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Meridian Memorabilia

Remember this?
16 pages of thumbnail photos of the Meridian we grew up with.

Collage Attribution: Kim Fortenberry


Some more Meridian history with thumbnail photos of the Queen City

MHS Class of '58, 40th Reunion

From there — to — here was quite a trip.

If you really want an in depth examination of Meridian and her notables, go here! I use this well - researched blog frequently, looking to find out about interesting cities and towns throughout the South. It's long, but excellent.
I will still maintain the blog, Past, Present, Future, but I've returned it to its wider net. More of a magazine — as some international viewers have termed it. I invite you to look there too, of course.
Past, Present, Future

Meridian, Queen City

Meridian's Queen City Story

If you don't continue to read this blog...

I'm going to kill both of these puppies!

Meridian's Chris Ethridge - Bass Guitar

Nice tribute to a Home Boy, Chris Ethridge.

Gone: 4/23/12. Rest In Peace, Chris. Ave Atque Vale

Chris Ethridge (born 1947 in Meridian, Mississippi) is an American country rock bass guitarist.

Jacky Jack White hosted a tribute to local legend Chris Ethridge at the Sucarnochee Review on July 2, 2010 in the historic Temple Theatre, Meridian, MS. Chris’s mother attended and Chris’s brothers, Tommy and Joey, also musicians, performed with their groups.

Career

Ethridge began playing in local bands in the South before moving to California aged 17, having been spotted in Biloxi. He played with Joel Scott Hill before joining Gram Parsons in ISB. He played with Parsons after the end of ISB, and again after Parsons left The Byrds, before cofounding the Burrito Brothers with him. He played bass and piano on The Gilded Palace of Sin, but left before Burrito Deluxe. When Parsons left the Burritos, Ethridge played with him again, touring with Byron Berline, Emmylou Harris, Clarence White, Gene Parsons, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, and Roland White.Ethridge left the Burritos again in February 1976, returning to session work. He has been a session musician throughout his career, recording with many leading country-tinged acts, including Judy Collins, Johnny Winter, Ry Cooder, Leon Russell, Randy Newman, Linda Ronstadt,The Byrds and Jackson Browne. He also toured with Willie Nelson's band for almost eight years and later played with the Kudzu Kings.

With the Flying Burrito Brothers. Chris is at the far right. Click on.

Elvis was generous.

Some said to a fault.

Click on:

Eudora Welty- also a photographer.

Before she was a writer she was a photographer.
Photos are titled: "Sunday Morning" and "Underwear".





More of her work shown here.

We all know this.

FYI

Meridian's own, Paul Davis.

1966 or '67 (?)

April 1948 – April 2008 R.I.P.




Singer/songwriter Paul Davis, who had a hit with the 1977 song “I Go Crazy” died in Meridian, MS. on April 22, 2008.

According to his cousin, James Edwards, Davis died of a heart attack at Rush Foundation Hospital. Edwards said Davis had come back to the city he grew up in to retire, after living in New York and Nashville.

Davis also had hits with "A Little Bit Of Soap", "65 Love Affair", "Sweet Life" and “Ride ‘Em Cowboy.”

May be from the South...

Lake Okeechobee, Fl- Fishing w/Son.

Photos: #1 At dawn, #2 9lbs.10oz, #3 Snowy Egrets

Nelva Court & Restaurant

Click on to enlarge.

Above Nelva photos attribution:

Ginger Brook @deepfriedkudzu.com

"Copyright, DeepFriedKudzu.com.

Used with permission."

There is little or no information about many of our old places. The Meridian Star is provides very little help. I had to dig to pick up these diary entries from a dead lady.

This diary is now the property of Ohio State University.


A LIFE REVEALED:

THE DIARY OF GLADYS BOLON COOPER

(1939-1989) 345 pages. This is from Volume IV

JANUARY 1,1967 to DECEMBER 31,1975

Page 14

THURSDAY, MARCH 23,1967 Left motel (after breakfast there) at ten 'till seven. Weather like summer, redbuds in bloom. Ate lunch roadside table. I drove 55 miles. Country not very interesting. Drove to Meridan, Mississippi. Stayed at Nelva Hotel, where we stayed last November. $8.50 after Charles told her what AAA listed. She had charged us $9.00. Had dinner at Nelva Restaurant. $1.60.

Page 77

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1968 Beautiful day. We had breakfast at Ackleys. Margaret packed us a lunch. Left at ten of eight. Got mixed up and drove about 10 miles out of our way. Bought rolls at Birmingham and ate lunch in the parking lot there. I drove 43 miles. Got to Meridian. Motel, Nelva at 4:30. $9.00 and tax. Had been warm driving but heater in motel felt good. Had a good chicken dinner at the Nelva Restaurant! $1.50. $2.36 total.

Steve Forbert, another Favorite Son

Steve has had a long and successful career as a singer/song writer.

He is best known for his song "Romeo's Tune", which reached #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1980.

An autobiographical song (below) about his New York City experiences upon moving there in 1976 at the age of 21.


An excellent Bio


Steve Forbert's website

More of Martha Ann's Art

I really appreciate classmate Martha Ann's paintings and sculptures

"One Wire,"
My piece chosen for the exhibition "Bare Essentials: Minimalism in the 21st Century" at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL, Nov. 4 - Dec. 22, 2011. Note that though it shows masculine austerity and uses industrial materials, it also has expression shown through the history of other movements of the wire. The addition of expression is a quality I expect to see in many if not all of the works in this upcoming show.

Click on for the exhibition, including Martha Ann's work below, at the Woman Made Gallery running from 11/04/11 to 12/22/11.

"One Wire," 12" x 12" x 2, Canvas on Board painted with Rabbit Skin Glue, Wire, and Tacks. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Changes Will Have Occurred

One Hundred Things Kids of Today Will Never know About.

Rayner's Drug Store

From the Meridian Star – edited for length.

July 30, 2006

Rayner Drugs owner finishes a chapter

By Georgia E. Frye / staff writer

In 1947, Ben Quintana moved to Meridian to work as a pharmacist at Rayner Drugs on Front Street. The McComb native bought the store in the early 1970s. Since then, he and his wife, Sarah, have run the business.

Quintana remembers when high school boys on bicycles used to deliver medicines each day, and he remembers giving discounts to his regular customers.

But those days are coming to an end. Rayner Drugs plans to close its doors on Monday after more than 80 years in downtown Meridian.

The 84-year-old said he tried to keep the business open, but no one was interested in buying it. He said large discount stores are making it harder for independent pharmacies to keep up, and he believes the days of independent pharmacies are numbered.

“A lot of my older customers have died off and I haven’t been able to replace them because of the discount stores,” Quintana said. “Big corporations are able to buy drugs cheaper than an independent pharmacy.”

Products in the gift section of Rayner Drugs, which was managed by Mrs. Quintana until recently, are on sale. They include gifts such as 1st Edition Cabbage Patch Dolls, other collectible dolls, decorative fans, greeting cards and gifts.

I never see photos of what was, but is no more, without this song forming in my mind. A lot of truth in it... for lots of folks.

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mscw

(excerpted from the Washington Times)

Hollywood’s Mississippi remains a brutal backwater.

No matter how state changes, images of bigotry, violence, ignorance endure Mississippi stereotypes persist.

If, as Michael Medved contends, Hollywood hates America, then it really, really hates Mississippi.

A long line of films — from “In the Heat of the Night” to “Mississippi Burning” and “A Time to Kill” — have cemented the state’s image in American culture as a brutal, benighted backwater teeming with violent bigots.

A steady stream, decade after decade, of screen images of hooded Klansmen, burning crosses and Yankee actors butchering Southern drawls while drenched in sweat have overwhelmed the occasional scenes of remarkably ordinary contemporary life that visitors to the state are far more likely to witness.

On Friday, Hollywood extends its rich tradition of Mississippi-bashing with the national release of “Straw Dogs,” director Rod Lurie’s remake of auteur Sam Peckinpah’s controversial 1971 thriller about a nonviolent academic interloper pushed into violence by the invasion of his home by resentful locals.

While the Peckinpah original was, like the novel upon which it was based, set in rural England, Mr. Lurie has transplanted the story to southern Mississippi, where bullying Deep South rednecks conveniently step in for the resentful British working-class barbarians who torment Dustin Hoffman as David Sumner, a privileged outsider.

Current hit “The Help,” starring Viola Davis, gives a more balanced view of the state, with sympathetic characters both black and white. (Disney via Associated Press)
Mr. Lurie, credited as a co-writer as well as director of the remake — shot in Louisiana, standing in for Mississippi — told the Miami Herald that he chose the setting to “plant these characters in a community where the lifestyle is violence.”

There is no denying or defending Mississippi’s role as a bastion of resistance to racial integration and equality during the civil rights era. But in addition to being a historical signifier, it also happens to be an actual — you know — place, where actual people continue to live and work. But in the imagination of Hollywood, Mississippi has long since ceased to be a place and become instead a facile metaphor for violent racial bigotry and hostility to outsiders.

“If you look historically at films, even if there’s a sort of ‘My Dog Skip’ story set in Mississippi with a sentimental vibe, Mississippi tends to function as the worst of the South concentrated,” said Ted Atkinson, an assistant professor of English at Mississippi State University who is working on a book about the state’s representation in American culture.

There are exceptions, of course, to the prevailing stereotype. The current hit “The Help,” a civil rights drama set in the state, presents a view of Mississippi that includes sympathetic characters — both black and white — with commendable morals and motives alongside the grim realities of segregation and racial prejudice. Another example of a positive mainstream portrayal is “The Blind Side,” the 2009 box-office smash that stars Sandra Bullock as a wealthy Mississippi woman whose family takes in a black football prodigy.

For all its faults, Mississippi has an incredibly rich artistic history whose lasting effects on American culture have been partly obscured by the inescapable stereotype. It’s the birthplace of artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Robert Johnson, the homeland of William Faulkner, often considered the 20th century’s greatest novelist, and Eudora Welty. The small towns and dirt roads often portrayed on-screen are overshadowed by towns such as Oxford, where portraits of Faulkner hang in fast-food restaurants, and the capital, Jackson, host to the USA International Ballet Competition.

Melanie Addington, a director of the Oxford Film Festival, said she has seen firsthand how negative depictions of Mississippi have conditioned visitors to expect the worst. “Every year I have filmmakers that nervously arrive for the festival expecting to be thrust into a scene from ‘Mississippi Burning.’ They are always pleasantly surprised that instead Oxford is an artsy little town with people from all over the world making it home.”

“The idea of Mississippi has functioned in the American imagination as a kind of holding bin for negative things about the nation,” said Kathryn McKee, an associate professor of Southern studies at the University of Mississippi, about the persistently unflattering film portrayals.

“Mississippi just has that cultural baggage and stigma,” Ms. Atkinson said. “It just keeps perpetuating because these Hollywood representations tend to follow that heritage and continue that narrative. It just becomes hard to overcome that.”

With every major film that recycles the familiar images of rampant poverty, ignorance and pointless violence, of course, the popular stereotype is reinforced. Ultimately, it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy, scaring away potential investment and tourism from the actual Mississippi — black and white, rich and poor — deepening the isolation and depressing the economy of a state that already ranks near the bottom as measured by most key social and economic indicators.

Coop Cooper, a Mississippi-based film critic who runs the website Small Town Critic, argues that despite decades of progress in the state, some would be content to see Mississippi remain as it is in the cultural eye. “Things are changing for the better,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of people, including folks from Hollywood, would like to keep that from happening. They need to have some sort of state to lay these stigmas upon, and Mississippi is easier than most.”

Davis Grill Menu – 1950. And interior from???

Click on for larger readable text.

"Bastard Blue" by Murray Dunlap

Over the last year I discovered a friend. I also discovered a writer whose stories soar. I'm referring to Murray Dunlap. The stories he has pulled together in his newest book of stories, "Bastard Blue", had me reading many over several times. They are that good. Most of them are themed from his experiences growing up in south Alabama, but they are not simply regional. They cast a much wider net than that and the texture of the lives he writes about are palpably universal.

"Bastard Blue" is available at Amazon– in both hard copy and the Kindle edition – and bookstores everywhere.

What those who know are saying:

High Praise...
“Forged with a poet’s attention to cadence and rhythm, a storyteller’s devotion to character, and tension that just keeps ratcheting up, Bastard Blue is finally a love story, between a young man and the place that made him, the southern culture that proves to be both a blessing and a curse. Murray Dunlap is a brave writer, and an honest one; the lives he portrays here are as heart-stoppingly authentic as his prose is dazzlingly beautiful. He serves up everything I want in a story: compassion, humor, substance and style.”
Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness

"Yes, Bastard Blue is a first book but there’s more than promise on display within its pages. This collection introduces us to a fully realized talent. Murray Dunlap’s voice is confident, his characters richly drawn, his sense of place as vivid as you will find in fiction. Sentence for sentence his prose is crisp and direct, edged somehow with both menace and hope. He has a knack for creeping up to sentiment in his stories without crossing the line, leaving only genuine, well-earned emotion on the page. This book is so fine somebody should offer a money back guarantee."
-Michael Knight, author of The Typist

"If possible, read Murray Dunlap’s Bastard Blue in a Louis XV style chair, near a subtle fire, or in an Adirondack chair, between peach and dogwood trees. Reading his stories is about as close to having a storyteller there—present, in the room--as I know. This collection is full of heart, mischief, and sly winks. What a grand triumph."

-George Singleton, author of The Half-Mammals of Dixie

Murray's recent history is a tribute to his courage, tenacity and strength.

Murray on Murray: I was very nearly killed on 6-7-08 in a car wreck, so I'm trying very hard to put my life back together. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a complex injury with a broad spectrum of symptoms and disabilities. The impact on a person and his or her family can be devastating. And my memory-loss has to be the most frustrating component of this entire disaster. It is as if I woke up from a dream of a life to a nightmare of a reality. But, as we all do, I keep focused and build a new life.

Murray Dunlap's work has appeared in about thirty magazines and journals. His stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as to Best New American Voices, and his first book, "Alabama," was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction.

Miner Saw, Inc

New Yorker Cartoon

Graham Transfer & Storage

Graham Transfer & Storage Co.

2108 A St Meridian, MS 39301

Began business in 1932

Camp Binachi

I well remember scout camp. There were Troops 2 and 6 – maybe others too – there each summer sitting around the campfire, the Tenderfoots, pretending not to be afraid the first time they were were told the legend of the evil "mossback"

Click on to Read more

The Times Sure Are A-Changin'

June 12, 2011
Bob missed his chance to free China
By Steve Gillespie / Managing Editor
The Meridian Star

MERIDIAN — I doubt that anyone has ever been labeled a sellout as much as Bob Dylan. It's the price living icons pay if they survive their youth.

Folk fans denounced him when his sound turned to rock. Rock fans denounced him when his rock turned country, some fans lost interest when he went gospel, or when they considered him old, or when he did that creepy Victoria's Secret commercial ... maybe the word "fan" isn't the correct word. Let's call them people who can't handle change.

Just before Dylan's 70th birthday, May 24, there was a firestorm of whiny media types — who can't handle change — that ridiculed him for going to China and supposedly allowing the communist government to censor his set list.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote an idiotic column about him and his first concert he performed in China in April.

She slammed him for allowing the set list to be censored, and for not singing revolutionary-type protest songs, namely "Hurricane," the song Dylan wrote about the wrongful imprisonment of boxer Reuben "Hurricane" Carter.

Dylan last performed that song live in Houston, Texas, Jan. 25, 1976.

She thinks he should have done "Masters of War," "Blowin' In The Wind," and "The Times They Are A-Changin'." And then what? I don't know. Oddly enough the set lists, which according to Dylan were not censored by Chinese authorities, included several songs filled with social comment, and "protests" if that's the word Maureen likes best. I don't think she realized this 'cause she's not a fan.

Here's the songs he performed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong: Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking; It's All Over Now, Baby Blue ; Beyond Here Lies Nothin'; Tangled Up In Blue; Honest With Me; Simple Twist Of Fate; Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum; Love Sick; Rollin' And Tumblin'; A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall; Highway 61 Revisited; Spirit On The Water; Thunder On The Mountain; Ballad Of A Thin Man; Like A Rolling Stone; All Along The Watchtower; Forever Young; Don't Think Twice, It's All Right; Things Have Changed; Blind Willie McTell; The Levee's Gonna Break; Desolation Row; It Ain't Me Babe; High Water (For Charley Patton); Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power); Jolene; My Wife's Home Town; Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues; and If You Ever Go To Houston.

The songs on those set lists were essentially the same as those he played in Australia later that month, and there was no censorship there either.

Last month Dylan did an unusual thing by posting a message online at www.bobdylan.com, addressed to his fans and followers. He said he was never denied permission to play in China a year ago, and that that previous story was dreamed up by a promoter before Dylan agreed to come to China. He said that on this trip he sold 12,000 out of 13,000 tickets, and the tickets that weren't sold were given to orphanages, which counters reports that there were lots of empty seats at his concerts. Also it was mostly young people at his shows, and he kind of doubted they would know some of the stuff he was doing 50 years ago.

"As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing," Dylan wrote. "There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play."

In her column Dowd uses excerpts from interviews and Dylan's own book to explain that he never wanted to be the keeper of social consciousness for his generation, even though he's been labeled like that, yet she acts as if he should have played that role. Then she tersely wraps up her column to say he "sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left."

Dylan ended his message with classic wit, taking a shot at those who try to make a buck off of him even though they really know nothing about him: "Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them."

Those Dylan "fans" who can't handle change don't go see Bob Dylan as much anymore, and they shouldn't. They don't like that he sounds and looks different, or that he never does a song the same way twice. If you want to see Bob Dylan he has concerts scheduled in New Orleans July 26, Pensacola July 27, Atlanta July 28 and Memphis July 30. You can find tickets at www.ticketmaster.com. If you expect anything, you will be disappointed. If you appreciate artists who love what they do, never quit, and never stop changing — you know, "sellouts" — you'll have a good time.

Meridian's Own – Jimmie Rodgers

Bay Towne Marina - SanDestin, Florida

We enjoy our place here in the fall, winter and spring. Summer is for vacationers... and it's hot... and the fishing is slow. So, I stay away. This was taken on a cool November afternoon. Click on:

Classmate, Marty Davidson.

Another reason we should be proud to know him.

Meridian Star

April 22, 2011
Marty Davidson to receive Ellis Island Medal of Honor

By Jennifer Jacob Brown / jbrown@themeridianstar.com
The Meridian Star

MERIDIAN — Meridianite Marty Davidson is slated to receive the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, a national award sponsored by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, in New York on May 7.
Davidson is the chairman and owner of Southern Pipe and Supply Company.

According to the NECO Web site, the award is designed to, "pay homage to the immigrant experience," as well as individual achievement.

"The honorees are remarkable Americans who exemplify outstanding qualities in both their personal and professional lives, while continuing to preserve the richness of their particular heritage," the Web site reads. "We honor them because they create a better world of all of us in the future by the work of today."

Davidson will represent the immigrant experience through his Jewish and Russian heritage.

Notable past honorees include Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Gen. Colin Powell, Sen. John McCain, Attorney Gen. Janet Reno, Rosa Parks, Elie Wiesel, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Joe Dimaggio, Yogi Berra, Muhammad Ali, Walter Cronkite, Quincy Jones and many others.

Davidson will be the second Mississippian to receive the award. The award will be given during a ceremony on Ellis Island. Ellis Island was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States from 1892 to 1954.

Marty Davidson's family first settled in America in the early 1900's when his grandfather, Russian-born Louis Davidson, immigrated. Louis Davidson started the company that would become Southern Pipe and Supply, a plumbing supply company that is now in its 72nd year of operation and its fourth generation of family management.

Louis Davidson started a junk company in Meridian called St. Louis Junk Company. The company started selling bathtubs, and in 1938, Louis Davidson opened Southern Pipe and Supply with his sons Sammie and Meyer.

Marty Davidson, the son of Meyer Davidson, started working at Southern Pipe when he was five years old and continued working summers until he left for college. He began working for the company full-time in 1962. In 1968, he purchased the company from his father.

In that same year, Klu Klux Klan members bombed the home of Meyer Davidson because of his public stance against the bombing of synagogues and churches in Mississippi.

Forty-eight years later, Southern Pipe and Supply has grown from four branches in three states to 93 branches in seven states. In 2010, it was ranked as the seventh largest distributor of plumbing supplies in the United States and the second largest regional distributor by Supply House Times.

Davidson's son, Jay, is now the president of the company.

NECO feels that the story of Southern Pipe exemplifies the type of immigrant story that could only happen in the United States, where an immigrant's journey from Russia evolved into a family company the size of Southern Pipe and Supply.

Davidson has previously been awarded the local Hartley D. Peavey Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence, Neville Humanitarian Award, and Meridian Star Citizen of the Year Award, and is honored in the Mississippi Business Hall of Fame.

Imperial Cleaners & Laundry

1328-24th ave

History:

Established in 1944

same location for over 68 years

"We clean your garments

not

your

pockets.