If the town of Crenshaw’s numerous challenges can be compared to a bowling match, then they’re being set up and knocked down. Again and again.

Improve morale at the Crenshaw Police Department. Done.

Clamp down on vicious dogs and junky property. Done and done.

Renovate the police station, municipal courtroom, and town hall. Done, done and done.

There are plenty of backs to pat in the little town, starting with volunteer Fire Chief Lee Duncan. He applied for a grant and won it. He used the funds to dress Crenshaw firefighters in new firefighting garb, known as turnouts. The grant also paid for a Jaws of Life, the lifesaving extrication device.  

But any credit ultimately belongs to Oscar Barlow, the current mayor. For the next four years, Crenshaw’s success or failure rests with him, since leadership starts at the top and trickles down. It’s sort of a second chance for Barlow, since he was defeated in 2005 and returned to office last summer.

“When you sit out for four years, then you see what people were trying to tell you,” Barlow told The Panolian recently. Those lessons seem to motivate him, like Red Bull pumping through his veins.

Despite a year of visible progress, Crenshaw is not Cinderella attending the ball. The once-quaint Delta town may never return to its former glory, when prospering shops lined Main Street sending sales tax revenues into town hall. But it has improved in a year’s time, with more improvements said to be coming.

And it was a long four years of waiting.

Once, at a city meeting, this reporter witnessed Chief Duncan turn red-faced when Barlow’s predecessor refused to allow Duncan to use fire department funds to purchase turnouts. That argument ended in a shouting match, which the then-mayor believed he had won after Duncan stormed out of the meeting.  

Then, on Election Day, the voters sent him home. Barlow won four of five ballot boxes, and lost the fifth box by a few single votes. I’m sure The Shouter was stunned. Here’s why:

U.S. Census figures show, in the town of 1,000 people, about 700 citizens are black. Barlow’s win last summer was possible only because black voters helped returned their white mayor to town hall.

That’s an important lesson for a whole lot of Panolians, black and white alike, as Panola County coasts toward a sheriff’s election.

In one corner is Otis Griffin, Panola County’s black interim sheriff, who is seeking to win his first term in office.

In the other very crowded corner, six white guys – Noel Aldridge Jr., Dennis Darby, Mike Darby, Phillip Herron, Richard McCarty, and James “Jimmy” Meek – have qualified for the sheriff’s job.  

Candidates, take note. When he campaigned for mayor, Barlow said he told voters the very same message: I will be fair and equal to all, I will work hard, and I will spend the town’s money, which isn’t much, wisely.

Anyone who knows Barlow knows that account is true. He believes it and lives it everyday.

If you’re a sheriff’s candidate crisscrossing Panola County, your stump speech should be the same regardless of the zip code. Or who answers their front door. Or the color of a church congregation.

Any talk of making Panola County history on election day, or talk about preventing it, should be thrown out like dirty bath water. Flee from such thinking, like Joseph ran from Potifer’s wife, because it is a sinful seed, planted by bitterness and watered by hate. It rots a man’s soul from the inside out.

Such thinking creates an us-versus-them belief that a person must support “my people.”

In civil times, such thinking distorts how you view your neighbors, your co-workers, the carhop at Sonic, and the church across the street. You may act civil, but the seed is still there, waiting to be watered.

In less-civil times, when people choose sides, it can lead to much worse things than kitchen table talk.  

I don’t know about you, but people who believe our freedom comes from God, and the grave stood empty on Sunday morning – those are my kind of people. And I will worship, and fight, alongside them.

Please stick to issues, candidates. And list your qualifications.

A candidate’s skin color should not be an issue, or a disqualification either.