By Maylon Rice
I mean those brilliantly white, billowy-looking corsages, to be pinned of course on your date or girlfriend, dress or suit jacket, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
And these floral tributes were, as I have said, huge.
The flowers all came from the two full-service florists in Warren back then – neither firm, sadly, survives today.
There was the Kelly’s Florist and Gifts, run by at least two generations of Kelly family. The spacious glass and wood frame floral shop was just across the street from the Bradley Mill and just blocks off the Banks Highway, out in what was then West Warren. Kelly’s had an impressive walk-in cooler, a large cooler display case and loads and loads of floral gifts for engagements, weddings, showers, new babies and of course, funerals.
At the downtown location, in the old Mansion style former home of Frazer Funeral Home was Frazer’s Floral. Run by Julius Brown and her long-time assistant, Minnie Harley, both sisters of the Bernard Frazer and John Frazer Jr’s aunts.
You walked up the front steps of the building and the flower shop was right there. They carried a smaller collection of floral arrangements and I don’t recall the plethora of gifts that Frazer’s carried. They, too, did all types of floral arrangements for all occasions.
Both floral houses did the ALL mums for Warren’s Homecoming celebrations.
Back then the flowers were predominately fresh mum heads and very few were done in artificial mums. The colorful orange and black satin ribbon streamers were not as long in those days (only a few inches below the mum itself) unlike some produced today and are almost touching the ground.
And most of the mums came with only a couple of plastic or metal trinkets on them...usually a small plastic football charm and maybe a small tin bell. Or a cheerleading megaphone. One year a set had small football players on the ribbons and always the metal trinkets were like individual charms for a charm bracelet – which were all the rage back then.
I was never sure, if this Homecoming Mum tradition, was a Southern thing, but if one were to check on the popular website know it all search engine – Wikipedia – that source says the trend is a Texas thing.
Well back in the era of these Pastimes, Texas traditions for us rural Arkansas kids was a no deal proposition.
But the flowers, themselves, were so fragile. At least once every Homecoming someone would bump into another wearing a corsage and almost all
The petals would simply fall out.
Tears would usually commence. And the more people tried to fix it – well the worse it looked.
Most all the girls with a date to Homecoming wore a mum. The small plastic boxes provided by the florist, held two oversized pins to affix the flowers to the coat or dress your date wore.
Now the mums, many carried a black or orange pipe-clearer type twisty “W” that was affixed to the mum itself. I have never gotten over how long it took the girl and her mom, to pin a corsage on the dress. They would fuss over how to get the corsage pinned on straight and then have the “W” be a little cock-eyed. So the only witness to the off-plump corsage is in photos taken with that old Swinger Instant camera by Polaroid or the old fashioned Brownie box camera by the dads.
Girls in the band could not wear their Homecoming corsage on the black jacket uniform of the day. That was an ironclad “Martin rule.” And neither could the Majorette, but this was traditionally the “fire baton night,” so that was out of the question.
Most of the band girls with a date, got their corsage in the box, brought it to the game in the see through plastic box. As soon as the last note was played in the bandstand, they quickly changed their clothes and out came the Homecoming Mums.
Later on at Henderson State College, the ribbons on the same type of big white, mums, usually carried the Greek Letters of the various Sororities.
Across the street (Highway 7) were the Social Clubs at Ouachita Baptist University, they had no dancing or sororities over there (it was a Baptist thing), the musical gathering where the hips were swaying were always called “social functions.” And the mums at OBU were the large golden variety – not white - of course - gold and purple are the colors of Ouachita’s Tigers.
There were few Homecoming dances back then in Warren after Lumberjack games on a cool October evening. There were some private parties and some small in home gatherings outside the Dairy Queen. Or if it was just the solitariness of simply cruising the Kroger lot, the girls wore the mums.
But even then, if you had a date for Homecoming and no real agenda event following the game. Your girl sure looked good in her Homecoming mum.
And that is a Pastime to remember here in the cool, fall evenings of Southeast Arkansas high school football.
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