A phone conversation last week with a Pike County resident who, like me, is a Louisiana expatriate, wandered through all sorts of interesting topics.
One was that each of us had a connection with Avondale Shipyard, the massive boat-building location on the West Bank a few miles upriver from New Orleans.
My connection was visual and acoustical. I grew up in suburban Harahan, five houses and one vacant lot from the Mississippi River levee, and Avondale was straight across the river from us.
I remember one time, about 1970, watching a ship launch from Avondale with my dad and brother. Even from half a mile away, it was cool to see this big vessel slide sideways into the river.
The acoustic experience was Avondale’s work siren. When that thing went off, it carried across the water loudly, and you knew it was time for a shift change. Even now, that sound is in my mind.
Another topic of the conversation, the one that inspired this column, was our mutual observation that the people who are the most negative about Pike County are the ones who grew up here.
He mentioned it first, but I’ve seen it and heard it many times over the years. The negativity covers just about everything: local governments, education, business, medical care, race relations, crime, and on and on.
I’m not sure how long this guy’s lived here, but it’s a while. And he likes it.
Same with me. I moved to McComb in 1983. The Enterprise-Journal was my first job out of college. I didn’t expect to stay for 41 years. I didn’t have any specific plans, to be honest.
But everybody was nice — honestly, everyone except about three people — and I never found any other job that jumped out at me. Frankly, if I had gone to a bigger newspaper, my job probably would have been eliminated years ago. Sometimes staying put is a good move.
I am very well aware of Pike County’s limitations, but we do have a few things going for us that tend to be overlooked. Let me give you an example that occurred Thursday, the same day as the phone conversation.
About 10 a.m., receptionist Candace Pepper came into my office with two new copies of Mother Goose nursery rhyme books. She said a man came to the front counter, asked her to give them to my two grandsons, and left. No one knew for sure who he was.
I was too late to catch him. I only saw him from a distance, driving out of our parking lot in a pickup truck. Henry and Tommy will get these gifts soon, I promise. And I thank you for such a kind gesture.
This is a very small thing, but little happies like this occur all the time, just one person doing something nice for another. This is part of a small community’s charm. It is greatly appealing to me. Pike County has an abundance of it, and sometimes we forget that.
On the big-picture stuff, we certainly have our challenges, just like most of America.
Elected officials do disagree, as do the residents they represent. I wish more families took education and job training seriously, because a work force with greater skills pays off over time. There is crime, too much of it committed by minors.
But there are positives. Interstate 55 brings a lot of people through Pike County. There is finally some construction at the Gateway Industrial Park along the interstate. Schools have improved their ratings. Commercial activity has hung on despite internet competition and covid-19. Look how the Uptown McComb mall has rebounded.
Every so often, we all hear how McComb is dying, and the last person to leave town should turn off the lights. If that is the case, why did large national companies like Chick-fil-A and Starbucks come here?
My point is not to pretend everything is all sunshine and rainbows. But we ought to have a little more confidence in ourselves. We ought to have faith that we can find solutions to our problems.
Pike County will never be Hattiesburg, Biloxi, Madison County, Oxford or DeSoto County. We have fewer people than those places. We are more rural, more country. But we do have some good things going on.
If two guys from Louisiana can see this and willingly choose to live here, then a few more people should try to see it as well.
