I just showed you the train station, which is, I think, a fancy restaurant today. Just about the only other thing in town that these young people would recognize today, at least by its name, is this.

Most of the advertisements are for businesses in Montgomery, Birmingham, Columbus and neighboring Opelika. But there's not a lot of Auburn businesses running ads in the 1924 Auburn yearbook. That's simply because there wasn't a lot going on in town yet. Of the ones in this book, only Toomer's remains. "The store on the corner" is still there; it's a gift shop now.

Change happens, slowly, then suddenly. The class of 1924 knew a different place than I studied in, a period which I've come to think of as the delayed end of the post-G.I. Bill boom. That was, of course, one of the three biggest catalysts in the 20th century. (The interstate and Bo Jackson being the others.) Another boom came along early in the 21st century, and a lot of what you could see now is dizzingly unrecognizable today to people beyond a certain vintage. That's a thing people always have to reconcile about small places when they get much, much larger. In the 1920 Census, 2,143 people lived in the loveliest village. In the 2020 Census, the number was 76,143. Estimates put it well north of 80,000 today. No longer a village, they're not done growing yet.

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