One of the first things I noticed about the paper for January of 1995 was the announcement of new jobs headed for Brewton. Judy Bond was adding 30 jobs to their work force.
I don’t remember just how long Judy Bond remained in this area after 1995. I do remember what a kick it was to be able to go to the mill and dig through bins of material.
At least once a year, the company would hold a sale on the fabrics they no longer were going to use. People would line up (like they do now on Black Friday) at the mill and when the doors opened there would be a mad dash to the bins.
Now those bins were taller than most of us shoppers, so we had to climb into the bins amongst all the fabric and see just how much we could find and hold on to. Back in those days I sewed a lot and I made all kinds of things out of that Judy Bond stuff. Right now I have curtains in my bedrooms made with the fabric I pulled out of those bins.
Jefferson Davis Community College named the new librarian at Leigh Library. Ann Biggs-Williams took over the job after having been working at the college for the past 22 years. She stated at the time that the college had grown a lot. When she began working there in 1973, there were only 966 students enrolled at the school.
Ann was one of the people at the library who helped me a lot with finding research material when I was working on my first book. I found out how to borrow books on the interlibrary loan system and it saved me many miles driving to distant places. It didn’t hurt that Ann, too, had some of the same interests as I did.
I noticed in the Business Review in the newspaper a photograph of the employees at Gleaton Cleaners. One of those pictured was John Gleaton, and he had short hair. It was only later that John began to wear his hair long and in a pony tail.
Brewton had begun a new recycling service and furnished bins to put out with all our recyclable for pickup. In a short period of time they had collected two tons of material. Although the service was a good one, they did lose a lot of the recycling bins and had other problems. I don’t know how long the service lasted, but it sounds as if it was a good idea.
IGA was selling leg quarters for 39 cents a pound and a half gallon of ice cream for $1.39. Winn-Dixie had the leg quarters for 29 cents. Not bad compared to what they are these days.
The City of Riverview announced that it was now covered by fire protection.
Auto Zone was under construction and the new Brewton Public Library was almost completed and planning an open house. Good Will had its opening on Douglas Avenue.