Celebrating 125 Years!

The little town I live in celebrated its 125th birthday on December 7th. There were all kinds of activities going on around town the week before.

The Colonel and I helped to hang a timeline of the city's history in one of the downtown buildings. The timeline was visited by many people and was featured in the local paper.

 A luncheon and dinner were held too. The Colonel, his parents and I attended the luncheon. The food had a southern flair: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, rolls and for dessert, banana pudding.

As we were eating our lunches, a 25 year-old time capsule was opened.

Below is a picture of some of the items that people thought were important enough to put in the time capsule back in 1987. Someone had put in a roll of toilet paper with a note saying, I don't know what you use now, but this is what we used. I hardly think cleaning the human backside would/could have changed all that much in 25 years. Notice the Big Gulp cup...someone knew back in 1987 that a Big Gulp would be an endangered species in some parts of the country now.

There was also entertainment. A local choir group sang some Christmas carols. They were pretty good.

On the day of the actual birthday celebration, several activities were planned and they would begin around 7 p.m.

There was one activity that The Colonel and I visited that was not part of the birthday celebration activities. Since it was December 7th and the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, one of the local cemeteries was having a memorial service with over 2,000 luminaries spread throughout the grounds. We did not watch the memorial service; we walked around, appreciating all of the luminaries.

As we walked around I spied a statue of St. Matthew. As I got closer to the statue I began to laugh and called The Colonel to me. St. Matthew had some Spanish moss growing out of his nose.

I picked St. Matthew's nose and freed it from the epiphyte. Now he could breathe easier.

We headed into town for the birthday festivities. There was Christmas music, birthday cake (enough to feed 2,000), lighting of the town's Christmas tree (32-foot tall with 9,000 lights), a parade with the local high school band and Santa and the Mrs. in a fire truck...and snow (bubbles)!

This is Bob "Fig" Newton. He was instrumental in getting the town's Christmas tree last year. He campaigned and raised the $33,000 to purchase the tree. It is the same kind of tree that can be found at Disney World, Sea World and Universal Studios.

Santa and Mrs. Claus exited the fire truck at another one of our town's pretty Christmas trees.

The Colonel and I enjoyed our evening...we love our little town.