Hello everyone. I hope you and your family had a Happy Thanksgiving. We certainly did, despite Gottrocks the Birthday Fairy’s attempt to fry a turkey. Thankfully we were able to contain the blaze, before it burned a brown spot on the front lawn. He did text in the birthdays for this week. Happy birthday wishes to Kent Prather, Angela Cody, Harry “The Padre” Felker and former Whitmire resident Tammy Barkoots McHale. Congratulations to former Whitmire residents Amy (Harsha) and Antz Eduoards on the recent celebration of their wedding anniversary.

This week’s column will be short and sweet one so let’s talk.

Upcoming events

The Annual Christmas Tree Lighting is coming up this Friday, Nov. 30 at 6:30 p.m. at the west end of Main Street, in the parking lot. The program will feature local ministers with scripture reading, the Whitmire Community School concert band and elementary chorus performing Christmas songs. The Whitmire Jaycees will serve refreshments of hot coffee and chocolate. Everyone is invited to attend.

The annual Whitmire Christmas Parade is Saturday, Dec. 8 at noon. This event is sponsored and coordinated by The Whitmire Jaycees. The line-up will be on North Main Street near the car wash. No entry fee, but float orders deadline is near. Contact Amy Silvers at 803-944-1959 or Sue Hollingsworth at 803-694-3797 for more information.

The Jaycees also have their Cheer Fund. Anyone interested in making a donation or a gift please contact Silvers or Hollingsworth at their numbers above.

Sims Chapel Baptist Church is hosting their annual Christmas Ball Saturday night at The Whitmire Community Center. See a member or visit the church’s Facebook page for information. The members are also sponsoring a coat drive and a adoption of needy families.

How about these early decorations? Looking good, although folks had their homes, yards and store fronts decorated very holiday-ish after Halloween. It used to be the day after Thanksgiving we put our Christmas decorations up. Oh what memories from my memory bank. I can tell, pssst, we will save those for closer to Christmas time. And thanks to retailers like Amazon, and websites like christmastreelights.com and 1000bulbs.com we can now find those big multi colored bulb lights and the bubble lights from 1941. I still remember back in the sixties, downtown Whitmire storefronts having the snow coated windows, with silver trees, blue ornaments and a color wheel shining on the tree.

What are your memories? We can share them, along with your civic/church group events Feel free to send us your news bits and photos to: news2cassie@yahoo.com.