The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-05-24
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS


 in these days of hustle and hustle, not ashamed to have a Leisure Club and be proud of it.
 I know now where my fancy will roam when the hot days come and I'm glued to my desk trying to pound out story. I'll just shut my eyes and have visions of an old-style rambling wooden build ing with double verandahs facing public square It will be the Phoenix Hotel at Carrollton.
 l am tired of the modern caravansaries or establishments with their glitter, noise and confusion. The up-to-date hotel is too much of a systematized effort to rob life of it's last vestige of homelikeness by making them gaudv palaces. I'm sick of the congested lobbies, the blase clerks. the noisy be1lboys, the bored walters.
 And so when I got to spend the nissst in the hotel, where the proprietor was still a host and not an executive, and the colored porter friendly and talkative but attentive, and the sound of dangling bells was hushed. and no elevator shoot ing up and down, and the room not one of series of cells, but roofhy. and the bed not an ornament but place in which to sleep. I was overjoyed.
 I am not merely taking fling at the big hotels with their pride and pomp and high prices, but will also take a shot at the average country one, where every thing is untidy and the meals trial to eat the beds nightmare, the service scream, and the tout ensemble enough to drive a man to drink. The mere thought of them spotted up and down the country is enough to make my heart go out in sympathy to the travelling men who have to put up with them.
 Just think of walking into a spacious dining room with fresh "flowers on the table with the dew still on them. roses. of the kind found in old-tine gardens, with fragrance sweeter than all the hothouse exotics from the nurseries. 10 me there is a beauty in the seeming negligent but loving touch a woman gives to bunch of flowers as she puts a hand full in vase.
 To show that the spelling hand of m6d- ern progress had not yet touched the hostelry in which I found such delight. I have but to state that in the center of the dining room, where the regular board CTS ate, was round, double-decked table, the kind seldom seen, for on the top one is placed the various dishes, and when any one wants to help himself it is but necessary to cause the table to revolve his way until the food he craves is before him. I was sorry when they sat me at one of the transients tables.
 spoke of the double verandahs. The hotel faces the square with it's well-kept
 lawn and splendid specimen of trees, but the front of the house is shaded by oaks and elms. I was told that one of the great oaks with it's spreading limbs was planted just at the close of the war, and that ono day General Forrest, in turning his buggy, rode over it as 1t pended like switch beneath it. It was reminder that the civil war was far past.
 One of the things first pointed out to the visitor is what is locally known as the ''man's face" on one of the top win dows of the courthouse. It is easily dis cernible and since it's appearance score or more years ago has been the cause of much wonderment and speculation, and various are the tales told to account for it. l believe the one most liked by all
 is that which associates it with freak lightning and a hanging. True or not, it still stares from the pane of glass
 No man gets to Carrollton without a trip a few blocks away from thc square to the Johnny Wood spring, bold basin of water which for as long as the mem cry of the oldest inhabitant run has been sending out it's cooling. healing stream. lit is prettly situated in lovely grove which is used for picnics and as place for lovers Nearby is the, public swim ming pool, a well concerted one wnIcn is supplied from a flowing well. -
 The courthouse to me Is pleasing structure, for it is not the average pre- tentious type seen in many of our coun- ties looking so everlasting new. It is l the third one on the present site, the other two having been lost by fire.s It was built in the year of the centennial, and is in good taste and fits in admirably with it's surroundings. A more modern care for the increasing need for space. I
 | But one of the strangest and most
 talked-of freaks comes about from the | fact that in the days of the saloons over
 Suilding now occupied by the Pckens | County Herald is a sign with the words "Whiskies, Wines and Beer Ben Ran port the editor, is my authority for the
 statement that the prediction hope oi Tight wines and beer" caused the din letters to come out most clearly bu'
 after the election they grew dim and dfm-
 mer and are now hard to discern. One of the pleasantest incidents Of my visit was meeting a gentleman Who toic mo that he had lived in Carrollton more
 than kree score years and ten. and that
 he began by taking the old Iron Age. ther
 the Herald, and on their consolidation The Age Herald. and that he had beer a continuous subscriber to dated and tha 1 he thought The Age-Herald was tht greatest newspaper in the south, and with my usual modesty. admitted it. Say iwhat YOU please. but it's good to TUT
 across the lifelong subscribers and fine
 that they are "boosters
 ~