Bob Sanders: Pageants help fabric industry

Got my hometown newspaper the other day. I’ll tell you, the resourcefulness of those Borderer descendants never fails to arouse my admiration. They have lost just about all of their heavy industry: the water mills shut down, the blacksmith shops went out of business, the gin closed up shop. And for the final nail in the coffin, the mule collar factory went out of business.

What to do? I’m not sure who should get credit, but something else has become a major industry in the town. Pageants. Yes, pageants. The paper devoted almost a whole page to pictures of the latest event, the Easter pageant. There were categories for every age from babies to 12th graders. I counted. There were 50 winners (win, place or show), not to mention the dozens who finished out of the money. And from the two-year group on up, they were wearing very fancy, very elaborate (probably very expensive) long dresses, evening gowns.

Some mamas spent a lot of time at the sewing machine, or, there is a lady in the area, I’m told, who specializes in making beauty contest-type gowns. She is said to have made the entire wardrobe for a recent Miss Alabama. What a spectacle! And as I say, this was the Easter pageant. There’s something like that about every month. Pageantry is a booming industry in the old hometown.

Not that that’s entirely new. When I was in elementary school, we put on some truly spectacular productions. I was a robin in one, and Poppa Bear in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But the biggest one was when I was, I think, in the firth grade. Oh, Cecil B. deMille would have been impressed.

Almost everybody in grammar school was in it. It could have been titled “The United States of America.” I was Ben Franklin in one scene, but the killer was in The Westward Movement. Me’n the legendary Jaybird Carr both picked and sang a little, and we were the featured people in a scene around the old (light bulb under red crepe paper) campfire, just a pickin’ and singin’ away. “Back in the Saddle” and “When the Work’s All Done This Fall” sounded great. We expected a curtain call. The thing wound up with a grand march of the whole United Nations. Virginia Turner, a blond, was a Dutch girl. Cousin Willadine, also blonde, was a Norwegian, or something, and so on.

So, as you can see, there is a solid background for this new industry. People are buying fabrics to make gowns, people are making those gowns, people are buying gas to come and see these productions. I’m not sure if they have to pay to get in or not, but the stimulation pot is boiling, tings are happening ... and it’s a good time to see some very pretty girls. Still plenty of those in the town.

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.