Winning speller in homemade dress
By Donna Traywick
Mt. Olivet News
I am so happy to know that Pilgrims Rest Baptist Church with Brother Daniel Minor will
be having a gospel singing on the first Sunday night of each month and so will Bro. Tray
Smith’s Pentecostal Church.
They sang at the Panola County Singing Convention at Mt. Olivet on Sept. 15 The
congregation enjoyed them both.
Sunday was a wonderful day at Mt. Olivet. We were blessed and honored to have
Dwight Arbuckle, wife Barbara and son Nathan attend church services, they are visiting
from Florida. I missed his booming voice singing specials. The choir sang one of his
favorite songs, “It is Well with My Soul”. We wish them well as they return to Florida
near the hurricane.
We were also delighted to have Ann Browning and daughter Sandra from Alabama at
church. Ann grew up in the Mt. Olivet teachers’ home. When they closed Mt. Olivet,
Horace Browning brought the teachers home. Before they tore down the school, Ann,
brother Larry, Lynda, Jane and Ricky, played “School” all the time there. They could
write on the black boards and play “teacher”.
Mt. Olivet formally was a large high school. They had a winning basketball team. Of
course, they played on a dirt and dusty court. My brother Eugene Palmertree was one
of their players. They eventually reduced it down from first to sixth grade. My little class
was one of the last classes to leave Mt. Olivet in 1951.
Our little 6-member class was Jonell Robinson, Mary Quay Tidwell, William Hudson,
Preston Tidwell, Wayne Tidwell and me. Of course, everything was so new to us. Riding
that long school bus ride into town was fun at first. Our 7 th grade class met in what later
became the agricultural shop. There were 25 or 30 in our section.
We adjusted surprisingly well to have some from such a simple background. I attributed
that to all the dedicated teachers that we had; they all lived in the teachers' home that
Horace bought when they consolidated.
I remember that Miss Shirley Smith (Later wife of teacher Lloyd Joiner) was my fourth-
grade teacher. Panola County School District had an annual spelling bee. All the

winners from each school could participate in the large county wide spelling bee.
Dorothy Ann Tidwell and I were the Mt. Olivet winners. Dorothy Ann was the sister to
Linda Tidwell Lawrence, my neighbor.
The spelling bee was held in the old elementary school building stage. What an
adventure! We had never known anything like that, the building seemed old then.
For me to have something to wear my mother made me a little yellow plaid Eisenhower
type jacket and a pleated skirt made from a pair of men’s khaki pants. How in the world
she did that, I will never know.
Miss Shirley just raved about my little outfit. I felt ashamed because my clothes were
homemade and everyone else had store-bought. Little did I know then that I had
designer originals. Miss Jessie was an amazing woman.
In 1938 my daddy, Jeff Palmertree, bought 200 acres in what is now Mt. Olivet
community. It was in the middle of the depression and eight children. He paid $1000 for
the 200 acres. That was a lot of money during the depression.
Ponder This: Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful of your day.
– Mark Twain
Write to Donna at donnatraywickmusic@gmail.com