In December of 2024 I'll find this old flyer and reminisce:
I am busy curating the Terrell Shaw Museum and Archives. In other words I am sifting through and triaging the disheveled boxes of miscellaneous debris from my 77 years on the planet, much of which should have been tossed years ago. It is a very slow process because I am constantly distracted by the memories associated even with a mimeographed sheet like this.
Michael J. Burton, do you remember this?
Little did I know, when Mike Burton gave me this flyer well over a half century ago, the ways the property he mapped (with a stylus on a mimeograph stencil) would occupy my attention and emotions in later years. The Art Gallery became the storied "coffee house" where I sang folk songs with Cleve Burton and met lifelong friends like Richard Ware and Gary Smith.
Sheila and I would celebrate Easter Sunrise in the amphitheater a time or two with our church.
We would celebrate the Fourth of July from the levee behind our house on Avenue A year after year (with the Burtons and Wares almost always in attendance) as the fireworks blasted from the base and later the summit of Jackson Hill.
The Duck Pond and surrounding property would be a major focus of my life for years as we fought to "Save Rome's Central Park".
And my baby and her beloved would be married in the renovated waterworks/Rome Art Gallery/ coffee house building on Jackson Hill in 2023.
