Changes swirling us around; still ground in B’ville

It has been a good run, but it’s time to go to the house, or somewhere different.
In the past week I have become orphaned and unemployed. Lots of strange thoughts are going through my mind.
My mother’s passing last Friday at age 96 of course left a vacuum. She has resided on Eureka Street for most of my life and long before. Not only did her parents (my grandparents) live on Eureka Street, her grandparents and great grandparents occupied homes there closer to the town square near where Batesville Clinic is now located.
Her mother’s maiden name was Dickins and she would marry a man who was born and resided in the Eureka Community who boarded on Eureka Street while attending Batesville High School. I currently live on the place he was born.
You just can’t get much more “Batesville” than that.
My late mother would marry a man from Birmingham who boarded in Batesville and worked on the Sardis Dam construction. They would marry in the church where she first worshipped, where her family attended while growing up, where she sang in the choir and where her funeral services were held, directed by the funeral home once owned by her late uncle who also lived on Eureka Street.
During the war she and her husband would move away and later reside in Oxford while my father received his journalism degree. They would move to Fayette, Mississippi where he owned and published the newspaper there about the time I was born.
They returned to Batesville in 1955 when I was three and my father and two partners began publishing this newspaper.
I began paying social security at age 13 when my father put me to work sweeping floors in 1966 almost 52 years ago. Maybe before but definitely since I have been looking at our community through “News-Colored Glasses.” Time will tell how long it will take to change my perspective.
We did take a 10-year hiatus when we leased the business in 1994. It took six months to quit tensing up on press day.
As of the first of the year, we have entrusted this business to a well established group who will take the reins Monday. We have complete faith in new publisher David Magee and the highly competent staff we are leaving with him.
Meanwhile we will be sorting through my mother’s attic trying to separate relics from junk and taking care of those chores which we have put off over the years. Maybe.
If history is an indicator, I won’t be far away from Batesville, nor Eureka Street.
It’s been a great ride. ;~)