lunch with mom

Today I had lunch with my mom at Barbara's Home Cooking (or Barbara's Homecookin' as it says on Barbara's business card), a fabulous meat and three that is located in a small house in Franklin on Old Hillsboro Road. I highly recommend Barbara's fried chicken - I believe it's the best I've ever eaten.

As I was driving to pick my mom up to take her to Barbara's, I recalled the days when I was a student in the kindergarten program at West Jackson Baptist Church, where my mother was a teacher. I only have one distinct memory from my actual kindergarten class - the time when my teacher blindfolded random students and made them taste and identify various foods and I got stuck with a lemon - but I do remember the happy days when my mother would take me to Woolworth's in downtown Jackson after our half-day at school was over so we could share a meal together at the lunch counter. I always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke, but it wasn't the meal I was excited about - it was my mother's undivided attention. As the oldest of four children - at that point my sister was 3 years old, one brother was 2, and the other brother was 1 - one-on-one time with either of my parents was obviously hard to come by, so I cherished our Woolworth lunches. 

Too bad there aren't any more Woolworth's in America. In 1997 F. W. Woolworth Company shuttered its classic five and dime stores and the company converted itself into a sporting goods retailer. Today the company is now known as Foot Locker, Inc. It's hard to imagine happy family memories being created in a shoe store.