EUTAW—Long-time residents of Eutaw are abuzz about the family lately seen lounging around the grounds of White Hall, ancestral home of Mrs. Margaret Irwin. This reporter caught up with Mrs. Irwin and her Garden Club as they lunched at the Ceinture Noire restaurant last Tuesday. When asked about her new tenants, Mrs. Irwin explained that they are “a family of perfectly respectable hippies who have taken up residence on the back lawn.” At first, she was a little apprehensive about their unfamiliar dress and manner of speech. Leaning across her chicken salad plate to be heard, Mrs. Bea Moore interjected, “These hippies give themselves the most curious names that I just can’t remember.”
Said Mrs. Irwin, “They don’t do much, and spend most of their time on the kitchen porch. But they do have the nicest watermelon garden. And they just eat them up as soon as they are ripe. I guess I could let them live in the big house, but I knew they would be more comfortable back in the old kitchen. You know at first I thought they had two little girls with long blonde hair, but it turns out one of them is a boy. They call him Little Moon or something. He is so cute, but you know he’ll grow up to be a problem soon enough. Now I wouldn’t mind keeping the girl, oh, what is her name, River Lotus or something. I wouldn't mind keeping her around to help me in the house some. However, the other day I am pretty sure I recognized one of my chandelier crystals on the mamma’s rope necklace.”
Last Sunday morning at the First Baptist Church, during the third call to altar and the sixth chorus of “Just As I Am,” several faithful say that they heard what sounded like distant bongo music. “I went over to investigate after the service,” said Brother Bobby Smith, associate pastor. “I followed the sound to the grounds of White Hall and saw what looked like a reenactment of the book of Job—-they were all half naked and swaying, kinda dirty, with flowers and sackcloth, and the smell of burning rope was heavy in the air. I just let them be, because they must have their own sort of religion. They might be really good practice for our youth ministry before their mission trip to Costa Rica this summer.”
When asked about the new tenants, Willie Jackson, the Irwin family gardener said, “They ain’t fit to live at White Hall. My people been keeping up this place for generations, and now times is hard and Mrs. Irwin has got to take in the likes of those. I feel sorry for the children of those no-count hippies. Some folks got no shame at all.”—Miss Virginia "Tootsie" McAlpine, with W. G. Marion
Monday, October 6, 2008
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