Saturday, June 24, 2017

Country Stores 16: Windham's Gro., Caile, Mississippi

In April of 2017, I was driving south on Mississippi highway 49W, and about half way between Indianola and Belzoni came across this little country store. The store looked unused, but a car to the left indicated that the house behind was occupied.
The faded sign said, "Sid Winham's Gro., Caile, Miss". Possibly a reader can tell us about Sid Windham or when the store was last open.

Photographs taken with a Rolleiflex 3.5E with 75mm ƒ/3.5 Schneider Xenotar lens using Kodak Panatomic-X film. I scanned the negatives with a Minolta Scan Multi medium format film scanner using Silverfast Ai software.

2 comments:

Suzassippi said...

According to Wikipedia, Sid and Helen Windham operated the store from April 1954 until 1997. The building was constructed 1930 by Herman C Burrus. It is listed in the MDAH historic resources inventory, but there is no additional information. Mrs. Windham died in 2014, and Mr. Windham in 2016. The Windhams appeared in the newspapers frequently (as was the custom of the times) for visiting family and friends, but I found only one mention of the store itself, which was the location of a community welcome home visit for a returning service member in 1991.

Anonymous said...

Sid Windham was my father-in-law. He and my MIL, Helen operated the store and farmed there in Caile. He was born in 1924, and she was born in 1921. They were married for 71 years. They had one child, my wife, and lived in the rear of the store. Sid's great grandfather moved to Caile from Noxubee County in 1860. Our family still retains some of the land that he purchased at that time.