All eyes wind up on the excitement surrounding the University of Mississippi and the thousands of bright students that arrive to town every year.

Then there’s the fun, games and shopping on the Square. There’s businesses all along Jackson Avenue to fit just about every need. Vision 2037 was a hot topic this year as Oxford plans for its future and business corridors.

But let’s remember in the L-O-U area, the L stands for Lafayette County. There is more to Lafayette County than beautiful hilly countryside, subdivisions popping up and bickering about zoning. There are interesting and friendly people doing creative things that will last for dozens of years to come.

Take for example Rusty Pinion in the Tula community. He played in a band and got tired of life on the road, so he created the Tula Opry. It’s now a place people from Lafayette County and beyond its borders come every month to have a wholesome family experience in a unique building. Love music but don’t want to deal with boisterous behavior, smoking and dipping or alcohol? Take the drive out to Tula.

But Pinion didn’t stop there. After retirement he decided to put his woodworking skills to use and is renovating the old, abandoned post office there in Tula, right across the street from the Opry. There are hundreds of old photographs that eventually will be on display, hopefully in the spring, for residents to take a trip down memory lane and enjoy. William Faulkner fans come out to Tula routinely to see what he was talking about in his novels, and they will be able to stop in there too and learn a little more about a spot in the road in Lafayette County that once had a business college in the 1920s. And, the restored post office will give the small community one less abandoned building.

So we encourage you to take a drive, get outside the borders of Oxford and see what the county has to offer. Pinion is just one of many neat people doing exciting things to make a mark and ensure Lafayette County is a cozy and special place to live in for time to come.