This will be the last edition of the Northside Sun before Christmas. This past year has been an interesting one for sure. The year was interesting for the world and for me personally. We have witnessed several wars around the world, some make the news channels and some just grind on in some of the countries that we’ve barely heard of. Our country experienced another presidential election, hopefully we all stayed friends through that. Our state has had many great successes with the big businesses that have recognized Mississippi as a good state to do business in. It’s been handy to have the giant Amazon facility in Canton, I have ordered things that have shown up at my door later that day. I thought we’d be living like the Jetsons before that happened. I’m hopeful that all the big businesses will keep people employed at descent wages and will keep our taxes in check.
Our neck of the woods right here in the middle of the state has continued to grow and prosper while moving forward. When I read about the housing economy in the nation I have to look around here and wonder if we are an anomaly. I was born and raised right here and I am beginning to have a hard time finding my way around our area. There are huge commercial projects popping up everywhere I look. There are giant neighborhoods showing up in places that were, not too long ago, big swathes of woods or pasture land. These houses are very expensive and they all have a family living in them. Poor ole Mississippi is bucking the trends right here in this area. It’s difficult to envision what the news is showing us about the rest of the country and parts of rural Mississippi.
When you travel to some of these cities in the news you begin to see how different life is for them. Apparently life can be way more expensive than it is here, more crowded, more traffic congestion. It seems like they are paying way more to live in way less. I won’t understand that, it comes along with wild fires, flooding, hurricanes and a lack of the most important thing, water. I know for younger people it must be tempting to leave for a more progressive and happening place like Nashville or Austin or Boulder but I can’t figure out how they are surviving the high cost of living in those kinds of places. I get it, it’s more fun but everyone has to start saving money eventually. I’ve done the paycheck to paycheck thing for the sake of living in a happening place.
Like the time in 1980 when my brother and one of my sisters took off to work in Santa Cruz, California just to see what would happen. Lots happened and that trip left a forever, indelible stain on my brain. We took a job weed eating the medians between the highways around San Francisco, it didn’t matter we just wanted to be there even for $3.10 an hour. You can make that work if you rent out of town with about 10 roommates. We made it out of there alive and returned a whole lot smarter than we were before, I returned to my 11th grade year having done it. I’ve tried out living in other countries for the experience on a very tight budget, that’s not so difficult as I lived as the locals did when I could.
I have missed 4 Christmas’s for being overseas, each of them were special but I was home for 56 Christmas’s and I would take those over being somewhere else any day. I come from a large and very close family that I wouldn’t trade for anything. We get together often as we all can. Christmas is no exception, our traditions stay the same with some wriggle room for new comers whether they come in the form of new spouses, new babies or new
friends that fall in with us. I am grateful for this past year in our business life and my life at home with Mimi and for my relationships with my grown kids and their significant others. I am grateful that I call this place home where I feel so comfortable and at home. My hope is that you have had a year that you can find the bright side of. A year with some personal successes that keep some zip in your step that has made you a happy and satisfied person who has a reason to work to make the upcoming year even better for you and yours. Merry Christmas!