Pride in our city starts with what we have, grows with what’s coming
Just this past week, I saw something that made me smile: El Dorado is listed on a Top 10 list for being one of the most beautiful cities in the state.
Theculturetrip.com doesn’t show number rankings for the cities chosen, but if it’s implied, El Dorado is fourth on the list as the viewer scrolls. Not surprisingly, our downtown is pictured to make the point.
The cities I grew up in were far from “pretty.” Honestly, they’re far from any Top 10 lists. I lived in Stuttgart for many years, and between the spoiling chaffe spilled out of grain trucks and the stench from the mill, I can vouch that anyone with a nose would have to put out at least marginal effort to see past the surroundings and view “pretty.”
Great people live there, but the city is poor. The same goes for Greenville, Miss. My stint there was very, very brief, and flying geese. I like variety in my quilts. Most of the time I do not make one that has the same pattern all over it. I like to use a rotary cutter. I used scissors forever, I did not know how to use a rotary. You can’t hardly quilt today without a rotary cutter.”
“I prefer buying fabric by the fat quarters so I have lots of little pieces and all the blocks can be different and you do not have a lot of money tied up in fabric. I have traded fabric with a lot of people so I could have the difference,” she said.
One of McGarity’s quilts was a bow-tie quilt with each tie being made from a different fabric. She proudly showed it to her grandchildren. After she left the room, they sat and studied the quilt. Then they came running to report to her that they had found two matching bowties.
“They thought they had found something magical. I could not leave it in there because it ruined my goal. It would bug me forever because I had not achieved my goal. So I took it out and replaced it with another fabric that I did not have in the quilt,” she said. “And we (the guild) had looked real good before we ever quilted it and did not see it. Those girls found it. They were about 8 or 9 years old.”
For many years McGarity entered her quilts at the fair. “I had a quilt in it (the county fair) every year ever since I have been quilting. I usually put one in. I didn’t have a new one last year. I have some tops that I have had a while, if I could get them done. You can’t enter the same one twice. I did win best of show for several years – until the good quilters came along. They are lots better quilters than I am by far. When I have been beaten, I have been beaten by the best, so that is all well and good.”
She keeps a quilt on her spare bed, “but not on the bed it’s because once I had lived in El Dorado, both Stuttgart and Greenville lack many of the perks — beauty — that El Dorado offers. They also lack the safety factor. Neither town offers the feeling of security in the middle of downtown at night. In Greenville, you’re advised to walk with a group if you’re downtown.
Though that is sound advice no matter where you live, feeling like I feel in El Dorado, like I can walk to my car without being attacked, even when alone at 2 a.m., is a great feeling. Our downtown is about to undergo some major changes. Everyone is aware I sleep on. Most of the time they are just too heavy. I use them for bed spreads.” Still her house has at least 12 quilts. “I have a long quilt rack. I have them hanging up on quilt racks. I have four on a rack in my bedroom,” she said.
“I have a top that I pieced for my granddaughter that I have been promising her since she got out of college. I need to get it done for this quilt show. I would have had it done in the past.” McGarity explained that in recent years, her health has interfered with her sewing.
McGarity’s quilts will be on display April 16-18 at the El Dorado Conference Center where the Night Owl Quilt Guild will hold a quilt show displaying quilts from the area. of the redirection our city is taking, and I think the majority of us are OK with it. We all want to live somewhere more beautiful. If jobs and entertainment come along, that’s great too.
In our publication, these past few months especially, its seemed to many that there is one particular part of the city function that is, in some minds, slowing down progress.
The El Dorado Historic District Commission meets monthly to discuss the ever-dreaded “Certificate of Appropriateness” telling business owners what they can and cannot do.
They sometimes come across as our downtown Nazis, but if you see the group that way, you may not completely grasp their importance.
When a business owner wants to upgrade a building in the downtown district, the city has placed certain regulations to prevent changes that would detract from the district’s charm.
Look at it this way, your living room has a color scheme of peaceful ocean greys and blues. All of a sudden, your spouse comes home and drops a big, ugly oversized chair in the middle of the living room, and it’s the gaudiest color you’ve ever seen.
For me, that would be muddy “pea” green. Blech.
I’d directly dispose of such a piece of furniture, and if my guy put up a fight, I might just dispose of him too.
The EHDC is preventing our downtown from having an ugly piece dropped in the middle of our charm. They’re our designers, not designing so much, but rather helping us maintain our feng shui.
One other thing, among the many, that the EHDC does, is they allow the public