You hate to look it up, lest you find it was named for George Winner, a postmaster, instead of something else. Such as “the town was named for being the victor in a contest to thrash the most hay” or something. Let’s google . . . Ah!

Winner was laid out in 1909, and named for the fact the town had emerged the "winner" as the county's most successful trading point.

Yay.

Jim Palmer, Hall of Fame pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, played for a college league team in Winner in the summer of 1963. He said "There are 2,500 people in Winner...There are four girls in town, two restaurants, one movie, no TV, no air-conditioning, and the temperature is always about a hundred.

Wimp.

Well, we’ve seen this countless times. Evidence of a downtown rehab to lure back the shoppers, empty corner stores that looked like the Nice Place for Nice Things.

Let's see if it's worked.

Hmm. The OUMB isn’t that U, and it really makes you wonder whether they stuck that curved window on an old 50s structure.

Your lawyer can frequently be found on the roof, wearing pointy shoes and smoking a hookah

On the left: a small Greek building that committed a crime and had to be imprisoned.

The building on the left expanded into the one on the right and wanted to make sure things stayed that way.

I too had SimCity designs that didn’t work out as expected

Have a seat on the bench! Look around and enjoy the revivified downtown!

There’s your theater.

The old Ritz. You’d be surprised to see what it looked like once.

YES INDEED

The problem with those great old signs? Once the struts and supports rusted, I think most owners just said “nah” and didn’t bother to replace them.

I don’t know what eldritch moss is covering the sign and I do not want to know

That’s adorable:

Somehow I don’t think it’ll ever be twinned.

This is the most Dakota tableau I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s the empty bench looking towards the street that somehow completes the scene.

This one BUGS ME

. . . because I can’t figure out the brick. Did they redo the corner when the building next door also got a new facade? Because the ground-floor entrance / window area brick doesn’t match the top. Except it does. Except it doesn’t.

It’s the skinny appliance deliverman from the “Money for Nothing” video

“Treats and Treasures”

Well, yes, the color does make people notice it, I’ll give them that.

But it’s a bit much, and overwhelms the fine old classical details. At least we have the pediment again.

Wonder what the sign said? Wonder if they’ll ever pull it down.

Angled wood to ensure modernity and up-to-date attitudes. Winner: a can-do city! Just look at this wood and how it’s tilted.

Different stone styles to indicate two eras. The cool 50s stone on the left, the more sedate, rote, and no-doubt cost efficient basic brick of later decades.

One doesn’t get that winning feeling, but the locals might well tell you different.