "sho nuff
countryfried." Rage on chilluns!
The marvelous thing about this
historical photo peeky poo window into the past is that at
the time, everything was contemporary and real modern. At
the time of this writing we're talking 40 years
ago...Practically the stone age. Marshall Dillion and Wyatt
Earp. History is FUN! |
