by Danny Tyree on September 25, 2024

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

My parents used to talk about the county's farmers streaming into town on Saturday and shopping until midnight.

From my own childhood, I still remember Petula Clark's then-new song "Downtown" blaring from the radio at my hometown's first Dollar General Store (located about a block from the public square).

During junior high, I sketched a map of all the businesses and landmarks surrounding the courthouse. (You're right; that venture should have been a genuine chick magnet, but somehow I got the polarity reversed. Or maybe it was the fact that this one particular zit was bigger than the town's Civil War statue. At this late date, who knows?)

Alas, the nation's downtowns (or central business districts or "that tumbling tumbleweed wouldn't give me the right-of-way" zones) have faced cataclysmic obstacles in the ensuing........

© El Dorado News Times