No place like home...

Kudos to the local Rotary Club for their latest fundraising event, a revival of The Gong Show. The club's annual auction was a victim of the ice storm. And won't we be referencing a lot of things to the ice storm as we go forward?

We're not sure who came up with the idea, but Rotarian Leah Mobley is given credit for running the show, although I suspect she will give credit to a lot of folks. According to at least one source, Danny Ray outdid himself as the Bootheel's version of Chuck Barris, creator and host of the televised version of the show.

The club's district governor, I believe he's from Overland, also sent along a congratulatory note. By all accounts it was a success.

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Home again

After noting that Judge Mike Mowrer and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Chris Carpenter, were back off the disabled list in last week's column I got an email from him. Mike, not Chris, just in case you were thinking otherwise.

Mike wrote, "A person that complains or tires of living in Dunklin County needs to stay in Memphis for about 3 weeks.

"On May 5, 2009 I wanted to kiss the 412 center stripe as it entered Kennett. My children said: 'No.'"

So, it's fair to say that he's glad to be home. Isn't it funny how being away for a while makes you appreciate this place a little more?

He suggested that Carpenter's return to the mound was a little more impressive than his own return to Kennett.

"...but we are in different pay grades," he wrote.

Well let's hope Carpenter continues on the way he's been pitching. Maybe he'll have a good year and can get his contract re-negotiated.

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Pistol shots...

"It was a rather murky sort of cold evening when this drummer came to Kennett for the first time, and when he unloaded his sample cases on the Frisco dock he asked the first person to walk by, 'Where can you get a hotel room.'

"The fellow shuffling towards the square that was lighted by the dim glow of the Star Theatre lights gave all of the information the drummer needed. 'You can stay at the Decker, but it is all full up tonight or you can go down to the Slicer or the Wyman and if you ain't so dern fancy you can go to the Cottage right here across the tracks and there is always the Yeller Dog.'

'After being installed in his bowl and pitcher suite that included a mattress that should have been used as a backboard for archery practice, the gentleman goes across the street to Allison's Café for his evening groceries (where Striegel now peddles transportation). He takes a gander at Nazimova and straggles back across the tracks, grumbling about why he ever came to this hole in the first place.

"He settles in just as comfortably as the bottom of a foxhole in Korea and dozes off for a minute before he heard the shots. There are about 10 of them. Next thing he knows the fire whistle blows (used for summoning the cops in those days) and he is asked to please help carry the bodies out to the hearse.

"Those days were so hectic that in spite of nothing to do, there was something going on all of the time. We will guarantee you that when the salesman left Dunklin County he never forgot it.

"In those days the hotels naturally made locations close to the railroad which was the only transportation and there were a lot of them offering accommodations all the way up and down the scale. The competition got tough enough that it was a regular Wednesday spectacle (ordinary time when drummers came in) to watch the boys hustling bags get into a fight over customers.

"They met every train and 'Take your bags, Mister,' was a familiar sound in tenor and bass.

"The Decker Hotel has been the only one that has survived those days and the New Cotton Boll Hotel took a forte in location. It is open now for a different kind of traffic and all of those beautiful accoutrements (pardon the English) can never be as colorful as those pistol-packing days when the good old 'Cottage' was just about in the same spot."

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Whit Thrower

Thanks to the DDD's unofficial, but much appreciated, historian Vivian Helton for sending that along from the Tuesday, Feb. 26, 1952 edition of the newspaper.

I'm not sure what period of time Mr. Thrower was writing about, but it sure sounds like a different place than where we live now, and I'm not just talking about all of the downtown hotels.

From his description I can't be sure which hotel the "drummer" mentioned in the story ended up staying in during his visit. On the one hand I thought it might be the Decker, but then from the description of the mattress it sounded more like the Cottage. Any of you that might venture a guess please feel free to call me and tell me why you think it was one or the other.

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Is it just me or does the weather seem like its running about a month behind schedule? Blame that on the ice storm as well.

Bud Hunt is Publisher of the Daily Dunklin Democrat.