By John Cofield

The Country Village Mall, with The Warehouse restaurant, J.W. Forrester’s oyster bar, Cofield’s Studio, and more, was the first time Oxford knew we were cool like Overton Square in Memphis, cool.

And town, county, and campus were laid low when the building was gone with the wind on the night of February 15, 1986. Post-fire morning felt like a funeral on the Square. Folks just stood in the street and shook their heads. Some tears were shed.

L.W. Thomas was an Oxford character and Warehouse restaurant manager who is dearly missed to this day, but on that day, he was coming around the Square with a fellow employee, and turning to walk down Jackson, prayed out loud that the fire did not start in the restaurant kitchen.

It had not.

It was then left to The Gin and The Hoka to take our new vibe and carry it on down the Oxford road, and they certainly did. I call that area where these three stood a Velvet Ditch (stolen term), so easy to fall into and hard to climb out of.