Thought you might enjoy seeing this photo - another and wider view of the old Stocks home and Waters funeral home. This is made in the Prather home East lawn across the street from the "shirt factory". Remember the huge Weeping Willow trees in their yard?This evidently is one of those trees when very young. Bertha Faye Stephenson stands by it and it appears to be less than 6 feet tall. This may be around 1940, hard to determine the year.
Photo by Curley Copeland. Submitted by Milton Copeland.
Click to enlarge.
GREAT PHOTO! I REMEMBER BERTHA FAY WELL.
ReplyDeleteThose willow trees were beautiful, and as well as I remember they were about the only ones in town back then.
ReplyDeleteNo one was allowed to walk on the Prather yard. The only no trespassing signs in town were in their yard.
ReplyDeleteCan someone identify Bertha Fay Stephenson? I don't remember her.
ReplyDeleteThank you Milton.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up next door to the Prather's was almost like growing up next door to the "Secret Garden". The 'renter's grandchildren' (us) were not allowed on the property at all. My grandfather Gookie kept his side of the tall hedge trimmed neatly and one summer Forest Allen (Prather's granddaughter)wanted me and Coleman to come over and play with her but since we didn't have access, the three of us pulled away enough of the privy hedge limbs to create a small hole in the hedge just large enough for me and my little brother to climb through. When we reached the other side there stood Forest Allen in a white 'Sunday dress' complete with a huge hair bow. She was ready to get down and get dirty with us and play with our little cowboys and Indians in the dirt but our play was stopped abruptly by a shrill cry from her grandmother and we were promptly escorted back to our side by Miss Vera. My grandfather got a scolding from her and was told that her granddaughter was not allowed to play with us and we were to be kept on OUR side of the hedge from then on. I got a paddling from Gookie for leading my little brother on a safari to no man's land. I can almost feel the sting of that little keen china-berry limb on my legs still today. So much for the no-trespassing sign. I was too young to read but old enough to remember. I never went there again. My mother however, was good friends with Miss Coy Prather and visited in her home many times. We even had a lamp in our home that was given to my mother by her. She saw mother walking home from work one night in the dark and came out and said she would leave a light on for her from then on and she did. It was that lamp. The base of the lamp looked like a Chinese ming tree and the shade looked like the roof on a pagoda. It was red silk. Miss Coy left it to Mother when she died.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this picture. Was the house in the foreground the one where A.T. Stocks and Luna Bonds Stocks lived? Where did Thomas Guilford Stocks and Mollie Charles live? Does anyone know anymore about this family. They were my grandparents and great grandparents, but we grew up mostly in the Baltimore/Washington area, so, although we returned to Baldwyn for visits now and then, I missed out on a lot of the history. A.T.Stocks and Martha Jean Grisham Stocks were my parents.
ReplyDeleteDeb, not sure which Stocks lived in that house but it could have been A.T. & Luna. My grandparents lived there in the late thirties and early forties. A.T. died in 1933.
ReplyDeleteSimon Spight says that there was a Stocks family that lived just west of the Methodist church on Main St. They would have been Rowdy Stocks parents
Milton,
ReplyDeleteDo you know what Rowdy's real name was? Was there a minister at that church by the last name of "Taylor"?
Debbie