Articles have recalled memories for many readers. I’d like to share a few more this week.
• Andy Gardner remembers hanging out in back of the Mag on Friday and Saturday nights in the 1960s. Also, in 1969, Watt Germany let him and Buddy Gardner use the grease rack at the new Phillips 66 station to work on their own vehicles, Andy’s being a 1955 Chevy that he had “built” in the summer of ’68.
• Norman Yates recalls that Temple Smith had a tractor business in the Pure station on Bank Street. He then moved to the Breland’s Building Supply area before building on the bypass where T-Bones is located now. He eventually bought the Horton Cleaners building.
•Jim Brooks’ mother Lona Brooks worked in Gilbert Banks’ café in 1942 when it was located below the Union Appeal office.
• Rebecca Adkins reports that there was a temporary training area upstairs in the Masonic Hall for teaching ladies to use sewing machines, preparing them to work at Lebanon Shirt Factory.
• Malone Nicholson remembers miscellaneous uses of the area now known as Park Street. Carnivals and circuses set up there, and the UHS track team trained there in the 1940s. It was even used as an air strip. One day he witnessed a plane take off, the engine stop, and the plane go down beyond the trees on North Street.
• Another young boy who witnessed this same airplane crash was Allen Carlson. He recalled, “A couple of men in town had a real interest in learning how to fly. Evidently, they received some training and were seen in a plane from time to time. One afternoon, I was standing near my bedroom window when I heard a loud noise. When I looked, I saw a yellow plane falling out of the top of the big oak tree in front of Mrs. Addy’s house on North Street. It nose-dived into the relatively small yard between the south end of the Addy house and Dr. Calvert’s house next door.
Wires were broken, sparks were flying, and I thought any minute the plane was going to burst into flames and consume those two men while I stood there transfixed by the horror of it all. But it didn’t happen. Within a few minutes, the men were extracted from the plane and taken to Laird’s Hospital. Shortly after that, perhaps the next day, the whole mess was cleaned up, and life on North Street returned to normal.”
• Andy Gardner remembers seeing Sen. John Stennis at the home of B.J. Milling on occasional mornings when he was on his parents’ milk route. Sen. Stennis was Milling’s brother-in-law.
• Fred Allen Barfoot recalls that Gibb Banks would receive a pickup load of seafood from the Gulf Coast on Saturdays to have the freshest seafood for a big Saturday night dinner crowd at his Banks’ Café beside the Appeal office. Patrons could eat at the café or buy gallon buckets of shrimp and oysters to prepare at home.
• Fred Allen also remembers Mrs. Blalock at Post Office Cafe being famous for her homemade pies.
• Virginia Jones Kilpatrick gives additional information on the different locations of Leon White’s White Auto Co. Her father Ross Jones worked for Leon White as a bookkeeper at his dealership on Bank Street while they were building the new building on Jackson Road. In addition to his Union business, White opened a Pontiac and GMC truck dealership in Philadelphia, and Jones moved his family there. He later moved back to Union and worked at White Auto Co. on Jackson Road.
The family lived on Decatur Street next door to Rush Turner. At that time, Turner bought war surplus jeeps, ambulances, and trucks, parking them behind his house until he could sell them. Jones also worked at the White Auto Co. dealership in Decatur. White opened that third one in Decatur after selling the Union business to John Lee.
• Virginia also remembers going to Sessums Hotel when Olan Mills Photography from Philadelphia set up there.
• Barbara Roebuck recalls when Mr. Jim Buntyn had a cement goldfish pond between the front porch and the driveway of his Union Ice House on W. Walnut Street. Mr. Ray Hollingsworth, who was a friend of her dad, worked there. On Saturday afternoons, their family would come to town and stop to buy ice on the way home. Every week, she looked forward to watching the big goldfish swim about in the pool while the men visited. Her family lived down the Conehatta Road opposite the Stratton Road turnoff, and they did not have electricity until she was 15. Her mother would wrap the block of ice in a sheet and put it in the top of the ice box.
• Benny Ware’s father Odie bought the ice plant from Mr. Buntyn and kept the goldfish pond stocked with large goldfish, along with lily pads, for the enjoyment of his customers.
• Norman Carlson, UHS class of 1949, worked at the soda fountain at Alexander’s Pharmacy during his high school years.
• Dave Warren, Becky Branning’s father, drove a truck for L.L. Majure after he moved to Meridian. He parked the truck at Carleton Oil when he made trips back to Union.
Here is this week’s question:
•Do you know who was the pilot of this airplane that cracked on North Street or of other plane crashes around Union?
If you have memories, contact me at teresablount26@yahoo.com or 601-774-5564 or 109 Woodhaven Dr., Union 39365.
