Tish Bowie Goodman was reared in a North Greenwood neighborhood in a time when she could reasonably expect that the house she grew up in would always be her family home.
It seemed that everyone in her neighborhood knew everyone else. Tish, 58 now, could ride her bicycle anywhere and never get lost, and her mom, Rose Marie Bowie, always knew Tish was safe and that if she got hungry, some other mom would offer her lunch or a snack and send her back home. Neighbors were all friends, and so were their kids, and that’s the way it would always be — very Leave It to Beaver and Happy Days.
But life happens.
When Tish graduated from Pillow Academy and left home for Mississippi State University, things did change. Her pace of life picked up. She had to grow up, make decisions for her future. After earning her degree in interior design from State, she married Paul Goodman in 1989; moved to Oxford, where he would finish his law degree at the University of Mississippi; then moved with him to his hometown of Tupelo to start his practice. In a couple of years, they moved to Greenwood and soon learned they were expecting their daughter, Abbey, who arrived in 1995.
While Paul worked, Tish, who had taken some real estate courses, started flipping houses, before flipping was even a thing.
“We’d buy a house, and I’d do some renovations, and we’d sell it and buy our next one, then do it all over again,” Tish said. It was fun and profitable, and she got to use her degree. Eventually, Tish and Paul divorced, and Tish and Abbey continued the frequent moves.
In 2000, Tish and her dad, Sonnie Bowie, opened Bowie Realty in Greenwood. At age 5, Abbey lost her father when Paul died. And Tish and Abbey remained on the move.
One day, Tish and Abbey were talking with one of Abbey’s elementary school teachers at Pillow, when the teacher leaned down and asked the child where she lived — her address.
“Abbey just looked up at me with a question-mark face,” Tish said. “We’d had so many addresses she couldn’t keep up with them!”
That moment was life-changing for Tish and Abbey. Tish had envisioned a childhood for her daughter similar to the one she had had, but the steady churn of homes had gotten in the way. Tish knew then that she needed to find a place that would be a good fit for her and Abbey, and it wasn’t long before a house on East Barton Avenue became available. It became the only address Abbey would need to remember as she finished growing up.
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“This house was in my old stamping grounds, just a few houses away from my parents,” Tish said. “I used to sell Girl Scout cookies every year to the people who owned it.
“I knew I’d need help from Mama and Daddy with Abbey because I was working so much,” Tish continued. “They were wonderful with her, and Abbey loved being with them. They helped with homework and babysitting and picking up and dropping off — just about all the things they did for my brother Mark and me when we were growing up in the same neighborhood.”
Tish bought the Barton Avenue house in 2003 from the estate of the late Charlie Henry and Linda Dunn, only the second owners of the house, which was built in 1957.
“When a house feels right, you just know it will be,” Tish said. “It was that perfect fit, and I knew it as soon as I walked in. I knew it had good bones and that I wouldn’t have to do a whole lot of renovating right away. We’re coming up on 22 years now, and I haven’t even once wanted to move again.”
If there’s one umbrella-type description Tish makes about the house, she said, “It has character.” As a Realtor, she is in and out of houses all the time — new, old and renovated. The design trend for a long time, she said, has been all white walls and all white kitchens, so she’s happy to hear from design experts that 2025 is the year that trend will yield to a warmer palette of hues found in nature, like creams and earth tones, which Tish has used throughout the house since moving in and has never regretted.
Where there is hardwood flooring in the house, it’s the original flooring, and it has held up beautifully. Tish has updated some of the other flooring with tile, for example, in the kitchen and baths.
Tish has arranged the rooms for maximum flow, as she enjoys entertaining. The game table in her living room is currently set up for mahjong. She and some friends have recently started learning to play.
“It’s fancier than bunko,” she said, “and not as complicated as bridge. We meet monthly at The Alluvian to play, and we practice at home. It’s a lot of fun.”
Tish frequently attends estate sales and is always on the lookout for interesting items. The piece behind the mahjong table is from Russell’s Warehouse Antiques in Greenwood. It’s a dry wet bar, she said, because it’s not connected to plumbing.
The formal dining room table is almost always set for service. Tish’s collection of silver in all its useful forms is extensive. Usually with the help of a sympathetic friend for company, Tish works diligently to keep it gleaming. On the sideboard is a sterling champagne bucket with what looks like a ball of moss nested inside its opening. Tish rarely discards any family pieces, and she has decorated the faux moss on this ball to happy effect with brooches and pins she has found that belonged to her grandmothers.
Tish’s kitchen feels like the heart of the home. She had the original cabinets refaced and the linoleum flooring replaced with ceramic tile. She added an island topped with granite and replaced the original countertops with the same granite. And she said she’s gone through a couple of rotations of new appliances since she moved in.
Connected to the kitchen is a comfortable breakfast room that used to be the den. At the end opposite the kitchen is a wall of built-ins that hold books and other treasures, such as some of Tish’s collection of original McCarty pottery. Her Yorkshire Terrier, Beau, likes the built-ins so much that he has moved into the space that was originally intended to house a cabinet TV.
“It’s his condo,” Tish explained. “He loves to give tours of it to his visitors.”
Down a few brick steps is a room with some local history. The original owners of the house were James and Alice Gardner, who also owned Mary Bell’s Flowers, a florist shop in Greenwood. They had this room built as a greenhouse, Tish said, complete with a (still) working fireplace and skylights to protect the more tender plants from the cold winter weather. When Tish moved in, she had the room adapted more to people’s needs, and it’s a comfortable, inviting den now.
As we turn to walk back up the steps to the breakfast room, our eye catches a large sign over the wide doorway: GREENWOOD. Tish found the sign in a client’s house and asked the owner if she could buy it. She recognized it as the original train depot sign that announced where the rail travelers had just arrived.
Through the hall leading to the primary bedroom, on the first floor, is one of Tish’s favorite finds. It’s an antique dental cabinet built in the 1920s to hold a dentist’s instruments and supplies, complete with milk glass trays and drawer organizers. Tish uses it for jewelry. It was last used, professionally, in the office of the late Dr. Richard Flowers, a longtime Greenwood dermatologist.
Tish’s bedroom and its bath are cozy, and she is converting a smaller adjacent bedroom into a generous-sized closet. A special feature she installed in a window in her bedroom is a bird feeder anchored to the bottom ledge of a window. The feeder space is a rounded platform that juts into the room and is surrounded by a semi-circle of clear glass, so that it’s almost as if the birds, as well as an occasional squirrel, actually come inside the bedroom to feed. Beau is a big fan of this display. He supervises all the morning feedings, which require about 20 pounds of feed each month, Tish said.
Upstairs are two guest bedrooms and a shared bath, ready for company at a moment’s notice.
“This is the furniture I grew up with,” Tish said. Abbey used it, too, and it’ll be available for future generations. Abbey recently married Brandon Hanks, and they live in Cleveland, but she does marketing and graphic design for The Mississippi Gift Company in Greenwood.
Tish is hyper-involved in activities in the city, and that involvement frequently offers her opportunities for entertaining at home. She’s serving, for the second time, as senior warden on the Vestry at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity. She just finished a term as president of the Rotary Club of Greenwood, and she serves on the boards of the Fuller Center, the Greenwood Garden Club and the Community Kitchen.
“I love being busy,” Tish said, “and I love chaos — doing things with other people, getting together with friends. Over the years, my immediate family has shrunk to only four people, so I just invite myself to friends’ family reunions sometimes!”
Wherever she finds herself, though, her love and appreciation for the home she owns has only grown since she bought it. “It was a good move,” she said, “one of the best.”
- This article first appeared in Leflore Illustrated, a quarterly magazine published by The Greenwood Commonwealth.
