MID-SOUTH MEMORIES

25 Years Ago — 1995

Optimism about profits and a deal to acquire 45 stores pushed Autozone Inc. shares to a 52-week high Tuesday, said a stock analyst who follows the company. The stock closed at $27.50, up 25 cents in New York Stock Exchange composite trading of 335,200 shares. Profits of the Memphis-based auto parts retailer were dampened in the second and third quarters by heavy investments, said Craig Weichmann, analyst with Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis. Since Autozone stock was first sold to the public in 1991, profits had jumped 25 to 30 percent a year, he said.

50 Years Ago — 1970

Just as surely as the dogs never will catch Rusty The Mechanical Rabbit, Southland Greyhound Park is racing toward another record season. The track, located just off Interstate 55 in West Memphis, expects to attract between 900,000 to 1 million fans before Rusty makes his final run Nov. 3. General Manager Louis Derteen Jr. says attendance is running about 7 percent higher than last year when the season’s turnstile count was pushed to a record 852,672. An attendance record would be no surprise to Southland officials, however, as the track has set new standards in each of its 14 years of operation.

75 Years Ago — 1945

Some 200 happy GIS took their first step toward discharge from the Army at the Fourth Ferrying Group yesterday. They and 1,000 officers, who will begin final processing tomorrow, form the advance guard of men stationed here who will go to separation centers nearest their homes for release from the service.

100 Years Ago — 1920

Nashville – Every streetcar in the city was brought to a standstill at 6 tonight as a result of a strike of union motormen and conductors who are demanding wage increases.

125 Years Ago — 1895

Memphis is being threatened with an epidemic of bicycle bloomers. We ought not to mind a little thing like that, editorialized the Pine Bluff Press-eagle, reminding us of several other vicissitudes, better left unmentioned, which Memphis has survived. We are braced, nonetheless, and hope that the manner of a woman on a wheel in bloomers is nothing like that she assumes when riding a high horse.

BARNEY SELLERS/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL Director Elia Kazan, seated on box at left, coaches 10-year-old Kathy Mccarty for her part in a scene for “A Face In The Crowd” filmed on Aug. 23, 1956 on the roof of the Claridge Hotel. Kathy, daughter of still cameraman Floyd Mccarty of Hollywood, approaches the film’s star Andy Griffith, to ask for his autograph while he is seated in a restaurant.