Laurel, MS is not the quiet little “Mayberry” town for which you have pictured in your mind, & not everyone knows everyone neither. Yes, our historic district is very beautiful with its many big live oaks for which have long low hanging branches, which I’m not sure if to many people know that those long branches are held up by long steel cables tied to them to keep them from breaking off & falling to the ground but anyway, as well as all of the big & beautiful historic homes for which we have here in our town. But, that being said, besides the historic district itself, where mostly the upscale rich & basically snooty people live & for whom haven’t the time of day for anyone else in this town, along with the old downtown mall, for which consists of streets within it made of brick, I, honestly, know of nothing else here that would be of any kind of an attraction for outsiders who may want to move here. There is absolutely nothing to do here for young people. NOTHING!! Our local police made sure they put a stop to young people having any kind of weekend fun here several years ago. When I was in my junior & senior years in high school if you wanted to find your friends anywhere out in town all you had to do was make the loop in your car from North Laurel shopping center, then south on Old Bay Springs Rd until you came to Watkins High School, then left at the T & down the hill in between the school & the football stadium & at the next stop sign you would turn right & follow that road all the way to the Sawmill Square Mall. On your way there you would pass by Daphne Park where there would be crowds of people hanging out there. Once you made it to the mall everyone would turn in there & make the circle around it, where crowds of people would be everywhere in the parking lot. Then you would come out of the mall & head back North the way you just came from. I am not exaggerating when I tell whoever is reading this that cars would be bumper to bumper, & when you did finally see your friends for whom you were looking for you would brake tap them in order to get there attention so they would turn around & meet you along the road somewhere so you could talk & just hang out. Usually it was someone in the car with them wanting to get in the car with you or vice versa. It was just a whole lot of fun & everyone knew what everyone was doing &/or going to do. You were going to town to cruise Old Bay. Now, nothing. Laurel is dead. The police cracked down on the youth in this town & made it to where the weekends here were no longer any fun anymore, & it’s just a ghost town here on the weekends now. You may see a few of the young hanging out in the Walmart or Kroger parking lot & that’s it. Anyway, besides the historic district, the entire town has changed completely. The majority of people I know, for some reason, sold there homes & moved out of the city limits & into more rural areas of the county. Some parts of the city now are parts for which I wouldn’t be in at night time by myself &, every morning, mainly weekends, when you drive down the streets they are littered with fast food bags everywhere. Speaking of the streets, some of them have finally been paved, but there are still several that need over layed badly. My last vehicle I had to put struts on it 3 times in 2 years due to the streets being so bad & now, my new car, is in need of struts as well. The streets were allowed to get in such bad shape that people’s cars were getting seriously damaged & from what I’ve heard if your car is one that gets damaged you are on your own when it comes to paying for it due to the city not being responsible for its citizens & their vehicles. Also, crime in the city is up, which I believe it’s this way in most cities. Another thing about living here in the Deep South is the humidity during July & August is just about unbearable. Today, as I write this, it is 99 degrees with a heat index of 115. It’s sweltering hot. So, I will end by saying that Laurel is my hometown & I will always call it home but, it’s definitely not what everyone for whom watches the HGTV show Hometown thinks it is & for whom gets this idea in their head of it being like Mayberry & such. That show only depicts our town in a certain way from just a few houses within the town & not what our town looks like in its entirety. When they pick a specific house to film at they have the local police cordon off the street on both sides of it with barricades in order to keep the rest of us local citizens from coming anywhere close to it meaning, people have to turn around & can’t continue down the street as if we were coming that way to interfere with filming. I remember awhile back I was in my big truck & trailer while working & I was hauling asphalt to one of the major streets within the city, it was 7th Ave we were paving, & when I got to the red light at 10th St the barricades were in the road & I assumed they were for us, due to us paving starting at the next red light North of there. So I got out of my truck & slid the barricade to the side where I could continue on my way. Well I had no idea they were filming just up the street between where I was & where we were paving & this lady police officer was there & started screaming & hollering at me. I was back in my truck by this time & was not going to back up or attempt to turn around with me in a big truck & pulling a long flowboy trailer loaded with asphalt so, I went on by her as if she wasn’t even there & it really pissed her off. I can still remember the look she was giving me while screaming something at me. Anyway, Laurel is like this, if you’ve got plenty of money & wish to live among your same ethnicity then, you can live in the historic district with the rest of the snobs. Or, you can live in other parts of the city among the other ethnicity & go to work & come home cause there absolutely nothing else to do in this town anymore. If you are looking to move to a town where you can make any kind of money working locally then I also suggest that Laurel is not the town to come to expecting for this. A person can’t make much money working here. Unless you are a doctor or lawyer you want find a job making any kind of money around here. This is why there is such a divide among the population here. Either your rich & snooty or your poor & just trying to survive. There’s really no in between. Yea, you can make a living but, I wouldn’t expect to be able to have nice things while taking the family on vacations annually. Like I said, unless your a doctor or lawyer there’s just not any good paying jobs around here. So, if your coming here expecting to find Mayberry then, I must say, you are probably going to get your feelings hurt when you get here & find that Laurel is far from Mayberry.
Tyrone |
Laurel, MS |
Report Abuse