I heard about Kramer Roof collapsing not long after it happened, thanks to the speed of social media.
I was talking on the telephone with a McComb friend when his wife, who scans her cell phone more than frequently, told him and he passed the news on, interrupting a conversation we were having about Ole Miss football and Hugh Freeze.
As soon as I got off the phone, I checked the Enterprise-Journal on Facebook and saw a bulletin on the incident.
I also watched a video that some fellow had recorded on his cell phone. During his narration, he excitedly reported the building “blew up” in his face.
I don’t know what the final determination will be on what caused part of that historic downtown building to collapse, but maybe it’s akin to a big oak tree on the same block as my present home in Oxford.
My wife Virgie and I had gone out to dinner Friday evening, and on turning onto our street we found it blocked by a police car in front of three utility trucks. Workers were sawing up and removing timber from the street and from a utility line that had been knocked down.
The entire tree didn’t fall, but a section of it, a huge branch with branches of its own, separated from the main trunk of the tree, which may be older than Kramer Roof.
There hadn’t been any severe weather or wind that day, and it was a mystery to me as to why it fell.
When I asked one of the workers if he could explain it, he said, “I guess it just got tired.”
It reminded me of the time a big oak tree collapsed in front of the Enterprise-Journal building for no apparent reason back before Croft Metals occupied the site near where the tree once stood.
A rookie reporter who was gazing from her desk out the front window of our office saw it, and calmly said, “That tree just fell.”
I guess old buildings and trees do get tired, although I’ve found it interesting that buildings in Europe, constructed without today’s modern equipment, have survived for centuries.
When I began a new job in McComb in July 1963, the building occupied by the Jubilee Performing Arts Center was the location of a thriving J.C. Penney store.
A few doors down Main Street was the McColgan Hotel, which at the time was frequented by, shall we call them, ladies of the evening from New Orleans who were shuttled in and out of McComb by their handlers.
I was unaware of the hotel’s unsavory reputation until a few hours into my first day’s work at the Enterprise-Journal, which was located less than two blocks away on North Broadway. Otherwise I wouldn’t have spent my first night in McComb there.
I was leaving a job in Hattiesburg, and my wife was remaining there with our two young children until we could sell our house and find one in McComb.
I knew little about McComb, but my dad, who played football at Hattiesburg High School in the late 1920s, had played a game against McComb and the team spent the night at the McColgan which then, according to him, was a fine hotel, right smack in the middle of downtown.
He suggested that might be a good place for temporary quarters. My father gave me good advice over the years, but this wasn’t one of those times.
When I checked in, the desk clerk was mostly inhospitable, almost appearing as if he was wondering why I was there. There were no other guests in the lobby.
The next day, as I was introduced to people, some asked where I was staying. When I said the McColgan, they would look away and make no comment.
Finally someone at the newspaper enlightened me on the hotel’s usual clientele at that stage of its history and advised me to find other quarters, which I did.
I rented a room on the second floor of a home on East Michigan Avenue from a nice, elderly lady. I wish I could recall her name.
The last time I passed the house, which may have been two or three years ago, it was still standing, but I’m sure its 1963 proprietor has gone to her heavenly reward.
By October we had found a contractor who agreed to take our Hattiesburg house as a trade for a down payment on a new one in McComb.
Over the next half century we saw a lot of change in McComb, especially in the downtown area. Obviously, it’s still changing as one of its landmarks just fell down.
