Let Me Tell Y’all A Story is a weekly column that’s not focused on sports. It’s brought to you by our partners at Chuck Owens, Alfa Insurance.

You didn’t know ahead of time when your last Thanksgiving Eve at The Mallard would be.

You got ready like you always did, picking out your favorite button up to pair with Clarks and jeans.

You made the drive down Highway 51, and went upstairs to a room with a bar, a dance floor, and your friends, who’d all been drawn back home for the holiday.

Eventually though, as your mid 20s loomed, you walked back to your car at the end of the night, and you looked at the girlfriend and said, “there were too many people that were in elementary when we graduated, we’re done.”

You didn’t go back after that, feeling ok with handing over the tradition to a younger generation.

That space is gone now, taken by a fire and replaced with a new version of The Mallard that carries on the tradition of Dixie Springs Café.

Your girlfriend is your wife. You’ve got kids. Thanksgiving Eve is now a time to plan how many sides you’ll put away at lunch on Turkey Day.

You’re typing this while watching Stranger Things with your kids on the couch.

Bedtime is early now and will be even earlier on Thursday when the tryptophan hits.

However, you’re not going to see this Wednesday come and go without thinking about those good times that fell around years 18-24 of your life.

The friends who started their college experience at the local community college, catching up with their peers that had returned home from Oxford, Starkville, Hattiesburg and some even more exotic locations.

Everyone had experienced almost a full semester of school since last seeing each other at the end of the summer.

The night was about catching up.

What was going on in your dating life, did you change majors, is your crazy roommate still hording the condiments in their sock drawer instead of the fridge?

The soundtrack of all that was DJ Aaron, playing the hits on his Dell laptop.

Lil John and the East Side Boyz.

Usher.

Ying Yang in this thang.

I think it was a lack of Lil John tunes that had one of my friends, who shall remain unnamed, ready to slam the Dell shut one night.

Dancing. Laughing. People smoking inside.

An occasional fight between some Pike County cage fighters.

Nothing too bad though, just some ole boys barking in a parking lot at closing time.

I once got hemmed up by an angry crowd at a joint outside of Kentwood back in these days. Someone had said something disparaging about LSU on the way out and they wanted blood.

Don’t think it was all about debauchery. Don’t think it was all about drunken stupidity.

I mean, there was some of that too.

I turned 21 the week before Thanksgiving. A week later, I came into the kitchen after my first legal Thanksgiving Eve at the The Dirty Duck with all my friends.

“You look like hell,” said Mama in her matter-of-fact way, as she worked on the lunch spread

It was about more than just cutting up, though.

It was about the last vespers of togetherness.

We didn’t realize it, but adulthood was on the horizon.

Kids, mortgages, the ability to make better decisions – some of the time.

Those things pushed us further away from one another. They made us too busy to catch up and laugh and dance.

You can’t just show up and eat now on Turkey Day, or else who’d cook the meal.

The memories, they’ll suffice.

Especially the ones that contain the friends we miss the most. Trent, Grant, and Ashmore all loved a good night at The Mallard.

We’ve all got our favorite stories from that time, most too problematic to be told here.

My personal favorite involves a guy walking back to Brookhaven when he couldn’t find a ride.

So long, to the Mallard of our youth. So long, Lil John and The Eastide Boyz. So long, Wednesday night before Thanksgiving.

Thanks for some of the memories.