Conecuh man on hand for Casablanca Conference in WWII

FDR and Churchhill at Casablanca Conference

While looking through some old editions of The Courant this week, I read where the City of Evergreen recently passed two important anniversaries involving two things that most of us take for granted – street numbers and indoor plumbing.

Eighty-four years ago this week, in the Feb. 28, 1929 edition of The Courant, it was reported that city officials were to begin numbering houses in Evergreen on the following Monday. Reading between the lines, it looked like the city had made arrangements to have all the houses in the city marked with street numbers, which were to be supplied by the Evergreen Sign Shop. I’m not sure where the old Evergreen Sign Shop was located, but the minimum charge for house numbers was set at 25 cents. I don’t know if that means that it was 25 cents per number, but it does sound like the numbers might cost you more if you wanted something more fancy than just regular, old numbers.

Also that week, in the same edition of The Courant, it was reported that the city council had approved a public health ordinance that required the installation of “water closets, privies and dry closets.” The council passed the ordinance during a meeting of the city council that week, and the ordinance also regulated “their type, location, capacity, construction, maintenance and use and to further regulate the town’s water supply.”

A water closet was defined as a room containing a flush toilet, and a dry closet contained what we would consider today an outdated form of toilet that didn’t use water. A privy, also known as an outhouse, was a toilet located in a small shed outside the house. Most of us, myself included, take indoor plumbing for granted nowadays, but there are still a lot of people out there who grew up in houses without indoor plumbing.

Fifteen years later, in the Feb. 24, 1944 edition of The Courant, it was reported that Roland R. Riley had just finished serving 3-1/2 years aboard the USS Memphis, a U.S. Navy cruiser. The most significant thing to occur during Riley’s time aboard the Memphis happened in January 1943 when the cruiser escorted President Franklin Roosevelt to the Casablanca Conference. During that important WWII conference, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill planned the upcoming invasion of Italy and the island of Sicily.

Last but not least, if you fast-forward ahead 30 more years to the Feb. 28, 1974 edition of The Courant, you’ll read where a young, 33-year-old named Edwin L. Booker made the decision to enter politics for the first time. In that edition of the paper, Booker announced that he’d qualified as a candidate for Conecuh County Sheriff. Booker won that election, and he still serves as Conecuh County Sheriff today.

Also that week, Robert J. “Bob” Floyd also qualified as a candidate for the Conecuh County Board of Education. He’d been appointed to the board in November 1973 to fill the unexpired term of a school board member who was no longer on the board, and he was seeking a full term in office during the ’74 election. Mr. Floyd is still active in the community today and is one of the most respected men in Conecuh County.