Friday, October 17, 2008

Baldwyn Businesses - Tapp's Grocery


Left, Mutt Tapp, center, Jimmy Tapp, and an unknown person. This photo was made at their grocery store at the SW corner of Main and Third Street about 1952.

The product they are holding, Wonder Bread, came to Baldwyn about that time. It was advertised to "build strong bodies 7(or 12) ways" or something like that. They put on a marketing blitz of great proportions; at school they passed out a package of 2 slices to all in school, and went door-to-door giving the samples to housewives with a coupon good for a discount of the already low price of about 7 cents per loaf versus the 9 or 10 cents for Hardin's (made in Tupelo).

It finally caught on and started selling. Looking at the picture, the Tapps were coerced into pushing it as much as possible. Also employed by the store was Bernis Tapp. The store moved from near the Ritz theater to the corner maybe in 1950 . Prior to that, Jack Waters and Carl Davis had an automobile repair shop there. Bill Parton consequently bought it and ran it for some time in the '40s. Later, Parton took on a new partner, James ??? Morgan??? and moved to his home area close to Bingham's Service Station.

The store closed in the 60s and Thomas and Doris Gentry opened a flower shop there.

(Update: The fellow on the right is Mr. Nanney, father of Cecil and Grady.)
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Photo from the Marie Evans collection courtesy of Clarene Evans

9 comments:

  1. What's Mary Katherine doing at the Methodist Church? It has to be some kind of mistake.

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  2. Although the Lindley's were Baptist and attended the First Baptist Church, I think they were living directly across the street from the Methodist church. At least that is where I went to GA meetings when her mother was our GA leader and G.A.'s(Girls Axillary) is a Baptist organization. (and I'm not so sure that's not the Baptist Church. It sure looks like the old parsonage in the background.)

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  3. Where did those huge rocks come from? Looks as if the water has scoured out 20 mile really deep and uncovered them I dont remember them being there when we hunted for shark teeth there.

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  4. Anon, this is not the Baptist church, what was I thinking. It faced north Third Street instead of Main like the church....duhhhhhh...I wrote that before coffee..

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  5. Clarene, you're on the right track.
    Mary K. had dressed for a piano recital and we wanted a photo of her. But my camera didn't have a flash, which necessitated making the photo outdoors. I made many photos with the Methodist Church as my backdrop.

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  6. Carl,

    Great picture of Twenty Mile Creek. As you may know this is a very interesting archaeological site. For details go to google and type in Twenty Mile Creek, Frankstown,MS. Like so many others, I, too, found a number of sharks teeth in the banks of the creek. Little did I realize they were over 70 million years old.

    Could you send me a copy of the picture via email?

    Henry

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  7. Henry,

    I remember the times we swam at "Blue Marr" -- I would take some time and walk up on the "hard pan" and find small washed out pockets, each time I would scoop out the gravel, I would find shark teeth, they were black, some small, many quite large -- maybe quarter size, at one time I had a shoe box half full, wish I knew what I did with them------

    John Melvin

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  8. E/mail from Billy Bob Lampkin:

    The third person in the Tapp photo
    is Mr. Nanney. They lived between
    Archie Frost and John McCay,
    across from Will McElroy.

    Thanks much, BB!

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  9. Professional quality photo! Carl, I wouls also appreciate a copy by email. Since I grew up on Hwy 30, a couple of miles from Frankstown, I know this location well. I don't recall the boulders either. Some of the local churches used the creek on the other side of the bridge for baptismals.
    DG

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