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Johnny Brister: Pistolero Extraordinaire
By Charlie Capps III
The Cleveland Current Contributing Writer
In 1995, Johnny Brister left his full-time job as an EMT to farm, but it just so happened he had spare time before planting season and he took a shooting class at Bill’s Custom Automatics in Shelby.
Brister did not know much about handguns or shooting competitions. He attended a local shooting meet in Clarksdale and was not pleased with his performance. Being a competitive man, he wanted to do better. As he was learning his new skills, his desire to win pushed him to try and be the best.
There were many aspects to the sport he had to learn, such as what equipment he needed. His first competition pistol was a 1911 .45 caliber, considered the best by competitive shooters. |
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Mosco Farms: Carrying On The Family Tradition
By Charlie Capps III
The Cleveland Current Contributing Writer
Mosca grew up and married Ludovina Pirani. Because of an early language barrier, the name Mosca was changed to Mosco, which is what the family goes by today.
Albert and Mosco share-cropped around Holly Ridge until the depression when many families from Heathman moved to the Shaw area to take advantage of the Federal Land Bank’s full inventory of land. Many of these families like Albert and Ludovina were buying 40 acres or 80 acres to begin a cotton farm. Albert built a dog trot house on his place, raised cattle, as well as crops of cotton and soybeans. One of his specialties was custom work, especially hay baling.
Henry Mosco, Albert’s grandson, said, “When they knew that the soybean crop was going to fail due to a drought, they would bale the soybeans while they were still green to feed the cows.” |
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Personalities - A fun, funky home for fashion
Personality sets you apart and helps create who you are. It’s the qualities that design who you are. Personalities — a women’s clothing store in downtown Cleveland (and now also in Southaven) — helps set individuals apart by providing fresh and exciting clothes and accessories for kids and adults. Owners Becky Kilpatrick and her daughter Angela Marquis opened the doors to their original Cleveland store back in 1998 with a lot of hope.
“I was a speech therapist living in Jackson and my mom was a nurse and I wanted to move home,” Angela said. “And while living in Jackson I had a bunch of girlfriends and they were all wearing name brand clothes that I’d never heard of so I told mom that Cleveland needed that.”
With women from around the state roaming the campus of Delta State University and a nice population of high school girls in the surrounding area, there would be plenty of customer desires and needs to fulfill.
The younger Kilpatrick started researching products and performing plenty of due diligence on name brands that would appeal to younger girls and women to get the project started.
“We opened and it kind of took off from there,” Angela said. “In the very beginning, people just kind of walked in and it was almost like we had clothes from another planet.” |
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Mission Mississippi - Maine students lend a helping hand
MOUND BAYOU Twenty-four high school seniors, 11 chaperones and a three-day bus ride amount for a ton of volunteer work and have for the past 11 years. This week, seniors from St. Dominic Regional High School in Auburn, Maine, carried on their senior tradition of volunteering during their spring break for what they call Mission Mississippi.
The seniors traveled down to St. Gabriel Mercy Center here where they worked with Sister Donald Mary Lynch, director, in improving the quality of life for Delta residents through a myriad of service projects.
We contact a lot of people in the area that need some sort of work done and they provide the supplies, Lynch explained. The kids do repair work, yard work a little bit of everything.
The high school seniors were seen around Mound Bayou and Shelby repairing porches, clearing brush, painting curbs, painting houses, and even doing carpentry work on roofs and floors. They even planted cabbage at the Alcorn State University sweet potato farm. Lynch held nine pages of requests for work.
The thing I like most about it is the service, Andrew Girouard, a chaperone this year who traveled down with his senior class in 2003. It is nice to be able to help people out and we have grown fond of this place.
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Half a century of success -
Delta Home and Garden Club turns 50
Fifty years ago this May, a group of women with a common interest formed a club in Cleveland that is still a vibrant addition to the community. The Delta Home and Garden Club is hitting the half-century mark and is still going strong. The same can be said for several of the charter members who are not only still active members, but remain the backbone of a group that has changed with the times, yet held steadfast to its original purpose.
It all began when Mrs. Bob Hormberg moved to town with her husband when Color Tile was brought to Cleveland in the 1950s. Lucy was an accredited flower show judge and quickly found Juliette Kossman and others in her neighborhood who shared her interest in gardening and flower arranging. A neighborhood organization was developed and eventually, with Mrs. Hormbergs guidance, the Delta Garden Club was formed. There were 25 original members, and of those charter members, six are still active in the club. Rebecca Austin, Mary James Blakeman, Mary Anna Davis, Kitty Eley, Joyce Kennedy and Barbara Varner are all charter members and are a treasure trove of information, anecdotes and memories about the Garden club and its history.
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For the full story, click here... |
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