MID-SOUTH MEMORIES

25 years ago — 1998

Barry Williams wanted to look different, so he put huge holes in his earlobes. Justin Barnett wanted to look different, too, so he tried scarring his body, but it hurt so much that he settled for a network of homemade tattoos. Williams, a pizza chef at the Arcade Restaurant, is happy with his holes, but Barnett has found that the tattoos are a hinderance in the job market and he wants some of them removed. The two 22-year-old Memphians are among young people who are delving into body art, which ranges from temporary henna tattoos to decorative scarification and implementation of objects under the skin. 50 years ago — 1973 WASHINGTON – Secretary of Agriculture Earl L. Butz said “no” to a

freeze on food prices Friday, joining the White House in counseling consumer patience. But other administration officials conceded the food price crunch will worsen before it gets better.

75 years ago — 1948

Ed Topp, editor of The Tiger Rag at Memphis State College, looked upon a set of paintings and was moved to join at least one fragment of the art world that has turned thumbs down on some of the contemporary production. Up in Boston, where almost anything can happen, the Institute of Modern Art denounced certain contemporary painters and critics as “a cult of bewilderment and doubletalk,” and with that out of its system, the Institute substituted “Contemporary” for “Modern” in its name.

100 years ago — 1923

EL DORADO, Ark. – Paul Vitek, a former Chicago newsboy, is the head of a company that brought in a 40,000barrel oil well in the Smackover field yesterday afternoon. The well started to flow at the rate of 15,000 barrels Thursday evening gradually increasing until some estimates as high as 75,000 have been made.

125 years ago — 1898

A big real estate deal has just been consummated by which $80,000 and the title to 32,000 acres of land in Sunflower County, Miss., change hands, and the trade directly affects quite a number of Memphians. The land was the property of the Sunflower Land and Manufacturing Company of Memphis and was sold to a party of Iowa capitalists.

BRANDON DILL / FOR THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL March 10, 2011: Standing on his custom flatboat, environmentalist Chad Pregracke, left, talks with Cargill employee and volunteer Kevin Byrd about the lake of garbage floating on the Mississippi River. Pregracke has been traveling the Mississippi to aid cleanup of trouble spots such as this. In Memphis volunteers from Cargill were joined by dozens of students participating in an “alternative spring break” to help with the project. Tons of garbage was removed from the river in just a few days.