After Nina “Bird” Garvin Montgomery died in 2000, her family was moved by a worn paring knife long used at one of the town’s most hospitable tables and by a yellowed picture of Billy Weems, a memorable figure in Central. Local tradition held that Billy’s mother was a Scottish wanderer known for cursing in what townspeople took to be Gaelic, sleeping in graveyards, and finally disappearing one night, leaving Billy and his older brother behind. Adeline Weems reportedly found the baby crying among the gravestones, rescued both children, and raised them. Billy’s older brother was remembered by some elders as a fine singer and musician, while Billy came to think of himself as a horse. He did chores to earn meals and his first wheels, then hauled freight parcels to the depot, carried baggage for train passengers, and sometimes pulled a buggy for riders, tossing his head and pawing the dust. On one trip carrying a local doctor, he panicked at a roaring train near a railroad crossing, upsetting the buggy and leaving its passengers with broken bones. Despite such episodes, people respected Billy and cared for him; Herman Werner and some children built him a makeshift house on the old Garvin place, and he attended all the local churches regardless of denomination. Children loved to steal rides on his cart, sometimes provoking fights and punishments afterward. Teny Moore recalled that when Billy was upset, her grandmother comforted him with milk and sweet potato custard, and Billy explained that a passing businessman had ignored his greeting. For a time Billy left Central and was said to have lived in Mississippi working on the levees as a loustabout. When he returned, his neigh was gone and even the sight or smell of fried fish made him sick. Around 1908 Billy declined and died, and the people of Central buried him, as best remembered, in Mount Zion Cemetery.