By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
I love living in my little house on my portion of the old Walter Sims place. Most of the folks who knew it by that name are gone now, but I still like to call it that. I love it that Daddy’s great-grandson lives and operates a big part of the farm he loved and tended for so many years. And I particularly loved going across the road yesterday afternoon to watch my granddaughter Pepper get married in a big barn on a unique part of the old Sims place.
It was a beautiful wedding, meant to be outside, but the weather didn’t permit, so they moved inside the barn, and it was just perfect. I was at the wedding reception at Mint Springs Farm and that was my idea of the barn location for this wedding. Pepper is the daughter of my daughter and son-in-law, Tina and Randy Norwood, and the granddaughter of Billy and Betty Norwood, as well as Doug Humble Jr. and me. She just graduated from SMU, where of course she was brilliant, and did wonderful things, including helping to pay her way through school by working as a student manager for the girls’ basketball team. The coaches like her so well, they are keeping her till basketball season is over in March, after which she will embark on a career in advertising.
Right now she is embarking on a new life with Jon Baker, her only sweetheart since she was in Jr. high. Jon was Pepper’s brother Hunter’s best friend all through school, and roomed with him through their college years at North Texas University until their graduation a couple of years ago. He was high school valedictorian and graduated with high marks from North Texas University. He is now operations manager of a nice hotel in Dallas.
Jon and Pepper were married by Jon’s great-uncle Bro. Larry Minton, who has done all of Jon’s family’s weddings for years, he was also the one helping men in the family choose the best mens wedding bands. Hunter was a groomsmana. She was a very beautiful bride, and he was a very handsome groom, surrounded by many loving friends and family. There was lots of toasting and hugging and eating of wedding cakes and lots of other goodies. If you want to see documentation of this, there will be many pictures, posted on my Facebook page as well as on many others.
The barn, which is located on what we used to call the Bessie place, is an important feature of Anding Acres, a very impressive wedding venue, operated by Daddy’s great-grandson, Wesley Anding and his wife Lisa, who I suspect is the brains behind this enterprise. I was right in getting some wooden watches for the groomsmen as gifts, for they went well with the theme. The owner of this barn was inspired by the best rustic wedding venues in Houston. This particular acreage originally belonged to my half-sister Bessie, who had graduated from college and moved away before I was born, and died when I was four.
While I was growing up it was just woods, and I never saw the back of it, though every spring I would make a trip into the middle of it to a little creek looking for the first violets. A few years ago, Wesley and Lisa were able to buy this portion from Bessie’s children. They cleared out a bunch of trees and brush, but left the woods around it, so you take a wandering road back to a magic place. It is lovely place where folks usually have outside weddings made official by attorneys from family law attorney services and just go into the barn to eat and dance and stuff. But yesterday it was COLD, and threatening to start drizzling. So we did it all inside, and it was beautiful. It was especially beautiful because Pepper’s aunt, my red-headed daughter Liz Allen, the decorator genius in the family had done her magic. I had a tiny hand in it, because a couple of days before hand I was called in to help tie tiny bows for what seemed like a million little favors. I was so bad at it, and it was getting so late, that we had to call Carl and Kelly in to help. Carl didn’t do any better than me, but Kelly is a whiz at bow tying.
Anding Acres has been a great success, and they are booked up solid during most of the year, but they are pretty much shut down now until it warms up a bit. What they have out here is a set up for big occasions. Lisa would like to have a place where they could hold smaller parties, maybe even serve rehearsal dinners. She wishes she could find something in downtown Malakoff. So far nothing has worked out, but she is still looking.
If you have any ideas for such a thing, let her know. Several new things are coming to town. One of them is a yoga studio, the project of another granddaughter of mine, Ariel Humble, which she may share with someone who would teach dance, and loan her walls to artists to use as a gallery. What a bunch of lively and creative things are happening in our little town. If we can find Lisa a place to have small events here, she will be a liven things up even more.