More and more, we like to think of Huntsville as a big city, one of the boom towns in the South. But whenever I want to see what Huntsville was like before the rockets and the interstate came to town, I head over to Mullins Restaurant on Andrew Jackson Way.

Here, I can get the scores of the 1953 Rison School basketball team. I can also get the roster of that team. I don't recognize a single player, but I know Rison's basketball team team won 11 games and lost four that season. I know because the record and the team photo are on one of the restaurant's walls.

If Huntsville still has a gathering spot, Mullins Restaurant is among them. Old-timers in small towns all over Alabama still bemoan the losses of general-merchandise stores that were longtime social centers. In Huntsville, we're lucky. Mullins Restaurant, open for more than 70 years, is still around to remind us that Huntsville still clings to small-town ways.

I went there the other day around lunch. The first thing I saw was a newspaper clipping taped to the front door, reminding customers about summer reunions of Jackson Way Baptist Church and Lincoln School, both institutions in northeast Huntsville.