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The rain over the weekend, gave a time of recess to the student “artists,” at Charles Henderson High School and Pike Liberal Arts School.

The students are giving a colorful, and much needed, facelift to the mural on the north side of the BlueKey Properties building on North Three Notch Street in downtown Troy. And had it not been for the rain, the mural might have — just might have – been close to being finished.

However, Pam Smith, retired Charles Henderson High School art teacher, said the mural was painted over a period of three school years so…. it might still take a while.

The mural was painted by students in a Charles Henderson High School’s art classes in 1996, 97 and 98 under Smth’s leadership.

The mural is reminiscent of the days gone by when the railroad train ran through the countryside hauling materials needed for finished products. The Pike County countryside was a landscape of barns, cotton fields, hay fields, woodlands, wood houses, and, of course, a schoolhouse and a country store were mainstays.

Smith said the idea was not to change the mural but to renew the colors and, perhaps, give a face-lift to some of the structures, several of which were “subjects” for those who visited the Pioneer Museum of Alabama in Troy to get a better understand of rural life.

“But, the schoolhouse is red,” one of the students said.

But, it was white, said Barbara Tatom, director of the Pioneer Museum of Alabama, in expressing appreciation to Smith and Karvarus Moore, visual art teacher at CHHS. for their desire to keep the mural as close as it was painted from 96-98

“At the museum, we greatly appreciate the mural that shares the story of Alabama’s pioneers,” Tatom said.

Several of the museum’s buildings and a train of the era, can be enjoyed by visitors to the Pioneer Museum of Alabama as an extension of the mural that is the work of Troy high school students, past and present.