Thirty years ago, 1987, was starting out to be a good one for most of us.

All those people we had elected and those who were to be sworn in were taken care of and they all went to work in their positions.

Mike Godwin was the new district attorney and William Cook was retiring from the Escambia County Commission, stating that after 20 years, it was time for someone else to take his place.

William America was sworn in to serve on the Escambia County Commission. He was the first African American to hold this office.

Brad Byrne was sworn in as the circuit judge and up at T.R. Miller High School, Mike Sasser was stepping down from his position as head coach and sports director.

Linda Franklin had an article in The Brewton Standard written about her cooking and sharing of some of her recipes. She said that when she married, she couldn’t cook at all. She said her husband gave her four years to learn how to cook because that was how long it took to go to college.

Well, she mastered the art of cooking and shared some of her favorite recipes with everyone in an issue of the newspaper.

I remember Linda and her husband. He was also a good cook. I can’t tell you how many meals of smoked chicken I ate that he cooked. Yum, it makes me hungry to even think about it.

K-Mart had an advertisement in the newspaper for a RCA VCR that cost $329.

I will have to say that electronics were in one category of merchandise that has not gone up in price. In fact, in electronics, prices have gone down drastically.

I believe that prices in that department are better today than they were 30 years ago. I was astonished to see some of the prices on electronic equipment at Wal-Mart over the Christmas shopping time.

It was announced that The Ritz Theater would be closing its doors after 50 years. It actually opened in 1936 and over the years had brought movies, news and live entertainment to our town. The last film to be shown was Crocodile Dundee.

Bettye J. Martin and Dorothy V. Faircloth were selected and named teachers of the year for Escambia County.

Mike English and Candy McMillan were named citizens of the year by the Brewton Chamber of Commerce at the annual banquet.

The T.R. Miller Band was selected to represent Alabama at the Tri-States Band Classic in Tallahassee, Fla.