Thirty five years ago in 1981, there didn’t seem to be much going on in the area.

There was a story about Earl Thompson of East Brewton who had completed construction of a small airplane, which took a good long time to build.

The airplane could carry two people at the time, but with only one passenger, the plane could fly 800 miles before needing to refuel. Thompson said the name of the plane was “Bout Time” because it took him so long to build it that everyone said it was about time he finished it.

I used to have a neighbor who flew his own airplane and in fact he kept another one in his house. It was always so strange to me to see a wing behind the dresser, another wing in the bedroom and scattered all over the place. I don’t know if he ever finished the building of the plane, but I did ride in the one he already had at the airport. We flew down to Jay one day and visited some of my neighbor’s friends. We visited a while and then flew back to Brewton.

The Brewton City School superintendent said that the elementary school was leaking and had been for some time. Superintendent Dale Garner said that something needed to be done about it and soon.

This would have been the same as the Brewton Elementary School is today. I guess they took care of the leak.

In the lifestyle section of the paper, there was a big write-up about the wedding of Barbara Gail Harris and Barnes Flournoy Lovelace Jr.

Moore’s was running another of its “Lemon sales.” I still don’t get the connection of lemons to department stores, but I guess it worked, since they had already done that before. They did run some pretty good sales including men’s suits for $48 to $88 each.

Over a period of six hours on Feb. 11, 1981, seven inches of rain fell in the area, causing the bridges across Murder Creek to be closed. There was quite a bit of damage throughout the county.

There were several pictures in the newspaper that were of the damage done.

A&P grocery store had milk on sale for $1.89, boneless rib eye for $2.99 a pound, and Pepsi-Cola for 98 cents for a two-liter bottle.

Kiwanis Club honored Mike Goolsby as Kiwanian for the Year and State Trooper John Evans as Law Enforcement Officer for the year.

Jim Hart, Brewton attorney, was elected to the Alabama Cattlemen’s Association and K-Mart had sundresses on sale for $7.88.

The home of G.S. Byrne, located on Evergreen Avenue, caught fire.

A new zip code, 36427, went into effect for the post office boxes.

David Brantley took over position of Escambia County Superintendent of Education.

I really don’t remember some of these things. Sometimes I think I lived in a shell until I began to work at the newspaper. I just didn’t know what I was missing.