Alina's Adventures

Discovering a time when Leonard Michaels lived in Tuscaloosa.

Because I have never read a writer who can put so much tension in a single sentence and call it "prose". While searching for his essays online, I found a passage in Mary Ward Brown's Fanning The Spark: A Memoir, which describes Michaels' sojourn at the University of Alabama. 

All the exquisite writers who have walked along the Black Warrior... what would they recognize of our town if they returned? What unique history have been we preserved in the rush for Progress?

"I’d go mad with concern over semicolons. Conjunctions ruined my sleep. I wanted no needless sound in my sentences. I hated to use adverbs because of the “ly” endings. They seemed like sloopy trailers. They made the sense mushy and weak and artificial. I didn’t want to mean anything beyond what could inhere in the particular limited aural sensation. Idea and sound had to be exactly the same length, or the same density, as if a word could be flesh. That used to be my idea of real writing. Sculptural."

Personal rants aside, here is "The Lost Interview" from The Paris Review as well the relevant local history excerpt:

 

The old cattle barn in Hurricane Creek Park.

Fred Fisher, the husband of Angelynn Parks Fisher, spent many happy days at Hurricane Creek where his father-in-law, the late Stanley Parks, owned a large chunk of property. Upon the death of the late Stanley Parks, this property was sold to the Trust for Public Land, a land trust, for the purpose of fulfilling Stanley's wish that the public enjoy this land for perpetuity.

This area is known as Hurricane Creek Park, though the Friends of Hurricane Creek (disclaimer: I am on the Board of this organization) would prefer the name be Stanley Parks Nature Preserve. If you walk the trails, you'll discover all kinds of stories. 

The North Loop leads through the area where Mr. Fisher once raised a barn and kept cattle.

You can recognize the premises by the mossy fence and the massive old tree, a survivor of storms and incubator of stories.

The relics of remain to be interpreted. Once upon a time, there was a barn built painstakingly by men to house and nurture cattle. 

A tornado whirled through and demolished the barn and the workshop, the hallowed family places and spaces, pockets of nature that begin to feel like home. What you see is the remains-- what looks like junk from here is the skeleton of a family story.

What was this? What can we read beyond the rust? How do we keep the past from haunting us by its incompleteness?

After roaming through the old stable area, remembering Mr. Fisher mentioned horses- horseback rides through the woods at family events- I think of how much care we put into places that disappear. How much we hope in our hearts that someone will keep these places from disappearing completely. How only stories keep breathing when material expires.

The Eldest looks for tadpoles in the lake created by Mr. Fisher as a watering hole for the cattle. If you're looking for stories written in trees, visit Hurricane Creek Park and wander through the North Loop. Do it for the late Stanley Parks, whose family left this land for you.

Roamschooling Greenwood Cemetery in Tuscaloosa.

The historic plaque at Greenwood.

After reading a few poems at the downtown Dunkin' Doughnuts and meeting a man from Gujarat who longed to return to the bright colors and unanxious life of his Indian homeland, we wandered over to the Greenwood Cemetery. According to the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society:

Greenwood is one of the oldest cemeteries in Tuscaloosa County, having been laid out shortly after the first survey of the city of Tuscaloosa in 1821. In it are the graves of many of early Tuscaloosa’s most prominent citizens. Among those is Dr. John Drish, a famed doctor and landowner, and Solomon Perteat, a prominent free, black craftsman who lived in Tuscaloosa prior to the Civil War.

Only grass covers many of the older plots of African and Native Americans and white settlers. 

Greenwood is the final resting place of five veterans of the American Revolution as well as more than 2,500 other individuals in marked and unmarked graves.

The bitter cold left us prey to a sun with teeth. Prophet, Gnome, and the Eldest wandered through the cemetery looking for their favorite gravestone. It was intriguing to see the difference in their preferences. 

Prophet's favorite.

Prophet liked the "big ones with entire families." She said there was something "kind" about being buried side by side with parents and uncles and aunts. She also got very upset when she found "baby gravestones" tiny as cereal boxes. I read the dates- one of which went back to 1867- and showed her the mother's grave nearby. Both the baby and the mother had been buried on the same day. 

She wanted to know why. I told her about the influenza pandemics and how mothers sometimes died during or after childbirth when midwives were unable to attend their labors. Winter babies were especially vulnerable. The Eldest walked around to check the months on the baby graves

The Eldest said this one was his favorite for the fabric draping.

Gnome was busy pouting and declined to select a favorite. But this one was cool.

Pick a gravestone writing assigment.

The Eldest had a creative writing assignment. He was responsible for selecting a grave, writing down the name and date and significant details, and then creating a story about the person's life based on historic context- historical records of what happened during that time in Alabama history. The historic context would include wars, epidemics, fires, economic development, environmental hazards, legislation, etc.

I can't wait for him to share the imagined history of Permelia S. Weger with us later this afternoon.

Other interesting historical gravestones at Greenwood include:

Solomon Perteet (1789-1863)
George Whitfield Crabb (1804-1846)
 Confederate General Phillip Dale Roddey (1826-1897)
Marmaduke Williams (1774-1850)
John Mason Martin (1837-1898)
The Leland Family 
Sallie Ann Swope
Jack and Jerry Winn
Dr. William Banks (d. 1877)
Richard C. McLester and family
James and Thomas Maxwell 
Captain Benjamin T. Eddins 

An opportunity to learn about the history of Druid City this December 3.

This semester, thirteen students enrolled in “The Nineteenth Century City,” an undergraduate course taught by Dr. Sharony Green of the University of Alabama’s Department of History, searched for “the nineteenth century city” in Tuscaloosa. The results of their efforts will be presented in a 12 minute documentary music video. 

As the students walk through downtown, they appear to be in awe of the idea of “the urban space “as much as they are in awe of the details on dwellings that date back to the nineteenth century like Christ Episcopal Church and Depalma’s Italian Restaurant, formerly the First National Bank.

Join them at the Jemison Mansion on Wednesday, December 3 at 5:30pm where they will continue their commitment to learning about emerging urban life, not only in Tuscaloosa, but America. It provides an opportunity to not only hear great music and see a student video-documentary, but an experience in an incredible mansion that paints the picture of Tuscaloosa’s past and present. Dr. Robert Mellown, a renowned retired UA art history professor, will be the keynote speaker. He will also stay after to sign copies of his latest book The University of Alabama: A Guide to the Campus and Its Architecture.

Searching for Franklin Daugherty and his Isle of Joy.

Franklin Daugherty’s wry Isle of Joy pits boosters against historic preservationists in Mobile. Excellent characterization that brings Lee’s Smith’s sardonic touch to mind, though Smith never manages to create a character as thick as McCorquodale, who admits, “Interior decorating was not leading to my full individuation”. It was one of my favorite books last year- one that situated me squarely within the social status seeking of the Alabama leisured set. 

Publishers Weekly offered the following summary review:

Sexy, iconoclastic McCorquodale de la Rouchefoucauld (the natives say ""Roshfookle""), the niece of a poor woman obsessed with uncovering proof of high-born lineage, is convinced she is ordained to be the savior of postmodernism. When H. Sloane Wolfe, a sexually predatory, socially prominent sexagenarian banking tycoon, falls in lust with her, she determines to parlay his attentions into her own avant-garde sidewalk cafe, which she hopes will be the cornerstone for establishing Mobile as the New World Mecca of postmodernism. Her plans run afoul of a group of nouveau-riche young Rotarian types who hatch a scheme to level the historic district and build a supermall and a ""Six Flags Over Jesus"" theme park. As the new South meets the old South, it's not exactly a case of the barbarians versus the cultured, since just about everyone who has something to say is more pedantic than intelligent. But Daugherty liberally salts his tale with subplots and themes involving greed, petty social ambition, artistic freedom, gay rights and Bible Belt puritanism. Happily, earnest social commentary never gets in the way of vigorous burlesque

The Isle of Joy is a remote southward island discovered in the 1870’s by TC DeLeon, a Jewish novelist and Mardi Gras enthusiast. King Felix III lived on the Isle but undertook an annual voyage to see his Maubilian subjects for three days of “misrule” and set sail at midnight of Shrove Tuesday to return. Much of the plot weaves through the local folklore and self-made mythologizing of the Sunbelt types and "suburban polyps"- the same suburban polyps whose penchant for extensive commuting and strip-mall shopping causes the "proliferation of parking lots" bemoaned by Daughtery's protagonist. 

The real conflict emerges over schemes for downtown revitalization that somehow demand massive expenditures involving the Ten-Tom Waterway. The Tuscaloosa Eastern Bypass- with its plan to build six bridges through a public park dedicated to Hurricane Creek- was not far from my mind as I read this book.

Daugherty makes it clear that "convenience is the code-word", a far cry from the traditionalism espoused by lovers of local history and sustainable farms. The "terrible nightmares of elevated expressways” and “supermall schemes” run far too close to home to keep me from squirming a bit. Like the motto of the Hamburger Harbor Improvement Association (as if any organization with such a name should be allowed the dignity of even the most spurious motto)- “Improve through Improvement”- the thinking of local officials tends to be more directed at fast economic growth (i.e. Progress) than sustainable, long-term development. 

It takes McCorquodale, a hipster debutante intent on radical chic, to rattle the cages of ill-conceived progressive development. When she's not busy debating the "intellectual underpinnings of Mardi Gras”, McCorquodale is offering outlandish solutions to the problem of a glut in growth policy. Take, for example, the possible appointment of a  "Public necromancer” to predict which scheme which scheme on city plan would come to pass. 

Daugherty’s section of the postmodernist “Radical Chic” play that went unremarked until Orville Tidwood of the Baptist megachurch put it in the media as a “moral threat” reminds me of Soapy Jones’ popular showing of “Turn Me On, Dammit” and the scandal which packed the Bama Theatre. Obviously, no one billed the film as a family event. Yet scores of Tuscaloosa citizens found themselves absolutely shaw-ked and a-PAUL-ed to hear of a film with a female protagonist that presumed her right to sexual pleasure paralleled that of her male-gendered classmates. It was a sad day for girls in Tuscaloosa, especially those young girls still struggling to discover and reclaim their sexuality from a world that damns them to being boy-toys rather than individuals in their own rights.

Studying aquatic macroinvertebrates to learn about Hurricane Creek's health.

Yesterday's annual Hurricane Creek clean-up featured a wonderful learning opportunity for creekophiles young and old. Thanks to the University of Alabama Natural History Museum, the girls and I were able to learn how to determine stream health by surveying aquatic macroinvertebrates. 

Our benthic "macro" friends.

Gnome expresses her opinions about how macros might taste.

Recent rains left the water unusally high- where the creek normally displayed riffles, we discovered mostly roars. Amanda showed us how to collect the water from the stream and use the macro key to identify the critters.

Peering through the portable microscope to view identify local macro life is like opening your eyes to a whole new world. I was so enchanted by what I saw that I couldn't resist running back up the hill to share it with older and wiser members of our group.

Can you see the friend we spotted in the lower right hand quadrant of the view? Identification is half the fun- everyone has their own opinions and underlying reasons. Amanda thought the macro friend resembled a type of beetle larvae. Jim erred on the side of the fly fisherman's ideal- "I think it looks like a caddisfly larvae," he said.

My heart skipped a beat.

Stanley Park, Jr. surveys the macro scene.

Sharing the snapshot of stream life with Stanley Park Jr., the son of the late Stanley Park who left this land with the Trust for Public Land for the purpose of a public nature reserve, was more wonderful than I can verbalize. Something timeless permeated the scene.

The late Stanley Park, Sr., in a photo shared by his daughter, Mary Angelynn Fisher.

I imagined his father's spirit watching the microscope move from the hands of tiny children to the aging hands of his son on the banks of the beloved creek.

Fred Fisher, son-in-law of Stanley Senior, tries to determine which macro we might be seeing.

Standing there together, surrounded by the blooms of native azaleas, the voice of the Hurricane Creekkeeper mingling the play sounds of the kids, softened by the rushing of the water over the rocks, only a run-on sentence can convey the way in which our actions and awe felt like a tribute to the late Stanley Park, Sr.

I am so grateful to have met Fred, Maryangelynn, and Stanley Junior (not to mention all the other friends of Hurricane Creek who teach me so much about our local treasure)- so honored to hear these stories along the banks of a southern stream, stories which deserve to be told and retold as the future of highways and pavement strangles the delightful whispers of our natural world.

To learn more about the local history of Hurricane Creek, visit the Friends of Hurricane Creek's website and take some time to explore the memories.

Free Alabama Blues Project concert tomorrow in Tuscaloosa.

Who: ALABAMA BLUES PROJECT ADVANCED BAND

Where: Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum in Tuscaloosa

When: Saturday from 12:00 to 2:00 pm

Why: Because it will rock your socks off. For FREE.

The performance is in conjunction with the museum's Mississippi Blues photo exhibit. Mississippi Hill Country Blues: Photographs by George Mitchell, curated by the Jackson Museum of Art, which will be on display at the museum through April 26.

Admission to the concert and the photo exhibit is free. The Transportation Museum will permanently waive its admission charge, making the museum free for all Tuscaloosa residents to tour and learn about the community’s history. Don't miss out.

The local history of "old Bryce" Hospital as told by Lee Bains and the Dexateens.

The first of 3 videos in this series, all produced by Elliott McPherson.
Lee Bains narrates. 

Growing up in Tuscaloosa has its unique rites of passage. One of them nvolves celebrating that newly-minted driver's permit with a night-time visit to the ghosts and haints of Old Bryce.

The entire journey- from the borrowing of the parental gas-guzzling unit to the illegal trespassing on Bryce property to the conversing with the spirits of Bryce's former residents- feels trangressive. And the intersection of local history with young adulthood requires the exploration of liminal spaces, unspeakable places only visible to those willing to venture out in the twilight. 

I confess to having visited the "old Bryce" five times during my high school days.

The first time was all chills and thrills and rumors of blood on padded walls.

The second time involved a group of us who waited for the full moon to illuminate our way.

The third time involved the company of my high school "sweetheart" (we were anything but).

The fourth time I went alone- with only my journal and a few names gleaned from tombstones.

The fifth time was a solo act, this time equipped with tape cassette Walkman technology and the haunting voice of Margo Timmins.

The Dexateens did much better- they went there to tell the stories of Old Bryce. Perhaps they even hoped to spill its secrets. But the ghosts of the past are easier to conjure than to capture.

On Halloween 2008, they traveled out to "Old Bryce", the abandoned Jemison Mental Hospital on the outskirts of their hometown, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in an attempt to conjure up whatever spirits might still lurk there. They took their guitars, recording equipment, and a handful of songs. Fortunately, "things did not go according to plan". Any story seeking ghosts is much better when it deviates from the plan or script. 

All three videos are worth watching- a great sampling of local history to share with middle schoolers and kids. 

In Part 1, the Dexateens learn the history of the hospital, the band arrives at the hospital and performs, and plans go awry. In Part 2,  a 2nd journey is proposed and carried out, another song is performed, and an unexplained encounter occurs. In Part 3, unexplained evidence is examined.

When I first got married, the King and I feasted in many a hidden local cemetery. Whenever the discussion got around to tombstones, I told him I want to be cremated, my ashes scattered over the village of Bran in Transylvania. But I also want an overgrown, weed-covered tombstone somewhere in Tuscaloosa- a tombstone that didn't have a coffin beneath it, a tombstone inscribed only with my name and the words:

All of it ends with in a ghost story.

Fred Shuttlesworth: #2 of my top 25 Alabamians.

2. FRED SHUTTLESWORTH

The boy who became the man known as Fred Shuttlesworth grew up under the rigid system of segregation, which used skin color to determine the value and honor accorded a human being. Segregation served as both a political and an economic way in which to preserve the heavy hierarchies of southern society. Most people fail to question the ugliness of an official policy; once something gains the status of law, the majority tends to comply.

As a high school student in Birmingham, Shuttlesworth complied. Like the vast majority of Alabamians living under segregation, he assumed that segregation was the only possibility, the only way things could be. After getting married in 1941, Shuttlesworth relocated to Mobile where he worked at Brookley air force base. In an interview with Bud and Ruth Schultz, Shuttlesworth described how the initial seed of activism was planted in his mind:

While there, I was encouraged to register to vote by a person in the NAACP who was very outspoken. A few of those people were tolerated. They were called "crazy niggers" or "big, uppity niggers". So long as there weren't too many of them, the system could roll on anyhow. But you had to appreciate those brave people.

Around 1954, the year when the US Supreme Court reversed the Dred Scott decision which legalized segregation, Shuttlesworth was elected Membership Chairman of the NAACP. He remembers the time as one of hope, in which the law of the land suddenly paved a path for equality. In an interview twenty years later, Shuttlesworth looked back on the times:

Well, you must remember that we were two societies. Blacks and whites couldn't play together, couldn't sit together, couldn't go down the street together in 1948 in Birmingham, Alabama. United States Senator, Glenn Taylor was arrested for sitting in a church- the same church with the black children were killed in 1963- with Negroes.

Bull Connor was the epitome of segregation and Bull Connor had a saying, "Blacks and whites are not going to segregate together." A misnomer, but he said it. And even in mass demonstrations he said, "Birmingham may become a dead city, it will never become an integrated city." And when the massive struggle began and somebody went to him and said, "Now, Mr. Connor, this is a law-abiding country…" Connor replied, "Damn the law, down here, I'm the law." 

The year 1956 strengthened his growing resolve. In May 1956, Alabama outlawed the NAACP while Shuttlesworth was still serving in his position as Membership Chairman. Shocked by the popularity and effectiveness of the Montgomery bus boycott, Alabama officials ignored the fact that the NAACP did not start the protest. In their panic, officials thought that outlawing the NAACP would, in Shuttlesworth's words, "kill the drive for freedom". The appetite for equality in a country that called itself "the land of liberty" was not going away. But Shuttlesworth understood that the strategy of the white supremacists would not work:

You can outlaw a movement, but you cannot outlaw the determination in people's minds and hearts to be free. I don't think you can do it. Then, now, anytime. You can keep a man in prison, but... you can't imprison his mind, he has to do that. By accepting the walls, actual or imagined. Freedom is something that I think people will always aspire to. And when you tell people they can't have it, this was... in effect saying, you can't hope.

You can't kill hope in people's minds and therefore we were determined. So it was on this [basis] that the Alabama Christian Movement was organized. ...I was the NAACP Membership Chairman, and, I was holding, I remember a membership meeting when this Sheriff, Deputy Sheriff came in with a roll of paper that looked liked it roll out half the room down to the floor, and he had a pistol with a shiny belt looked like it was the longest belt I'd ever seen.

He said, you're outlawed, you can't do this, you can't do that. And, of course, I didn't accept it, I told him I doubt if you're going to make this stick. And he said, well, you're outlawed. I guess the thing that got me was that people started calling up see, from all over, people saying what can we do, what can we do? Can we send things to New York?

Well, we couldn't collect membership, we couldn't do anything. And the NAACP Board, they were outlawed; our attorney Shores said, well we really can't do anything, we're outlawed. I said, we're going to have to do something. He said, well, you'll be in contempt. I said, well, we have to be in contempt. He said, If you get in jail for contempt, you can't get out. I said, well then, somebody has to go to jail.

Meanwhile, people debated what they could do. A couple of days passed; the debates and strategies continued. Shuttlesworth recalls how a plan finally took shape:

I remember Friday morning, or Saturday morning, I believe it was (before June 5th because we called our first mass meeting on June 5th), I sat up in the bed 3 o'clock in the morning wide awake. That "what shall we do" was just drumming in my conscience. And it looked like to me God or something said to me, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. I knew then instantaneously, it was God telling me I had to call a mass meeting and get people organized so, I decided that Saturday to call a mass meeting and ask the Negroes if they wanted to organize for freedom.

I knew we'd be in contempt and I expected to get arrested. This was frightening, it hadn't been done in Alabama nor the South - every radio program, TV program, every 15 minutes, Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth, 3191 North 29th Avenue, telling the Klan where to put the bomb... This went on from Saturday until Tuesday might just say hear Pastor of the Church, 16th Street at that time, was a famous preacher and he was nervous too, so he called me up and told him the Lord told him to tell me to call that meeting off. I wasn't quite as nonviolent then as I am now.

I said to him, "Well, Doctor, when did the Lord start sending my messages to you?" Because I knew he was afraid. That was about uh, 9 o'clock in the evening. But 11:30 that night, I recall it, there was my picture on TV, radio, everything was blaring out Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth, Negro Minister, 3191 North 29th Avenue, has called a mass meeting, and he called me back at the same time that was on, he said, "Well, I've been praying. The Lord told me to tell you he really wants you to call it off. And I said, "Well, Doctor, I want to be respectful, but you go back and tell the Lord that I think he told me to call it on. And the only reason I'm going to call it off is he'll have to come down himself in person and tell me to call it off. He'll have to bring the identifying marks, his pierced in his side, nail prints in his hands. And so the meeting went on.

At the end of the year, the Ku Klux Klan brought their policy of terrorism closer to the bone. Shuttlesworth explained:

I believe it was the night after Christmas, but on Christmas Night in '56 the Klan set about uh, 16 sticks of dynamite right at the head of my bed, the corner of the church, the corner of the house and I was in the bed at the point of the blast. And this dynamite went off about 9:15. It blew the wall between my head and the dynamite away, it blew the floor out from under my bed, space of I guess, 15 feet. The springs that I was lying on we never found them.

The roof came down, all that dust, the house was about 60 years old, dynamite dust and blast was, smoke, other things were there. This is a strange thing, I knew that the bomb was meant for me, I knew what it was, and instantaneously, at the same time I had a sense of presence that I wouldn't get hurt. I knew that. You can know something you never read. And, I might say to you, at that moment all fear was taken from me. I never feared anything since that time. 

This personal encounter with the Klan's policy of bombing homes and churches did not have it's intended effect. In Birmingham, terrorism against blacks failed to scare them into submission. Shuttlesworth describes how surviving the bomb blast fueled his convictions:

I walked out from this instead of running away from the blast, running away from the Klan, I said to the Klansman police that came, he said, "Reverend, if I were you, I'd get out of town as fast I could." I said, "Officer, you are not me, you go back and tell your Klan brethren that if God could keep me through this, then I'm here for the duration." I think that's what gave people the feeling that I wouldn't run, I didn't run, and that God had to be there.

The NAACP board wanted Shuttlesworth to pause, pull back, and lay low as they dealt with the KKK bomb's implication for the movement strategy. But Shuttlesworth insisted on continuing with the plans for the Birmingham desegregated bus rides. "There's nothing to think out," he told them. "We said we're going to ride and we ride- we do what we say for a change."  So they rode the buses and over 250 people got arrested.

And so Shuttlesworth traded the fripperies of a middle-class life for the mold and mausoleum of the American jail. It was to be a common station in the journey of many civil rights activists. His activism resulted in his May 1961 arrest for a Freedom Riders protest (along with reverends William Sloane Coffin, Ralph Abernathy, and Wyatt Tee Walker). Shuttlesworth’s mug shot from that arrest is seen above, thanks to The Smoking Gun.

Among his many accomplishments, Shuttlesworth helped organize the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, which ended in the notorious bloody confrontation on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The notoriety comes from the horror and tragedy of this event, which made it impossible to continue doubting whether institutionalized white power was, indeed, a "harmless" affair.

Civil Rights Movement veteran Charlie Cobb recalls Shuttlesworth's courage and determination:

Shuttlesworth was not some smooth city guy. He had been raised in Alabama's backwoods and had been convicted of running his family's whiskey still in 1941. He'd been a truck driver and cement worker before becoming a Baptist preacher.

Although Shuttlesworth's bravery was already legendary, my generation of activists' first meaningful contact with him happened during the 1961 Freedom Rides. He tracked the Klan and informed CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) of its violent plans. After Klansmen in Birmingham beat Freedom Rider Jim Peck into unconsciousness, Shuttlesworth boldly walked into the bus station and carried him to a hospital. Two days later in Montgomery, as hundreds of Klansmen surrounded the church of King colleague Ralph Abernathy, where Freedom Riders and local supporters were gathered, Shuttlesworth conducted CORE Director Jim Farmer through the mob into the church.

During his lifetime Shuttlesworth survived two bombings, dozens of arrests, and a number of police beatings that left him hospitalized. He brought many law-abiding, middle class blacks into the movement through his establishment of the Alabama Christian Movement for Civil Rights. 

His participation and leadership during the march from Selma to Montgomery helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Shuttlesworth’s participation in St. Augustine during their violent Civil Rights marches and Beach wade-ins helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  

Teaching the next generation

An extensive collection of Shuttlesworth's speeches and letters is housed at the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham. It is a must-see for families and homeschoolers in Alabama. You can also make use of this printable I created for Max about Shuttlesworth. It includes a primary source analysis activity based on a telegram from Martin Luther King Jr. to Shuttlesworth.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: Amazing Alabamians (PDF)

Other resources

Shuttlesworth archives (The King Center)
Shuttlesworth Humanitarian Award
 "The world is my pulpit" (A video interview with Fred Shuttlesworth)
Interview circa 1985 with Fred Shuttlesworth (Eyes on the Prize)
Shuttlesworth as remembered by others (Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement)
Gov. Bentley's remarks at Shuttlesworth's homegoing ceremony (Office of the Governor)
"Rep. Lewis gives a fiery tribute at Shuttlesworth funeral" (The Raw Story)
Dan Warren and Fred Shuttlesworth obits (The Economist)

25 extraordinary people from Alabama for whom I am thankful this Thanksgiving.

The first of 25 extraordinary people from Alabama who made a difference

I am thankful for people who give chunks of their lives out of love and concern for others. In creating this list, I aimed to skip over the sentimental, day-to-day thanks and head straight for the gray matter. Forgive my lack of attention to formal titles- none of these people would be any less significant without added titles and degrees. Their contributions surpass any professional accomplishments to which they may lay claim.

These twenty-five exquisite human beings inspired me, educated me, and gave me the courage to do more than aim for the perfect lawn or household appliances.

In no particular order, here's the first of my twenty-five extraordinary people of Alabama.... The remainder will follow in the coming weeks as I look over the past year and make plans for the year that lies ahead.

1. FAYA ORA ROSE TOURE

Faya Ora Rose Touré is a Harvard-educated Civil Rights activist and litigation attorney who has worked on some of the highest-profile civil rights cases to come before the courts. Touré—who spent most of her career as Rose Sanders until she decided to step away from her "slave name" in 2003—was the first African-American female judge in Alabama and was part of the winning legal team in Pigford vs. Veneman, the largest civil rights case in history. This case led to the payment of a billion dollars in damages to black farmers by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, Touré is founder of the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama, and a founding partner in the law firm of Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, Pettaway & Campbell, LLC. She uses her many talents to further her message and is a prolific songwriter and playwright, as well as the host of a weekly radio show, Faya's Fire.

Touré was born Rose M. Gaines on May 20, 1945, in Salisbury, North Carolina. Her parents, the Rev. D. A. Gaines and Ora Lee Gaines, taught their six children to conserve so they would have something in life to give back to their community. Training the children by word and deed, Rev. Gaines didn't always adhere to protocol, but he got the job done. "He was a trained minister who didn't always fit the image of what society expected," Touré said in an interview with Contemporary Black Biography (CBB). She notes similar traits in her own personality. Touré has the courage to follow her own drumbeat. She speaks frankly on controversial matters of race, injustice, and education, but said in her CBB interview, "I'm not fearless. I just won't let others define me."

Here mother Ora Lee's ways have rubbed off on Touré as well. For 30 years Ora Lee's strength and support helped Touré run the McRae Learning Center, a private community school Touré founded in 1976 to raise children's reading levels. "My mother made the greatest contribution to that school as she traveled back and forth from Birmingham for over 30 years," Touré told CBB. "People always approach me to say how much my mother's work helped their kids. We had them reading at 3 and 4 years old. Many were starting in the 27th percentile. We raised the level to the 74th percentile. We know the kids' greatness. I'd like to see other schools around the country do the same. That's the challenge."

Touré's community work began at an early age when she organized kids in the neighborhood. Through her teens, however, she remained unsure about what she wanted to do with her life. After graduation from George Clem High School in 1962 she entered Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 1966. Still unsure where her career path would take her, she completed a law degree at Harvard in 1969 and was awarded the Herbert Smith Fellowship. That led to an assignment the following year at the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Columbia Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law. In 1971 she worked briefly for the Legal Services Corporation, and opened the law firm of Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, Pettaway & Campbell, LLC the following year along with her husband, Alabama State Senator Henry Sanders. In 1973 Touré became the first African-American female judge in Alabama, serving as municipal judge until 1977. In 1982 Touré was hired by the Emergency Land Fund for the Department of the Agriculture to conduct a study of black land tenure and document land loss by African Americans.

Through the years Touré's legal skills led her to several major cases. In one important case she teamed with noted attorney Johnnie Cochran to seek reparations from corporations who profited from slavery. Seeking academic reparations for African-American students for what she calls "400 years of miseducation and discrimination" is one of Touré's latest projects. She is also preparing a case on behalf of black women who suffered sexual abuse during slavery. It challenges current laws that, Touré said, "do not offer equal justice from sexual assaults and misconduct towards black women." 

Touré's day job never kept her away from her extensive community work. In 1982 she co-founded the Black Belt Arts and Cultural Center, an arts-based community organizing group. She founded the National Voting Rights Museum in 1993 to tell the story of the Voting Rights Movement and founded the Bridge Crossing Jubilee in 1965 to commemorate the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She co-founded the Coalition of Alabamians Reforming Education (C.A.R.E.) in 1993. In the 1990s Touré spearheaded a movement against the practice of "tracking" in Selma public schools, a controversial system that can limit education and career opportunities. Touré founded the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement in 1985. The group educates young people about the political process and encourages their involvement. It has chapters around the United States and in Mali and Senegal, West Africa.

Mothers of Many (MOMS), a group Touré founded for low-income women, has opened three businesses under Touré's direction. Touré founded the Replacing Inequities in School with Excellence Network (R.I.S.E.). Their mission is to fight the practice of tracking and work for better education nationwide. She co-founded the Africans in America Renaissance Project. The organization provides land for purchase and development by African Americans in South Africa. Touré also founded MAAT Leadership High, an all-male school.(Source)

Faya Rose Toure spent this past Tuesday night in an Alabama jail for trying to speak out against the city of Selma's decision to donate land for a monument to General Nathan Bedford Forrest. 

After losing the Battle of Selma, Forrest returned to Tennessee and resumed his successful business activities. Along the way he also helped to organize the Ku Klux Klan. Members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans view Forrest as a hero of the first order, a brave leader known as the "Wizard of the Saddle." Critics say "wizard" was an apt description, as in Grand Wizard of the Klan.

For those unsure of what the Bedford monument represents, Occidental Dissident speaks fairly clearly for his supporters. Responding to Toure and others, he says that "Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest is best remembered for the manner in which he dealt with the Black Undertow". He elaborates: 

How would the real Nathan Bedford Forrest have dealt with the likes of Al Sharpton and Faya Rose Toure? Would he have responded to such an insult like Connie Chastain or the Virginia Flaggers in Richmond? White Southerners can learn a lot from Nathan Bedford Forrest. Foremost among these lessons is how we should have responded to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

Note: If there had been more Nathan Bedford Forrests and fewer Connie Chastains in the last generation, Selma wouldn’t be an uninhabitable Black Undertow city today.

The loss of this bronze bust of Forrest is less important than the loss of Selma, Dallas County, and the whole Black Belt region to White people, not to mention Birmingham, because MLK succeeded in getting the Voting Rights Act shoved down our throats.

It's hard not to cringe when I read this. In the same way that the statues of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu were offensive to Romanians that lost friends, family, and hope under his totalitarian regime, a monument to Gen. Forrest should not be housed in a public space. If a man wants to build a monument to a person who used his power and authority to oppress other human beings, he should do so in the privacy of his own home or backyard. No one should be forced to participate in this particular fetishization of historic nastiness.

After the revolutions of 1989, Romanians removed all monuments to Ceausescu. Residents of Selma should ensure that no monuments to vulgar racists are funded and erected in the first place.

 

The spirit of Selma is alive in efforts to keep the KKK from being honored in local history.

Faya is married to Alabama State Sen. Hank Sanders. When she's not being arrested by hyperactive local police, Faya serves as the co-founder and chair of the Direct Action Committee of Saving Ourselves (S.O.S.), a Movement of 32 organizations for Justice and Democracy.

Her lack of complacency serves as a reminder that we must insist on our dignity as human beings first and foremost- that we cannot rely on our elected officials to do the daily ethics for us. Alabama is a better place as a result of this woman who refuses to take complacency- "That's just the way things, are honey... You can't change the world"- for a serious answer. You can, of course, sign this petition against the erection of a disgraceful monument in Selma. 

More to explore

C.A.R.E. 
Faya speaks to Selma City Council (Video and news report)
Article on "Moral Mondays" and Toure (Greene County Democrat)
"An African American Manifesto on Education" (Faya Toure)
"An Opinion on the Death Penalty" (Faya Toure)
"View from Selma: Can Obama Debate Be Colorblind?" (NPR)

Honoring Jon Daniels' life and love.

Pilgrims in Hayneville hold an icon of Jonathan Daniels on this year's pilgrimage.

If you do a quick online search for the name "Jon Daniels", you'll find multiple links to the manager of a major sports team. What you probably won't find, however, is a link to the "Jon Daniels" that made such a difference in the world as we have come to know it.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels (March 20, 1939 – August 20, 1965) was an Episcopal seminarian, killed for his work in the American civil rights movement. His death helped galvanize support for the civil rights movement within the Episcopal church. He is regarded as a martyr in the Episcopal church. The wikipedia entry offers more facts and details. Now I'll offer my own shrivelled synposis.

While Jon was studying at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the spring of 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. put out a call for students and clergy to come to Alabama and participate in a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. The students debated how to respond to a call from the dark- a darkness made more palpable by its social and intellectual distance. Tim Abbott shares his father's own encounter with King's call, as well as with Jon Daniels:

Dad describes his own growing activism and the late night conversations with his fellow seminarians in which "we were honing our positions and our hearts on what had to be done."  He remembers his classmate Jonathan Daniels as a complex man, and totally non-violent. "I was in a very different place than he was, in terms of active activism and spirituality" he told me.  "In his liturgical way he could sing the Magnificat and feel as if that was his calling, a true Epiphany, and I wasn't there yet.  I was studying religion rather than living it the way he was.  I was much closer to the activism, on the verge, but there were too many easy rationalizations for not going down to Selma.  They weren't about self-protecting - I was not as concerned about personal harm, though perhaps I should have been - but felt I had obligations at school...When he went to Selma with the 1st wave, a couple of seminarians went with him..."

Thus Jon answered the call. And then he missed his bus back to Cambridge. Feeling pulled by the social breakdown he witnesses in Alabama, Jon stayed behind in Selma the rest of that semester to help the civil rights movement.  He returned to Cambridge for his final exams, and then went back to Alabama in July. Because something unspeakable kept pulling this highly-disciplined, non-flamboyant, dedicated young seminarian back...

There was a moment, of course, when Jon’s commitment to the beloved community became clear. This moment came prior to his time in Selma at a time when he was working in Wilcox County, specifically in the town of Camden, where sharecropping remained the primary industry for blacks. In Camden, Jon first experienced tear gas and came to see the ribald fear of blacks to become a casualty of the march for their own freedom.

He found himself inhabiting his own "existential moment". To have an existential moment is to become aware of the fact that our lives have signficance and that we exist within them- that we are responsible for them and to a spiritual sense of self characterized by a concern for integrity. An older man who lives on my street likes to call those moments "epiphanies"; I'm inclined to follow his judgement. 

The impact of this epiphany on Jon's faith was life-giving. He wrote:

My hostility really lasted until last week. I think it was when I got teargassed leading a march in Camden that I began to change. I saw that the men who came at me were themselves not free: it was not that cruelty was so sweet to them (though I’m afraid sometimes it is) but that they didn’t know what else to do. Even though they were white and hateful and my enemy, they were human beings, too. I found myself feeling a kind of grim affection for them, at least a love that was real and ‘existential’ rather than abstract….. Last week in Camden I began to discover a new freedom in the Cross: freedom to love the enemy. And in that freedom, the freedom (without hypocrisy) to will and to try to set him free.

On August 14th, Daniels was arrested for protesting against a "whites only" store, and he was sent to a county jail in Haynesville, Alabama, along with several others.  After their release on August 20th, Daniels, along with a Catholic priest and two young African-Americans, went to a local store to get a soft drink.  They were met at the door by the store's owner, Tom Coleman, who was carrying a shotgun.  When Coleman aimed the gun at 17 year old Ruby Sales, Daniels pushed her away, and he caught the full impact of the blast in his chest, killing him instantly.

The story of his murder was reported nationally in the immediate aftermath of his death, and once again after his killer was acquitted by an all-white Alabama jury.

Jon completed his college education at Virginia Military Institute, where he was a valedictorian, before deciding to attend seminary. This is his VMI class photograph.

As a seminarian, Jon struggled to continue his studies while fulfilling his spiritual calling to serve the torn communities of our state. Soon, his experiences in Alabama began to inform and supplement his theological education; the abstractions of theory rubbed shoulders with the reality of love in an angry, selfish world. It became hard for Jon to separate the texts from the people he encountered along the way. For his theology Professor William J. Wolf, Jon submitted a paper he’d prepared during the summer entitled “Theological Reflections on My Experience in Selma”. In it, he described his experiences as the source of a "living theology", a faith lived anew in each day of one's life, a love lived with immanence and resolve:

All of this is the raw material for living theology.  And yet in as deep a sense, from my point of view, it is the product of living theology.  The doctrines of the creeds, the enacted faith of the sacraments, were the essential preconditions of the experience itself.  The faith with which I went to Selma has not changed: it has grown.  Darkening coals have kindled. Faith has taken wing and flown with a song in its wings. 'My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my Spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior...'

I lost fear in the Black Belt when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had truly been baptized into the Lord's Death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God…

The point is simply, of course, that one’s motives are usually mixed- and one had better know it. It occurred to me that though I was reasonably certain that I was in Selma because the Holy Spirit had sent me there, there nevertheless remained a fundamental distinction between my will and His.

This paper was read at Jon's funeral as a eulogy. I read it now as a testament to the message of love he left behind. How many of us know the saints that live just down the street? How many times have we encountered a love so certain that we find our fears and anxieties dissipate as the urge to share this love becomes a central part of our lives.

The signs of the times- the signs Jon prayed would disappear, and take with them, the paralyzing fear felt by many blacks in Alabama.

Jon Daniels is a model for all of us who lose sight of the way in which love demands that we respond with unconditional love in the immediate, absolute present. Carpe diem is not a slogan that urges us to throw back as many beers as possible during a football game- it's a slogan that reminds us no love and no faithful action can be postponed to a "better time" or a "better place". The only time we can be sure of is this moment. The only acceptable time to do what is right- to honor the image of God in every life- is the present. Living in the moment means loving in the moment. Nothing is a greater, more worthy challenge.

The life and ministry of Jon Daniels is remembered on August 14th every year by the Episcopal Church. In this context, the role of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU) played a pivotal role in eventually integrating southern public institutions. Members of ESCRU felt that Daniel’s alleged murderer, Tom Coleman, was acquitted wrongfully and that white juries would continue to fail to convict those that should be found guilty of race and hate crimes. In response to the acquittal, ESCRU launched Operation Southern Justice, a campaign and lawsuit undertaken in conjunction with the National Council of Churches and other groups to integrate southern juries.

The Episcopal Diocese of Alabama supports an annual pilgrimage to Hayneville to honor Jon Daniels' sacrifice. 2013 marked the 15th annual Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage. Though we missed it this year, our calendars will keep this date open for August of next year. I was especially inspired by a 2010 pilgrim's post about how the experience impacted her life and spirit....

For more on the life and death of Jon Daniels:

Outside Agitator, the wonderful biography written by Charles Eagles (and published by the University of Alabama Press) that led me to Jon Daniels' life
"But My Heart Is Black," an article by Jon published Oct. 29, 1965
"A Burning Bush", an article by Jon written in April 1965
Jonathan Daniels lectionary 
Jon Daniels (Encyclopedia of Alabama)
Daniels' 1961 Valedictory Address (Virginia Military Institute)  
Daniels' Yearbook page (Virginia Military Institute) 
Memorial plaque for Daniels in Hayneville, Alabama 
White House tape transcripts of Pres. Johnson's response to Daniels' murder 
Liturgical lesson plan for "A Love That Forgives" 
Bishop Fisher's blog post about Jon Daniels 
"The Journey of Jonathan Daniels" (Sentinel Source) 
"Memory and Denial Are Kissing Cousins" (Greensleeves) 

What we know.

“Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.” 

        Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

Shucking corn together is a habit in our family- something known as a little people's "job". Usually, they chat and sing as they peel back the layers to reveal the cornsilk.

It's not just about being together and talking, a form of communion (though it includes much of that), but also makes for great metaphors ("how peeling back layers leads to new treasures"). Not to mention the context it provides for many of the books we read about rural and local history where barn raisings and harvests involve activities that create and solidify community.

Activities like corn-shucking give us a tiny taste of communal life- a life in which everyone helps and lends a hand, a life in which the greater good is truly greater than any immediate gratifications we wish to pursue. As a mother, I relish those things we learn which draw us closer to one another and build a structure for happiness pursued in conjunction with others.

Why we love the The Alabama Blues Project.

 

There's Max with his harmonica, his new best music-making friend, thanks to the Alabama Blues Project Summer camp. I can't say enough about this experience.

The CS Monitor carried an article describing the Alabama Blues Project as a "change agent", and we are inclined to agree. And add our own exclamation points. Here's the background:

The Alabama Blues Project was co-founded by Bond in 1995 in Tuscaloosa, Ala. It is now a nonprofit group directed by Paula Demonbruen. This year, it began providing instruction in five Tuscaloosa after-school programs, in addition to its blues club for children and programs in other schools in Alabama.

In July Ms. Demonbruen led the annual summer Blues Camp in Tuscaloosa. Former camper Jonathan Blakney, 20, came back to help teach.

"It comes out of African music," he says of the blues. "Some of the African beats and rhythms survive."

Field hollers, spirituals, work songs, simple ballads, and shout and chants were among the 19th-century forms that evolved into the blues.

Mr. Blakney and Blues Project program director Cara Lynn Teague describe how early blues players made homemade instruments. Wires were hung on a wall to create a stringed instrument, a plow handle attached to a washtub and strung with rope became a washtub bass, and tobacco tins were used to create a harmonica-like instrument.

At the summer camp, the children learn about specific blues musicians. Lowell Jeff, 13, gives a report. "This is about Microwave Dave," he says. "His first gig was in a local church in Texas."

  

You can hear blueswoman Hattie B. clapping just behind us- she's been part of the Tuscaloosa blues community for a long time and she made no secret about how much she enjoyed this event.

Thanks to the inspiring art teachers which worked with the kids on visual representations, the walls were of the performance hall were lined with self-made album covers for each of the music artists present. 

Here's Maggie Slough's amazing self-portrait.

Max poses with his awesome album cover.

Max's band warms up for their performance.

Yes, we're going to do it again- and again... for the incredible combo of local history, music, and art.  Max is still nagging me to sign him up for the fall session, and homeschoolers who have an interest should contact Cara because I know they are currently planning to work with homeschoolers more, and our excitement makes a good incentive. The website is mere mouse-click away.

Decoration Day music and traditions.

It's hard to read an Alabama author who doesn't somehow mention the tradition of Decoration Day. Joey Brackner describes it as follows:

Decoration Day is an annual observance at many privately owned southern graveyards during which families gather to clean up the graveyard, reconnect with family, and honor the memories of their ancestors.

Sometimes the terms "Decoration Day" and "Homecoming" are used synonymously. However, homecoming instead can be the equivalent of a founder's day for individual churches. The term appears to be more commonly used to describe similar activities in the southern portion of the state and among African American communities throughout the state, where the focus is less on the cemetery and more on food and social activities.

The exact origins of Decoration Day are unclear, although traditions of eating in cemeteries and decorating graves are found in other cultures. The tradition seems to predate Memorial Day (once known as Decoration Day) and Confederate Memorial Day, both of which have a military focus. At some point, the warm months between March and September became the preferred season for commemorating the dead among southerners. These months are the slower period in the agricultural year, between planting and harvest, so more people were available to help with cemetery maintenance. In addition, American Protestants may have consciously chosen a cemetery memorial holiday apart from the Catholic All Souls Day on November 2, which also features floral decorations and feasting. The availability of fresh flowers also may have been a reason to select the early summer season. Because the date, usually reckoned by a particular Sunday in a particular month, varies by cemetery, families can easily participate in several Decoration Days in their region.

Tuscaloosans who would like to witness it up close and personal need only drive to Brookwood, where Little Hurricane Baptist Church still honors those who have gone before us in this way.

And then there is the influence on music. At least two bands from Alabama- The Drive-By Truckers and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit- feature Decoration Day in recent albums. Now Decoration Day playlists are hitting the semi-mainstream.

You can download the Mason Jar Collective's free album, Decoration Day: Volune 2, online at Noisetrade. Good stuff from great songwriters who know that the best song always includes a story. 

Adventures at the Faunsdale Bar & Grill.

In another Alabama town with no stop lights or main intersections, the King and I satisfied our curiosity abou the Faunsdale Bar & Grill. 

As I scoured through the local newspaper in the hopes of running across some bunnies or hens for sale, the King instructed the ladies in a the fine art of how to roll and blow a good spitball through a plastic straw. Max couldn't resist the opportunity to arrange and rearrange the condiment bottles- a favorite pasttime since the tender age of two.

Waiting for the lucscious burgers and cabbage to arrive, I got a little restless and decided to wander up and down the street looking for stories to help make sense of Faunsdale. Any bit of rubbish held out the prospect of further illumination. 

The "bar" next door was closed. The owner later told me that it is only open on certain days because Faunsdale is such a small town that there isn't a demand for a full-time bar and juke joint. I noticed that the flag above the entrance had been perched there for a long time. Was it intended to be symbol of history or a sign of warning? One never knows, and I seldom dare begin those conversations when still waiting for my food to be arrive.

The main street didn't give me much to read or untangle- not even crushed cigarettes suggesting a favored local brand.

So I focused on the bricks and the cobwebs between them- the way in which the spider's web healed the cracks by bridging them, by bringing everything back together on the surface with home-spun silk. 

I sat on the hot cement sidewalk for a moment and tried to imagine what the future might bring to Faunsdale- if the future even bothered to visit. And then I remembered that a hot burger overflowing with mayo and tomatoes was waiting for me just two hollers down the street. So I left the sidewalks, the spiders and their stories in the hands of a less hungry suitor that may chance to pause and read what they see.

A visit to the Alabama Rural Heritage Center.

 

En route to the beach, we bit back into our royal plan of making a pilgrimage to every Rural Studio construction in the state.  So we stopped and spent some time exploring the Alabama Rural Heritage Center in the tiny town of Thomaston. The wide open spaces combine with ingenious construction innovations to produce the effect that made Rural Studio so famous.

The kids explore the handmade local wares.

Unlike other schools of architecture, the Rural Studio celebrates the story which emerges from every single design and construction. In many cases, the designers create a website which reveals the plans and charts the journey through the project. The ARHC building's story, like the audacity of those who first dared to dream it, is preserved eternally at the project website. 

In August of 2003, the Alabama Rural Heritage Foundation, and the Rural Studio of Auburn University began a partnership helped along by a $400,000 grant from HUD with the intent of helping to stimulate economic development in the community of Thomaston. Using less than half of this grant money, five determined Auburn students in the Rural Studio Program, Abbey Barnett, Melissa Harold, Paul Kardous, Nathan Makemson, and Robert White, embarked on a thesis project to design and construct the Alabama Rural Heritage Center (ARHC).

Free experimental beams made from recycled, compacted trash.

Rather than starting from scratch, the students renovated the Home Economics building of the old Marengo County High School and constructed a new 5,000 square-foot addition which includes a gift shop, commercial kitchen, packaging room, and vegetable cleaning/processing area. A separate grant allowed the students to add an outdoor pavilion/deck intended for use by the community.

True to the Sambo's building philosophy, the students' construction process made use of experimental and eco-minded materials, including the free "trash beams" pictured above. 

On April 9, 2005, The Alabama Rural Heritage Foundation celebrated the grand-opening of the new Alabama Rural Heritage Center. 

Max concurred with the ingenuity of offering free meteorites to little people. Each of the kids selected at least two "Alabama meteorites" with accompanying brochure. I crossed my fingers quietly, hoping that the idea for a "meteorite fight" would not leak from my brain to theirs.

The sense of community is enhanced by the prodiguous pamphlets, signs, and cards announcing the work and support of local artists, artisans, and nonprofit centers. Deeply-rooted communities tend to be those that engage us at multiple levels- from our individual preferences and affinities to our group identities and social concerns. 

The gift shop overflowed with the with the creations of local artists, artisans, and traditional crafters. Since many creators leave a business card next to their creations, it's more like a gallery of local creatives than it is a gift shop. The gourmet Mama Nem's Red Pepper Jelly is made and sold in-house.

Local historian and advocate Foster Dickinson collaborated with Nancy Anderson to birth a book/curriculum guide which is now on my wish-list, Treasuring Alabama's Black Belt: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Teaching Place. If you can't find it in stores, I'm sure ARHC wouldn't mind maling a copy in exchange for a phone call and little mullah. 

Hours of operation for the gift ship are Thurday and Friday from 10 am to 4 pm and Saturdays from 10 am to 1 pm.  You can also make purchases by email (ruralher@frontiernet.net) or by placing a call to 334-627-3388. The kitchen and dining area are still available for rent if you're seeking a special place to host an event in Alabama. 

The kind lady who eagerly answered all my questions at the gift shop (and who even went so far as to compliment me on my "well-behaved children") explained a little project she had started on the back wall of the old school. This project, the Kid's Korner, featured art for sale by young Alabama kids who donate their creations as a fundraiser for the Center.

When she said the project "wasn't going as well as she had hoped", I had a feeling we'd be mailing some art donations from the Coryell Castle before the tomatoes got fat enough to fall from the vines. If you live locally and find yourself staring at that same "feeling", just write a short note about the artists, scoop up the art, and mail the whole cornucopia to Rural Heritage and Gift Shop, 133 Sixth Avenue, Thomaston, AL 36783.

Otherwise, scurry over to their Facebook page to learn more about upcoming events and opportunities.

Alabama Herbs: A video introduction to pokeweed.

Since Phyllis Light is the mentor of my two favorite herbalists, I was excited to find a video in which Phyllis goes on a little herb walk in her hometown of Arab, Alabama. A fascinating introduction to the ever-common pokeweed that lives so happily in the South.

Local history investigation: Does the Memnon-Tierce house qualify as a Wright-style prairie house?

The Memnon-Tierce House in Tuscaloosa

Right now, we're knee-deep in the study of Frank Lloyd Wright's "prairie houses". In 1936, during the USA depression, Frank Lloyd Wright developed a simplified version of Prairie architecture called Usonian. Wright believed these stripped-down houses represented the democratic ideals of the United States. In fact, the only community that Wright ever helped build was one based on the Usonian-type house. To see how Wright’s prairie houses continue to influence American architecture, we explored the Prairie Styles website. 

As Max read about the Robie house and Wright's adaptation of the prairie house style to downtown cities, he mentioned that he thought Tuscaloosa might have its own prairie house "somewhere near the University". Intrigued by the prospect, I did a little online sleuthing to quickly discover that Max, of course, was probably right.

The Memnon-Tierce near downtown Tuscaloosa (pictured above) includes many features of the prairie style popularized by Wright. Technically, a prairie house usually includes the folowing features:

• Low-pitched roof
• Overhanging eaves
• Horizontal lines and rectangular shapes
• Central chimney and hearth
• Open floor plan
• Clerestory windows

I created a worksheet for Max to frame his analysis of what the Memnon-Tierce house. You can download it below if you'd like to try and determine if the Memnon-Tierce house qualifies as a prairie house.

MEMNON-TIERCE HOUSE WORKSHEET (PDF)

Like all local history investigations, the family behind the house is a story in itself. You can learn more about the fascinating Tierce family history and chase it with Rick Bragg's article about the Tierce house. 

The Tierce family in 1901 on the front steps of their home just south of North River (Lake Tuscaloosa) on Highway 69 North (Crabbe Road) .

Playing the 5 Questions Game with the Voodoo Saints.

It's not often that one gets to hear a favorite local band playing live for a fantastic local burlesque show, but such was the case in this case. I'd owned the Voodoo Saints CD for awhile, but hearing them live at the Pink Box Burlesque still somehow blew my combustile little mind.

Feeling saintly, John and Nathan answered five questions for me the other day. Granted, one of their answers was not entirely gratifying for personal reasons, including a small amount of cash and a personal ego trip. 

QUESTION #1: It caught my eye that your album was recorded in Cherokee Hills Studio. Since we live in Cherokee Hills, my kids and I place bets on which house this studio might be. Where was the mysterious Cherokee Hills Studios and how did you end up recording there?

JOHN: Well, Cherokee Hills is the street that the album was recorded on.  A very close friend of ours let us record at their house for the session…so we'll just leave it there…but you're on the right track. 

QUESTION #2: It looks like the mystery will continue.... Now I have to ask the underwear question- five bands or musicians on your playlists right now.

JOHN:  I think this would be impossible for me to answer on the groups behalf.  Everyone that plays within the band definitely has their own unique tastes as well as common grounds.  But we are all fairly eclectic listeners.  Personally, I have been listening to: Tedeschi Trucks Band, Alabama Shakes, Gary Clarke Jr., The Beatles, Mahalia Jackson.  

NATHAN: Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto, Dizzy Gillespie, Caetano Veloso, Lee Konitz, Mal Waldron. 

QUESTION #3: I enjoyed you guys at the Pink Box Burlesque show. The history was made palpable by your music.  don't think most bands have the experience of playing for a burleqsue in their repertoire. Has playing live for the PBB  influenced your music in any way?

NATHAN: I really wouldn't say that either of us are influenced by each other.  We enjoy working with Mama Dixie and the cast of the PBB, but there's no influence going on.  We just try to hit a wide variety of music that applies to each designated show, and make a complete "product" (or "theme") for each and every show.  Wherever that takes us is where we'll go.  So stay tuned and attend the next PBB show to find out. 

QUESTION #4: Why New Orleans jazz?

JOHN: Well to be quite honest, the band started as a one time thing.  We had some friends that decided to throw a “Prohibition” themed party in the fall of 2010.  They asked us if we would mind playing a few tunes during the festivities.  As a result a quick group started out as a joke playing some really, really old Jazz tunes.  Unexpectedly, we were asked how long we had been together and when and where we would be performing again... and we said "We've been together for about 20 minutes.  This was just thrown together!"  After that night, we decided to pursue the group seriously, and the rest is what you hear.

QUESTION #5: Indeed. Most interesting place you've ever played and why on earth you played there?

JOHN: Besides the group's inception at the "Prohibition" party (which is pretty weird to have a group start out from a fluke), the most interesting place we've ever played would have to be in the studio at WVUA for their Tuscapalooza on-air music festival.  As we were playing, there was a band that literally broke up at the studio, and they were slated to go on after us. So, we were asked to keep going, and it was more of a good time for us in the studio.  Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler! (Let the Good Times Roll!).

The Voodoo Saints. If you'd like to catch them live, the Saints play at Chloe's Cup Coffees & Teas every Tuesday from 6:00-8:00PM. If you catch them with the PBB at the Green Bar later this month as a result of this post, just buy me a local beer so I can continue my study of Prohibition. If you don't live in Tuscaloosa, then you should visit for something besides the football- something like this.

In the meantime, take a listen to my favorite tune from their album. It slinks, slithers, and grins its way straight across whatever room you happen to inhabit.

Walk On Guilded Splinters (Voodoo Saints)

A few others to stream (with a reminder that you can find more on their website). 

The Pink Box Burlesque....

George Washington Carver, one amazing human being.

There aren't many characters in American history that hold a candle to George Washington Carver. From inventor to artist to naturalist to botanist to professor to football player, there is little he did not do and nothing that he did not overcome to the do the things he loved. He offers an example in persistence, dedication, and creativity. Studying his life and work with the kids has been humbling and grand.

Max read Stephen Krensky's A Man For All Seasons aloud to us as we colored. He even paused to ask what felt like "reading comprehension" questions several times. One of my favorites- "Now girls, do you think it was fair that black and white people were segregated?" Micah looked confused while Milla nodded with enthusiasm. I guess I shouldn't expect moral revulsion from a toddler, and Max quickly stepped in to provide a long-winded explanation of why segregation and slavery are crimes against nature.

For the girls, coloring our own flip-book about Carver's life gave us opportunities to talk about the details, including his love for plants, his enjoyment of painting, and his admirable journey towards a dream that just involved tinkering, exploring, inventing, and learning. You can download the free George Washington Carver Little Book.

Max enjoyed the USDA's coloring pages and fact sheets on Carver, especially the peanut-butter process handout which illustrates how peanut butter is made. The rain left us reading, re-reading, and exploring the many inventions which still touch our lives thanks to the ingenuity and courage of this remarkable man.

Proposed zoning adjustment map for Tuscaloosa.

Here's the recently updated map for the upcoming Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting (February 11) and the Historic Preservation Commission meeting (February 13). Hat tip to Caleb Kirk for making it available to the public.

View Proposed Projects City of Tuscaloosa in a larger map

5th Street Vintage Market.

I almost spent more than I earned at the 5th Street Vintage Market this weekend. It was beautiful and chock full of fabulous vintage frocks, old books, records, trinkets, and collectibles. 

One of the hardest parts about selling handmade goods for me remains picking a price and sticking to it. When someone likes something, I find myself so happy that I slash the price into shreds for the satisfaction of seeing a person with a y.so.str8 goodie going home. Everything happens so fast that it's hard to keep track of what you sell if you operate on a cash-only basis (as I do). Super grateful to Monica for her half-sandwich and general kindness.

I've been trying to go through my goods and make note of what I sold.... I do remember that the fairy tale bonnets went to two lovely little kids. Made from upcycled sweaters that needed a new raison d'etre, the bonnets were created from a design based on the fairy tales I share with the kids. 

Working with cashmere for bonnets and winter hats is lovely because the awful itchiness of wool hats as a young child sticks fresh in my mind. Wherever the little red riding hood may be, I know she isn't itching when she wears her bonnet.

The green lacey bonnet went to a little girl with a head full of beautiful black curls which peeped out around the lace. 

I kissed a number of handmade cards bye-bye. I also sold my old friend, the two-faced doll, as well as a funky grate-full packet for a young lady whose mother wanted "something creative and different for Christmas". I think the doily bib also found a home. (Boy, I would be easy to rob....)

Astri's star ornament.

What I sold is dim in my memory. But what I got is fresh. Dani Beach's itch for kitsch landed me with a dress straight out of my wildest 1970's daydreams. I stocked up on soap from The Left Hand- the scent of vetiver still lingers in my car. I also discovered some lovely old books from a vintage dealer impacted by Hurricane Sandy, and found myself the proud owner of a knit star ornament made by Astri Snodgrass, who has way too many talents up those sleeves.

The next 5th Street Vintage Market will take place in March of 2013. I'm so grateful to its organizers and planners who did the legwork of making it happen and bringing a little more awesome to Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

A month of learning about Native American history: Chief Tuskaloosa and Alabama Choctaws.

Ever since Max decided that he wanted to have a Cherokee birthday party, we've been exploring all things Native American. Fortunately, the Moundville Native American Festival takes place in Moundville this weekend, and everything, including the acorns and the seasons, are falling together to make this a perfect theme for the month. So why not share it? 

Almost every space and place on this continent has its own specific Native history, so we started with the local. The name "Tuscaloosa" comes from the Choctaw language and means "Black Warrior". Coincidentally, the Black Warrior River runs through Tuscaloosa and provided our city's initial impetus for existence back in the days when all trade and commerce used rivers for transportation. 

 The Dreams Of A Young Chief: Chief Tuskaloosa by Maggie Geist with illustrations by Cliff Ballard is out of print, but provides a beautiful introduction to Chief Tuskaloosa, the namesake of our town and a local history worth exploring. According to an archived article in the Tuscaloosa News which surveys local Native history, the famous Chief Tuskaloosa probably never actually lived here but his legend is alive and well.

Maggie tells the story of a young Choctaw boy who always knew he would one day be a chief. She describes his experience with the Black Drink Ceremony and the Green Corn Ceremony, tribal events which ritualized harvest practices and shaped individual identities and roles within the tribal structure. In her words:

When the braves returned home, it was time for the Green Corn Ceremony- an exciting time. This ceremony took place only when the last corn crop became ready for harvest. It was a time to purify the village. Before the feasting began, four to eight days were spent in fasting.

The men repaired items that needed repairing. The fasted and they drank the black drink. The women cleaned their homes and discarded all their broken pots. 

The lighting of the new sacred fire was the main event. The High Priest rubbed two pieces of wood together until there was smoke, then he fanned the small flame with the wing of a white bird. Only the men could watch this ceremony. This was Tuskaloosa's first time to witness the event. Only the men who took park in the Black Drink Ceremony could watch.

The High Priest forgave all the braves for their wrongdoing except he had no power from the Great Spirit to forgive those who had killed others during the year. The women were then asked to come and light new fires from the sacred flame to carry to their homes for the home fires. The High Priest challenged women to behave and be good housekeepers for the coming year. 

The Green Corn Ceremony took place every year and marked the change in seasonal activities from summer to fall and winter. Tuskaloosa grew into a tall young man whose height helped him excel at all the ball games and markmanship games, like chunkey. He assisted his tribe in making dugout canoes to help them get up and down the Black Warrior and smaller streams.

As a member of the Maubilian tribe of the Choctaw, Tuskaloosa learned how to hunt and protect his people from more warlike neighbors, including the Chickasaws and the Creeks. He proved himself as a warrior in battle against the Creeks. To become chief, Tuskaloosa needed more than war skills- he needed peacemaking skills. 

It would be necessary to have self-control before he could control his people. Peace would be hard to keep. A peacemaker would need to have the strength to hold back th desire to control- the need to be in charge of others. Tuskaloosa knew he must lead with gentleness yet with firmness.

Tuskaloosa proved his ability to lead when he made peace with the Creeks. The Choctaw culture deserved some additional exploring, so Max used colored and used the following handouts to explore the Eagle Dance and Choctaw ball games.

Choctaw Ball and Eagle Dance Writing Exercise (PDF)

 

Discovering a hidden cemetery in Dayton, Alabama.

When we drove down to the beach last month, we took a different route on the back roads, seeking new scenery and dangling predicates. Bunica mentioned a cemetery she accidentally discovered while driving around the state with her sister, Sanda. Of course, I couldn't resist..... and Patrick was game.

The tombstones, lacy iron fencing, and vernacular-laden light evoked Lousiana, Duke University gothic, and Chip Cooper photographs. Dazed from driving, we wandered around, reading the stories etched in stone and marveling over the meanings.

"Loved and Lost", an anthem.

What happened in 1887?

The Alexander family tree grows thick through these parts. On November 11, 1887, Clara L. Alexander died. Two weeks later, on November 26, Millara L. Alexander passed away. It seems they were sisters, perhaps stricken with influenza or a communicable disease that tore through a family home. The dates of their births are not noted on the tombstone, so its hard to tell if they died as infants or adults. 

The tombstone of Ira Caldwell, whose life remains a mystery.

It seems Ira Caldwell was the daughter of John D. Alexander Sr. (1829-1901) and Rebecca Lawson Alexander (1836-1894). 

Spiders go about their business of spinning and trapping amid the tombs

A Christmas tree left behind for one who left this earth still loving Christmas.
The sun singled out the solitary stocking.

The tombstone of Mary Eliza Jane Smith, who passed away on October 7, 1839.

Details from the tombstone of Mary Eliza Jane Smith.

The tombstone monument of Emma L. Reeves, wife of Levi Reeves.

There is a love story swirling around the tombstone of Emma L.  Reeves, the young bride of Levi Reeves who lived from 1841 only to die at the tender age of sixteen on July 10, 1857. What drove him to build a monument so beautiful it belongs in a museum? Who was the sculptor of this stone portrait? 

Emma Reeves gazing skyward.

Born to Adolphus Sellers Cade and Thurza Jane (Catline) Cade, who remained residents of Dayton throughout life, Emma's three siblings played a prominent role in her life- and in the the life of her husband. Her brother, John Catline Cade (1843-1875), maintained a large plantation in Dayton, Alabama. Her sister, Carrie Cade, married Eddie Prince, while her other sister, Adolpha Cade, married Col. Levi Reeves after Emma's death.

John Catline Cade was the owner of a large plantation near Dayton and had many slaves. He served as adjutant in the Confederate States Army and after the war was appointed probate judge of Marengo County in 1867. He was married at Tuscaloosa, Ala., December 24, 1864, to Sallie Jemison, daughter of William Henry and Elizabeth Armlntine / Jemison of Tuscaloosa.

Emma was married for less than six months before she died- not long enough to leave Levi with an heir or a child. Perhaps the monument was the idea of the Cade family?

Young Ira A. McKnight almost survived the seasons to live a full year- from July 1892 to the beginning of June 1893. I wondered what claimed her life- what illness or what accident would be likely in June in the 1890's?

After using the GPS function on my IPhone camera, I noted the latitude and longitude and made use of Google Maps to identify the location. The name of the cemetery is Little Flanders Field Cemetery (a.k.a. Dayton Cemetery), and it lies on the left bank of Highway 25 just past Little Flanders Road in Dayton, Alabama. Make the drive through Marengo County on a beautiful day which beckons every linger-loving bone in your body to stop and sit a spell.

NOTE: I have been informated that this cemetery is called Dayton Cemetery. Little Flanders Field cemetery is a separate cemetery next to Dayton for African Americans. Dayton Cemetery is the white cemetery with all the ornate headstones shown above. There are three separate cemeteries adjoining one another in this area.

"A Few Things In Themselves", a poem by John Finlay.

A Few Things in Themselves

Along the bay live-oaks and magnolias
Gather massively the warm blackness
As birds dart and cry in their hard leaves.

At their base the narrow strip of beach
Is yellow and African in the late sun.
We hold off and let the boat drift....

The string of fish in the bottom
Lies in spilled oil, blood, and bay-water.
Their white underbellies gleam in the dusk.

A black watersnake is moving into
The closed, muscle-like bloom of lilies,
The darker swamp weeds along the shore.

Slowly we follow it, back to the dock.
And walk in the early night through crickets,
The low wind in the rusty screen. 

For more on Alabama poet John Finlay, visit this post about his life and verse.

The lyrics and life of Alabama poet, John Finlay.

Thanks to his article in the Alabama Literary Review, Jeffrey Goodman brought a new Alabama author to my attention. The author is John Finlay, whose brief-by-modern-standards life begins in Ozark, Alabama, where he was born. His father had a farm in Enterprise, a small town incorporated in the 1890's as a cotton town. Lumber interests soon followed as part of the long story of how Alabama's state tree, the longleaf pine, lost its home in our landscapes.

Finlay's father, Tom, was considered "land-rich"- they owned three to four hundred acre tracts. His mother, Jean Sorrell, came from an established family in Birmingham. But economic good fortune did not protect John from life's tragedies; his family tree, while deeply rooted, was pock-marked with suicides, drug addictions, insanity, and violent death. For example, his mother's father, Martin Sorrell, was a prominent attorney who clerked for Hugo Black but ended his days at Bryce Hospital, where he "died of insanity" leaving behind a wife and three little ones in Ozark.

As a boy, he loved to read Shakespeare, and he sometimes recited passages from the plays while caring for his family's dairy cows. What John did not love, however, was the actual chores and farming life itself. He preferred to spend his weekends at his grandmother's home in Ozark, where classics spilled from the bookshelves and erudition marked the conversations on topics ranging from politics to theism to the latest trends in modern literature.

It's no surprise that John decided against the farming life when he enrolled in the University of Alabama in 1959. After spending his allowance on books for his library, John cozied up to Professor Hudson Strode, and the childless Teresa Strode practically adopted John as their son. Hudson went to the lengths of securing a $1,000 scholarship for John from a wealthy banker friend and John repaid him with the flattery and outright charm which Hudson valued so highly. Later, John would also repay Hudson with considerable research for his three-volume biography of Jefferson Davis.

John's writing was also influenced by August Mason, a poet and English professor whom Goodman reckons as "one of the last of the Vanderbilt Agarians". Specifically, Mason's emphasis on the art of verse, as distinguished from the art of poetry, must be dimly heard in the background. Finlay's poems are usually written in measured verse with a focus on intense, place-based perceptions of the world. One of his most notable poems,"Audubon at Oakley," celebrates the naturalism and detail captured by artist and naturalist John James Audubon. 

John's relationship with the Nashville Agrarians was to be a life-long one. He nurtured friendships with Andrew Lytle and Allen Tate, and his ability to fit the mold of a "southern gentleman" stereotype served him well in local literary circles.

After finishing his degree, John Finlay secured a teaching position at the University of Montevallo in the fall of 1966. Goodman identifies this as the point at which "Finlay revealed for the first time his eccentric lifestyle". To many Southerners, John's homosexuality was not obvious- the literary circles were filled with flaneurisms and bowties. John knew that his sexuality went best left unextolled under these circumstances. Those who knew him well, however, knew he was gay. And those who knew him briefly knew he was something fantastic- "a small mountain of cigarette butts piled up on the floor of his VW bug as he drove some 40,000 miles without changing the oil."

As a political liberal, John treaded gingerly around the politics of his day, choosing to leave behind only one poem that might be considered overtly political. This poem was about the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC, and it reflects John's anti-war position. In his view, war was what happened when passion and frenzy superseded reason and self-discipline.

Early in his writing career, John provided a list of a list of "Notes for the Perfect Poem", some of which he later revisited. These "notes" reveal his literary kinship with Edgar Bowers and Yvor Winters, one of his most transcendant mentors. 

1. It must be about the truth. It must give truth.
2. It must be literal, very literal.
3. It must be symbolic, very symbolic, but symbolic only in terms of its literal "base" or "narrative", not in terms not growing out of this literal whatever you may call it.
4. It must be literal, very literal.
5. It must be clean and lean and have the supple, yet firm movement, of pure muscle.
6. It must be of the physical world, have winter mornings, summer nights, creeks, smokes, smells, the reflection of a star in a bucket of water, etc. in it so that the reader will say, "Oh yes, this is just the way it really is."
7. Yet it must also be abstract.
8. It must come from a man who is mature and has mastered himself so that he is calm in the good knowledge he has of our mystery, our language and history.
9. It must be rooted in a particular place.
10. It must be whole in its beautifully compelling demand that the reader engage his wholeness, both his intel- lect and his emotion. 
11. It must be moral and cause the reader to make one of the three following statements: “I should and want to lead that kind of life.” “I should not and do not want to lead that kind of life.” “I should and want to have the patience to resign myself to these unavoidable facts about life.”
12. It must have both the intensity of engagement and the detachment of judgement.
13. It must be fully realized in language.
14. It must be plain.

After spending some time on the island of Corfu, John lived in Paris and worked as a janitor. His Paris notebooks provide insight into his absorption of the classicist milieu. Then John returned to Tuscaloosa to work at Bryce Sanitarium, the place where his grandfather died. His Bryce notebooks reveals the danse macabre of John's fascination and repulsion with the treatment and life of the "insane"- illuminated in his poem, "The Locked Wards".

It took John Finlay ten years to finish his PHD thesis. From 1970 to 1980, he cavorted, worked, wrote, explored, and finally completed the thesis which technically allowed him to rest on his laurels. At some point during this decade, John's multiple visits to the backrooms of New Orleans' lively gay bars and baths left him with an HIV infection. The tragedy in this part of John's life lies not only in his infection, but also in his passionate conversion to Roman Catholicism. His poem, "To A Victim of AIDS", almost suggests that the man in the New Orleans bars deserved the "divine punishment" meted out by a God made angry by homosexuality. For John Finlay, his final religious conversion brought more self-loathing than peace and mercy. That breaks my heart.

John passed away from AIDS in 1991. His final resting place lies in Enterprise, Alabama in a graveyard I am still struggling to find. A John P. Finlay (1887-1935) and a John D. Finlay (1911-1952) are buried in the Enterprise City Cemetery. 

More on John Finlay's life and poems can be uncovered in the following:

"In The Beginning: A Note from the Poetry Editor" by David Middleton
"On Rembrandt's Portrait of An Old Man Reading the Scriptures", a poem by John Finlay
A segue to all the John Finlays whose names ended up on a POW list 
Encyclopedia of Alabama entry on John Finlay 
A Garland for John Finlay by David Middleton 
Mind and Blood: The Collected Poems of John Finlay by John Finlay and David Middleton 
Entry in Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary

A dwelling a day: Hurricane House.

dwelling #2: hurricane house

This is Hurricane House, a home originally built in the 1800's and then moved and rebuilt in 1946 by folk song collector Byron Arnold. It is located along the banks of Little Hurricane Creek, one of the five major tributaries to our beloved Hurricane Creek. With the help of the munchkins and a few other folks (including Nancy Callahan, Wayne Blackwell, the Trammells, Joy Baklanoff, and Guy Ward Hubbs), I discovered the long and winding history of this hand-hewn, square-cut log dogtrot log house made from the longleaf pine which once grew abundantly in these parts.

Currently, the house is being used as a home for tornado victims who lost their homes in the tornado. It's history has been unpublished to this day- though yours truly is working hard to find a interested party to get involved in its publication.

Inside the front entryway to Hurricane House.

Tuscaloosa Area Virtual Museum opens soon!

Love letter #37: From the minds of local Alabama authors and literati.

Last thing I remember before being wheeled back to my endoscopy.

Anything Can Be A Leprechaun, the blog of Gin Phillips
The Edifice Project, David Ainsworth's votive for Milton  
Brian Oliu Internet Presence 
The Creative Writers Collaborative, a project manned by BJ Hollars
The Lit Pub, the blog of Elizabeth Wade
Thoughts from Nanci Kincaid, the woman who wrote,
"I want a man who is born happy so it isn't my job to make him that way..." 
Hobart for a little Sam Martone and anothers
Gay Talese's official website, for a plethora from hats to histories
The Seasons Bear Us, the blog of Jeanie Thompson
Roy Hoffman writ Roy at South Writ Large
Rodney Jones' bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation 
James Braziel needs no title 
Sena Jeters Naslund's blog 

Since even love letters have unchased butterflies or words which got away...

Chapter 16's moment with Michael Knight is as close as it gets.
Norman Jetmundsen goes from from Vulcan to Soulbane.
Ralph Fletcher keeps writing for children with parents who love children's books.
Robert Inman storytells and stages.
On a sad side note, R.I.P. Madison Jones.
And what we missed of Wilmer Mills. 

Rural Studio Pilgrimage #3: Mason's Bend.

Getting to Mason's Bend

Following the footsteps of Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio school around the corners of Alabama begins with a trip to the Pie Lab in Greensboro for us. After polishing off some quiche in the courtyard, I sidled up to the counter hoping to get directions to Mason's Bend. The lady behind the counter didn't know, but she knew someone who did. Before long, I was speaking on her iPhone to a man who provided the following directions:

Take Highway 14 from Greensboro to Sawyerville. Once you pass the only blinking traffic light in Sawyerville, take the next left (might be Highway 15). Follow that road all the way on out until you pass a huge mansion. A little futher, the road will continue as a dirt road or a hard top- stay on the hard top which veers left. 

Grandma Vicki used the spotty cell phone reception to consult Google Maps as we drove. Between the two of us, we balked at the rolling green hills and hot orange dirt while trying to figure out which roads we needed to follow. Max chirped up from the backseat that "This is like an awesome puzzle and we have to find our way with a few clues." The thrill of the chase kept us laughing- it also kept our eyes and ears attuned to the landscape and world around us in which any road might be "the one clue". I'm convinced that we learn so much more from these pilgrimage outings combining verbal directions with slipshod maps than any perfectly-planned field trip. 

The Glass Chapel at Mason's Bend

When I explained to Grandma Vicki that Rural Studio uses "local ingredients", including clays, dirts, salvaged materials, and metals, she expressed the oft-repeated question of how dirt houses withstand Alabama thunderstorms. Little did we know that our adventure would provide a first-hand experience of exactly this building lesson.

The last thing I remember before the zombie apolcalypse is that we turned left onto Mason's Bend Road. Before we knew it, a bright orange dirt road stretched out before us in a curve that could only be called "Mason's Bend". And there it was.

The Glass Chapel-   a transportation stop, community gathering space, chapel for the local choral group, and distribution center for children's summer school meals- made from car windows salvaged from a Chicago scrap yard provide set atop rammed earth walls. Anderson Harris, owner of the Butterfly House, donated the land for the center and before his recent death tended to its garden.

Max and Micah visit the Glass Chapel, a community center in Mason's Bend.

Inside the Glass Chapel, which once held picnic tables.

A close-up of the exterior Glass Chapel walls.

The Basketball Court at Mason's Bend

The Basketball Court was completed in 2000 around the same time as the Glass Chapel. The same rammed earth technnique was used for the court shelter. One difference is in the composition of its creators; the Basketball Court was the first Rural Studio Outreach project which brought together students from different disciplines.

Grandma Vicki poses with the kids near the Basketball Court which is currently missing a basketball goal.

The Butterfly House at Mason's Bend

On the right at the beginning of the bend stands the Harris/Butterfly House, built for Anderson and Ora Lee Harris in 1996. Its name comes from the sharply angled roof structure that collects rainwater and shelters a screened porch. The house is largely heated and cooled passively, with assistance from a wood-burning stove. The roof's "tail" funnels rain into a cistern, which is used for washing clothes and flushing toilets. The house is now occupied by Anderson and Ora Lee's children.

The water spout just barely misses the bird bath, probably intended for less furious showers.

Chance encounters are my favorite kind, and we just chanced upon a young lady standing on a porch with her children. I asked her if it was alright to photograph the Glass Chapel, and she said, "Of course." We got to talking about the Bend, her kids, the basketball court that used to sit behind her house before the balls kept landing in her windows, and her mom, who lived a few houses away in the Butterfly House. When I asked if there was some way we could contribute money for local kids to maintain the Glass Chapel, she called her parents, Daniel and Lori Harris, one of which I presumed was a descendant of Anderson Harris. 

As the kids exchanged cockadoodles with a handsome rooster strutting across the road, Daniel and Lori Harris appeared- warm smiles, welcomes, no concern for the clouds just beginning to shed a drizzle overhead. While the drizzle turned to a shower (my first shower of the week, I confess), Daniel and Lori told me how we could could help the community of Mason's Bend maintain the Glass Chapel and the Basketball Court. They gave their name and number, and Max immediately began drafting a poster to collect money for Mason's Bend- for upkeep and to add a playground/basketball area for the kids. 

The Green (Dirt) House at Mason's Bend

Turning left onto Green Lane will lead you to the Green Dirt House and the Willie Bell House.

The Green Dirt House bore a group of 8 children, possibly Greens, playing on the porch, but the rain drove them back indoors.

The Green (Dirt) House, completed in 2005, was marked by fantastic overhanging eves which protect the dirt blocks from the elements and its inhabitants from the hot summer sun. Experimental blocks made of newspaper and Hale County red dirt molded into papercrete form the exterior wall that bears no load. Papercrete is a construction material composed of pulped paper, clay, and cement and has existed since the early 1920s, but has never been used extensively. As such, the wall is an experiment and consequently is protected by a big roof and does not carry any load.

The central column clad in metal serves as a towering chimney. Based on common African building techniques, the tower is located above the kitchen and creates a natural convective current by causing a pressure gradient — warm air rises and is pulled up and out the column while makeup air is pulled in creating cooling breezes.

The Willie Bell House at Mason's Bend

In 2005, Rural Studio students tried their hand at a more disciplined project using conventional lumber and a standard box frame. The Willie Bell House next door to the Green House was the result. We saw brightly colored bowling balls on the front lawn, but the house itself was very difficult to see in the rain.

The barely-visible Willie Bell House.

What we missed at Mason's Bend

The advent of a torrential downpour kept us from visiting the Harris Hay Bale House, completed in 1994. With 24-inch-thick walls constructed from stacked hay bales enveloped in concrete stucco, this house is a model for sustainable insulation. Hay bales act as a highly effective insulator, economical, and mildew- and mold-resistant. The awning windows pull air off the large front porch and form a natural convective current for cooling the home in the summer. 

The Harris Smokehouse was made from broken concrete salvaged by the Hale County Highway Department. It was built for a total of $40 and now functions as a henhouse. The roof is made of salvaged road signs and beams from a local barn. Glass bottles are embedded in the walls and glow when seen from the inside. Mockbee dubbed the smokehouse style "Alabama Ronchamp". I was hoping to see the special "bricks" up close and nab Mr. Shepard for a chat. 

We also missed the Manor Bryant Seed House, 1999 thesis project for Rural Studio also located at Mason's Bend.

The thunderstorm waltzed across the state with us as we drove Grandma Vicki to the airport.

Topsy-turvy clouds= cheering kids in the car.

If you'd like to help the community of Mason's Bend, please send an email to rainscented @ gmail dot com. Include your name, suggestions, and possible donations for a playground.

Pilgrimage to a quasi-secret sulphur spring.

James F. Sulzby, Jr., the Birmingham realtor who founded the Alabama Historical Association in 1947, shared his personal passion for local history in Historic Alabama Hotels and Resorts. The bland title obfuscates the diligence to detail within. Sulzby's chronicle reveals the early development of Alabama by land speculators and land grant companies, many of which purchased land, discovered a mineral spring, and created a resort around these "therapeutic waters", in that order.

The cloudy Saturday started slowly at the Coryell Castle- piles of laundry to fold, sort, and put away almost distracted us from the call to adventure. Then I stumbled across a chapter called "Windham Springs" and the sirens started. Love for laundry aside, Patrick and the kids didn't take much convincing. Off we went in search of Windham Springs which we knew from Sulzby's book was "located on Crabbe Road, twenty-five miles north of Tuscaloosa, in the extreme uppermost part of Tuscaloosa County".

Sulzby's description of Windham Springs, which was called the "Fountain of Youth" while the resort was in full operation, bore reading aloud in the car. The name comes from Levi Windham, formerly of Pickens County, who first established this formerly-famous watering hole:

After obtaining title to the land, Mr. Windham returned to settle there. He brought along fifty slaves to clear the land, and upon completion of that work he possessed a beautiful farm. The immediate area surrounding the springs was left in its natural state because of its picturesque beauty, and became known as Windham Springs.

In 1850, Mr. Windham built a hotel and six cabins... After Mr. Windham discovered the curative qualities of the mineral waters on his place, the news spread throughout Tuscaloosa and the adjacent counties like news of a new patent medicine. The water was "reputed to cure rheumatism, toe itch, colic, stomach acidity and most any other sort of ailments."

Max jumped in to exclaim that his toe itched due to fire ant bites, and he looked forward to being cured of this annoyance. I told him that there might be reason to expect such a cure since George Christian, father of Northport businessman T.W. Christian, had supposedly been "cured" of a "severe case of eczema on his legs which the doctos were unable to cure" by soaking his legs in water from Windham Springs.

Though Mr. Windham apparently enjoyed a drink- the hotel's saloon really took off- local churchgoers did not approve. The legislature passed a bill prohibiting the selling of alcohol within five miles of nearby churches, which meant Windham's saloon had to be shut down. After the Civil War (consistently described as "The War Between the States by Sulzby), Mr. Windham lost his slaves and couldn't operate the farm or hotel anymore. The acrerage and resort were sold to Sam Friedman and Company of Tuscaloosa.

Sam Friedman added several new cabins, bringing the total to twenty cabins, at Windham Springs. He also leased the hotel and cabins to local operators. The "curative effects of sulphur water continued to attract people to the resort and often there were three to four hundred people there at one time". Sulzby notes that "traveling drummers who made trips out from Tuscaloosa, Jasper, Fayette, and Carrollton stopped at Windham Springs regularly because of the good hospitality, cool nights, and good meals."

On the fourth Sunday in May of 1917, tragedy struck the resort when a tornado rolled through and "blew practically everything away." The cabins, stores, houses, and the Baptist Church in the area were levelled. Houston Clements, who had been managing the hotel, barely escaped with his life when the entire hotel save for two rooms, one of which he used as storm shelter with his family, was destroyed. 

In 1933, Joe Christian purchased the Windham Springs property from Friedman and Company. Professor T.E. Christian who taught school in various parts of Tuscaloosa was still living on the property when Sulzby's book was published in 1960. 

As we drove along Crabbe Road, it soon became clear that there was not going to be a Windham Springs sign or any easy access route from the road. We stopped at Field's Grocery and Patrick went in to inquire about the healing sulphur waters. Mr. Fields told Patrick that he used to "drink that water all the time and it tasted gooo-o-o-d". As for directions, we needed to turn left at the curve in the road with mailboxes and trailers onto a dirt-road winding around the back. 

Milla makes her way down to the mysterious spring.

The ladies stare with slight horror at the tap water running into the creek.

The sulphur water tap is still running- and look at the white residue!

Micah finds the spring and the tap where Max waits.

Patrick was the only one brave enough to taste the spring water, which smelled distinctly of old eggs.

More butterflies to chase if you decide to cavort around the Windham Springs area

The WTTO Tower, supposedly "one of the tallest constructions on earth"
Alabama Pioneers' geneological history of Windham Springs
The Windham Springs Baptist Church nearby on Crabbe Road
Goodwater Cemetery, home to several Christian and Dunn headstones 
Field's Grocery on Crabbe Road- to get the scoop from Mr. Fields 

More Rural Studio in Alabama to chase: The hit list.

Since I've been spilling the beans about Rural Studio lately, I prefer to open the doors of your imagination to more than just our little wanderings. To learn about Rural Studio, Fred Bernstein's article is a great place to start and the back roads of west Alabama are a great place to continute.

Mockbee liked to work in Hale County because there was no building code enforcement which allowed his students to experiment with "unconventional materials and forms" ranging from surplus Chevy Caprice windshields to bales of hay. I think about this when my hopes for Rural Studio designs in Alberta City come to mind, and I hope that Tuscaloosa's new building code does not limit new construction to the tacky chain-mall style (and parking lot hell) of Midtown Village. I've noticed that much of the rebuilding in the tornado-damaged areas includes the same dull facades which promise to turn us into a generic version of the suburbia everyone is trying to escape these days.

The public restrooms at Perry Lakes Park in Marion, Alabama.

But back to the good stuff- here's my Rural Studio hit list for our roamschooling adventures this summer and fall:

1. The Glass Chapel at Mason's Bend, the hamlet near Sawyerville which includes the church built with Caprice windshields.
2. The Butterfly House in Mason's Bend. (Around 32.728822,-87.797794)
3. The Green Dirt House in Mason's Bend. (32.728822,-87.797794)
4. Harris Hay Bale House and Smokehouse in Mason's Bend. (32.727743,-87.800685)
5. The Towering Sky public restrooms at Perry Lakes in Marion. (32.694866,-87.243649)
6. The underground public restrooms at Perry Lakes in Marion. (32.694961,-87.243762)
7. The Uncle Henry House on County Road 23. (32.564669,-87.442766)
8. Butch Anthony's cool-sided Organic Farmer's Stand house of Doo Nanny repute dangling near Newbern. (32.631243,-87.499747)
9. Music Man's house outside Greensboro on County Road 19. Check out the StoryCorps.
10. The Bodark Amphitheater and Chantilly House in Newbern. (32.597870,-87.534036)
11. The Bridge House in Greensboro.
12. Rural Heritage Center in (32.271531,-87.626481)
13. The Safe House Museum in Greensboro. A must on all levels of spirit.
14. The Carpet House in Newbern. 
15. The Newbern Baseball Club field in Newbern. (32.605046,-87.529900)
16. The Patrick House in Newbern.
17. The Fire Station in Newbern.
18. The Newbern Playground in Newbern. (32.599763,-87.533956)
19. The Subrosa Chapel/Pantheon built by Carol Mockbee, Sambo's daughter, as a tribute in Newbern. (32.597915,-87.534401)
20. The Shiles House in Hale County.
21. St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Selma a stone's throw away from Old Cahawba. (32.319434, -87.105263)
22. Amos Kennedy's residence/studio in or near Akron.
23. The Dorothy Wilson House near Greensboro. (32.717882,-87.578003)
24. Hale County Animal Shelter in Greensboro.
25. The road sign fence in Greensboro.
26. The Connor House near Greensboro. (32.705366,-87.581168)
27. The Antioch Baptist Church somewhere in between places. (32.824360,-87.450448)
28. Lion's Park in Greensboro.

For more histories, details, and personal blurbs on Rural Studio, pick an asterisk and click.

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Rural Studio Pilgrimage #2: Lion's Park in Greensboro.

Highway 61 should played a big part in our pilgrimage. On our way from Newbern to Greensboro, we passed through the possibility of a town named "Whitsitt". I say possibility because there was no town in evidence and the name itself suggests a spin off "What's it?".

Driving the 8ish miles to Lion's Park in Greensboro was easy sailing. The GPS coordinates for your visiting pleasure: 

Latitude: 32.690500° N
Longitude: 87.588833° W

The super metal gate to Lion's Park are part of the Rural Studio's Surfaces, which turned the park from a car-friendly park to a pedestrian-focused park.

The intriguing Mobile Concession Stand that looks like a cross between the Jetson's and Soviet realism.

Patrick strolls up to the Baseball Fields at Lion's Park. The anti-90-degree angle look of the fencing is 100% Rural Studio.

Micah finds her own way to enter the super Playscape.

The play maze in which the kids got lost and found and lost and found again.

It might be one of the best places for hide-and-seek tag ever devised.

Stepping from one tin can to another is part of the fun.

Milla claps for herself as she manages the big leap across cans.

Sky and tin cans- vistas for kids.

Endless possibilities.

 Left out of our photos are the skate-friendly Toilet Rooms, the Skatepark, and other projects currently underway- which you can watch on Lion's Park Project blog. Coincidentally, the Rural Studio students were visiting the Tuscaloosa Arboretum recently.

The ones that got away.

Micah at Hurricane Creek.

Fly fishing is one of those things I hope to carve into a few spaces in my life as the kids get older. And reading books like Howell Raines' The One That Got Away, a memoir cast through love, longing, and wisdom, baits the imagination.

Fortunately, Raines doesn't dwell too long on the technical details of how he got from Birmingham, Alabama to the top position in the New York Times. Neither does he drag out his downfall and the Jayson Blair scandal- tiny pieces in the bigger plot of a life. 

My preferred Raines- the raised-at-the-knees-of-southern-storytellers Raines- reminisces and somehow pulls me to the present throught the mud puddles and tiny creeks of his past:

Before I was a fisherman I was simply a boy who could not stay away from the sea, lakes, ponds, puddles, rivers, creeks, brooks, branches and springs, and up until I was eight or nine years old I could happily be around water without fishing in it. The gift for being a companion of water rather than a flailer of it deserted me, but I remember those days as possessing a peacefulness that lies beyond the reach of incurable fishermen. For them- for us, I should say- every stretch of unfished water is a missed opportunity. In that happy, earlier time, all marine pleasures- swimming, dam building, collecting and liberating newts and minnows and crabs- were equal.

As Micah and Milla piddle through, content to be "companions of water", Max has begun to seek rewards from the water- a means to specific ends, the quantitative congratulations of "the catch". His hooks are now carefully organized in the budding language of lures. A strategic vision underlies his discussion of possible fishing expeditions at the beach or at the creek. Raines describes his preferred water spots:

I had several favorite venues, none of which lay near my home. Indeed, one of my chief grievances against the part of Birmingham where I grew up was its lack of ponds and creeks. Between them, the municipal sewage system and the United States Steel Company had polluted every stream within bicycle range. But once I could get down to the Gulf coast at Panama City or back into the hills of Winston County, Alabama, I was in the kingdom of joy.

Howell Raines lives up north now, so it needn't break his heart that even the Gulf Coast has been polluted beyond fish-ability by the oil spill. Eyeless shrimp and fish with big black appendages are now a regular fishing find for Gulf Coast fishermen. Explaining to Max why we can't eat the fish we catch in the Gulf is a uncomfortable conversation- one in which he asks why "you adults" let these things happen, why "you big people" destroy things you can't repair.

I tell Max, in my big-person voice, that money talks. But resignation and acceptance of political corruption doesn't fit anywhere in a child's worldview. It takes "maturity" to live a lie without blinking. These days, I find myself blinking all the time.

I suppose that Max's favorite fishing holes will soon become part of his water lexicon. Raines suggests that this development might be more significant than the doorway measurements in determining the gradual journey from childhood to "maturity".

The river runs through it.

The way the sunset shimmers like gasoline on the Black Warrior.

Patrick took this photo on our Bama Belle sunset cruise last month. So much of Alabama's history runs along the Black Warrior River- from the cotton plantations to the rise of local industries to the early Indian settlements.

The Black Warrior inspires the best in us. In fact, the university's poetry magazine even proudly bears the title, Black Warrior Review. On early mornings, I love watching the rowing crews cross the water, oars in perfect sync, the resemblance to the waltz of the water striders unmistakable. 

The Prewitt Plantation in Tuscaloosa: A narrative history.

The Prewitt Slave Cemetery Comes to Light

In 2006, Carolyn Mason opened the history of the Prewitt plantation and its slaves to the readers of the Tuscaloosa News. Her article described the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery as "the final resting place of 300 to 500 slaves and their descendents". Mason explained:

Plantation owner and slave trader John Welch Prewitt, who was said to have owned more than 600 slaves, established the burial ground in the 1820s. Prewitt’s estate once covered more than 6,000 acres north of Northport. His home, which burned down in the 1940s, was a few hundred yards uphill from the cemetery. 

Prewitt, who is reported to have owned slave ships that docked in Mobile, designated a two-acre parcel of land next to the road for his slaves to bury their dead. After Emancipation, many of the freed slaves took the last name of their former owners — as was the custom of the time — and settled in the same vicinity. 

Possibly the largest existing slave cemetery in Alabama, Prewitt cemetery’s location has remained well known within the black community since its oral history was passed down through the generations. 

Although the last burial in the cemetery was in 1945, Prewitts continued to gather there to pay respect to their kin and roam across the sacred ground in search of familiar names among the haphazard gravestones. The markers include hand-cut river rock with crude etchings, solid slabs of arched stone, footstones and flat rocks tented together to keep out animals. The markings range from initials scratched into stone to full names and dates going back to 1819, the year Alabama became a state.

Responsibility for this cemetery was assumed by Pole Bridge Baptist Church, the official landowner of the historic cemetery.  But annual clean-ups could not stop the deterioriation of the aged stone markings. At this point, several factors coincided to bring the Prewitt cemetery onto the radar of local historians. 

Eloise Prewitt stumbled across a few articles written by Marvin Harper, an early leader of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society and founder of the Kentuck Arts Festival. In these articles, Harper described early pioneers, including a man named John Welch Prewitt. My feeling is that this very article might have been the one which occasioned Eloise's search. Recognizing the shared surname, Eloise began an adventure that all local history aficionados can appreciate.

After consulting census records, Eloise confirmed that she was the great-great-great-granddaughter of John Welch Prewitt. Then she found his grave, which was marked with a fading headstone nestled among about two-dozen markers. Mason writes:

The practically unknown cemetery is deep in a heavily wooded and almost inaccessible location on the southern side of the portion of Lake Tuscaloosa that crosses U.S. Highway 43. 

In 1998, Prewitt resumed up her quest and found the Prewitt Slave Cemetery. “I felt a strong pull, a sense of family and a determination to do something about the condition it had fallen into,” she said. “I wanted to help.” 

What followed was a massive restoration and preservation effort that continues today. The mission brought Prewitt the warmth and acceptance of an extended family, including Floda Prewitt Taylor, known as Miss Flo, and now-deceased Willie Prewitt, black descendents of Prewitt plantation slaves. 

“She did more than just help out,” said Taylor, 88, and still active in clean-up duties. “She’s family now. Her efforts have been astonishing, and I think of her like a sister for all she’s done.”

The white and black sides of the Prewitt clan have formed a close connection through their work at the cemetery. But make no mistake: It is backbreaking work against the forces of nature. Volunteers spend hours toiling in the sun’s heat, pulling weeds, cutting vines, digging up stumps and trying to halt nature’s impulse to cover her ground. 

The markers at the cemetery have been placed randomly, reflecting times when there was always room for the body of one more family member. They were days when it was common to mark a grave by planting a flower, vine or bush or merely breaking a dinner plate and scattering the pieces. 

The cedar trees at the site date to pre-Civil War days and possibly were planted in memory of the deceased, and every rock and stone must be treated with due respect. That this once overgrown cemetery is now easy to access and its appearance is remarkably improved is often credited to Eloise Prewitt.

She says her efforts are nothing more than something families do to help each other. But her actions speak volumes. She set two goals: to help with the physical preservation of the cemetery and to match existing genealogical records with the writings on the grave markers to create a historical account before nature erases the last clues.

“I care that future generations have these records before it’s too late,” Prewitt said. 

She has compiled comprehensive, though not-yet completed, notebooks with photographs, slave census records, press clippings and detailed information on every grave she’s documented. She shares her notebooks with volunteer workers and court-assigned clean-up crews. 

Eloise Prewitt's hard work opened the doors to the descendants of the Prewitt plantation to discover and commemorate their own roots. The story of James Wilson's efforts to gain access to the Prewitt Cemetery gained prominent attention a few years ago. Yet the media accounts of this cemetery offer only a limited and fairly glossified version of the story.

The Less Publicized Stories and Legends Surrounding the Prewitt Plantation and Cemetery

To get a clearer picture of the Prewitt plantation and cemetery, I consulted the Alabama State Archives and stumbled across an essay by Lillian Finnell written in the 1930's. At one time, Lillian Finnell's every stumble merited mention in the Tuscaloosa News. Apart from being a collector of local folk tales and histories, Lillian also happened to be a sister of Colonel Woolsey Finnell and "prominent in the work of patriotic organizations" who happened to be raising their trumpets in the Depression-era south.

Her social status offers insight into cultural mores and assumptions predominant during this period by the "educated classes". As you read Lillian's entire account of the Prewitt plantation (excerpted below), take note of the subtext which suggests that some slave-owners were "good" or "virtuous" slave-owners:

Mr. John W. Prewitt and his wife lived 13 miles north of Tuscaloosa on the Byler, US 43, Road. They owned approximately one thousand slaves. These slaves lived in different communities in groups necessary for working the farms they lived on. Mr. Prewitt had no hired overseers, but each farm was under one of the slaves that was most dependable.

All these slaves had their own cows, hogs, chickens, etc. which they used and disposed of as they wish. They kept the mules- which were owned by Mr. Prewitt- that they worked and used at their homes. They raised their corn and kept it at home. They went to mill- the mill belonged to Mr. Prewitt- just like white people. On Sunday morning by sun-up these leaders were at the "Big House" (thus was the master's house always designated by his slaves), to draw meat, flour, lard, coffee, sugar, or any other supplies they needed. The following which was related long years after the war by some of the old ex-slaves is pertinent at this time.

They said that when they used to go to the commissary to draw provisions on Sunday mornings that "Miss Betsy" (Mrs. Prewitt) was always present and that she wouldn't let "nobody" have a thing unless he, or she, had bathed the night before and had on clean white clothes that morning.

The largest group of slaves lived in quarters back of the "Big House"  and worked the big farm. Just south of these quarters was the grave yard for the negroes. When the negroes had colds and other ailments, especially the children, Mrs. Prewitt would get her lantern and such home remedies as she kept, and go from house to house doctoring the sick before she went to bed. This happened oftener during the rainy spring months, because there was more sickness among the darkies then than at any other time.

After the slaves were free and Mr. and Mrs. Prewitt had died, the negro quarters were burned or torn down. But all the old negroes and most of the younger generation believe that every bad rainy night "Miss Betsy" can be seen with her lantern visiting the sick, and not finding them in their cabins, she goes to the graveyard and ministers to them there.

There are some 2000 negroes buried there now. It is the largest negro graveyard in America outside of a large city. 

There is another item in connection with the Prewitt negroes which has been handed down by citizens of Tuscaloosa who lived before the war. As the Prewitts had so many slaves- there was only one other gentleman in Tuscaloosa county who probably owned as many slaves as Mr. Prewitt- it was not an easy matter to keep them eployed at all times. So in the fall of the year, during cotton picking time, Mr. Prewitt would hire some of his slaves to planters living below Tuscaloosa in the Black Belt to pick cotton for them. It was said by those older persons, who witnessed such occasions, that it was a show to Tuscaloosans to see the Prewitt negroes passing through the town on their way down to pick cotton on the river plantations.

There would be wagonloads of them, men and women, all so strong and healthy looking, and every one dressed in white.

The paternalism in Lillian's account is impossible to ignore. Clearly, the Prewitt slaves were to be considered fortunate and lucky to be so finely adorned as they were carried like cattle across town. Even Mr. Harper's account, written in 1972, describes the kindness of the Prewitt's in their treatment of slaves.

Paternalistic descriptions of slavery bring to mind the excuses given by harem or brothel owners for treating women and their bodies as property- "But we make them look so pretty and you know they would just be on the streets without us". I call "canard". The enslavement of human beings is never justifiable on ethical or moral grounds; and the only heroic slaveowners are those who refused to own slaves.

The Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society includes the Prewitt Slave Cemetery on their list of historic places in Tuscaloosa. The cemetery is located just off Byler Road, the oldest public road in Alabama. To get there,  take U.S. Highway 43 to the northwestern edge of Lake Tuscaloosa and turn at the historic marker for Alabama’s first public road. Then follow what’s left of Old Byler Road until it reaches the lake. Once a toll road that crossed land that was swallowed by Lake Tuscaloosa, Old Byler Road connected the Warrior and Tennessee rivers and ran through the Prewitt plantation. If you happen upon the ghost of "Miss Betsy", let her know she can rest in peace because owning other human beings in now against the law of this land.

When exploring Reichhold Road, bring your own pit bull.

Rarely do I venture forth into places where I wonder if I should have brought my own pit bull or mean dog for company. But last week's survey of property along Reichhold Road in Holt spooked Angie enough for her to say, "Alina, I'm not going on this road with you and the kids again unless you have some protection." The kids agreed.

Our first stop was the old Empire Coke Company, where Arthur, Angie's dad, worked for a period of time. Angie reminisced about climbing the old fence and playing the shrubs while waiting for her dad. Those days are over, as Empire Coke no longer appears to be operating. The site is fairly desolate.

One of the first stops along the way was the old Reichhold Chemicals headquarters- now deserted and ripe for the possible poetic plucking. Something about the building brought the rich history of Tuscaloosa's early industrialization to mind. The style of the roof resembles Jack Warner's oriental-inspired architecture at Northriver Yacht Club and the Westervelt headquarters. 

Back in 1942, when the Tuscaloosa plant for Reichhold Chemicals was constructed, World War II loomed large. The plant was constructed “primarily to serve the war effort through the manufacture of synthetic phenol”, a chemical used in the manufacture of munitions and plastics. Personal history intersects with Reichhold history in 1960, when Thomas P. Shumaker was named the Corporate VP of Sales for Reichhold. My early memories of childhood include growing up in the old Shumaker home, fascinated by the woodturning lathe in the basement- a hobby that must have been part of Thomas Shumaker's life.

In 1968, the Geological Survey of Alabama (GSA) and Deep Well Pollution Control Corporation published a preliminary study for a deep dispersal well at Reichhold- “Study of the Potential of Subsurface Disposal in Tuscaloosa Area” dated Sept. 30, 1968. At the time, environmental industry leaders and the EPA were seeking ways to dispose of industrial waste deep below the surface of the earth. Ultimately, this search would lead them to drill dispersal wells over 8,000 feet into the ground on the Reichhold site. After Reichhold abandoned its Tuscaloosa plant in the early 1990's, this experiment in waste disposal remained. I hoped this little drive would help me to discover where the underground wells could be found.

As we continued a little further along the road, we noticed a large red clay field to the right. I stopped the spaceship and jumped out, hoping to catch a glimpse of a company name or associated business. Alas, no proper nouns could be discerned.

A quick hike led me to a clearing in which trucks were excavating what appeared to be red clay dirt. When I realized that a man was standing nearby smoking a cigarette- "H--e-ey miss, whutchalookinfor?"- I smiled nervously and scurried back to the van. Angie laughed and rolled her eyes, warning me that she would soon start making calls for protection.

Across from a loop with one residential home owned and occupied by the Corder family, we found a locked gate near the location where the deep dispersals wells are rumored to lie. Again, I jumped out of the car, snapped a few photos, took note of the jeep with an Obama bumper sticker and Auburn decal parked in front of the locked gate, and vowed to return to solve the mystery of the road leading up the hill. I will have to hike this one on my own.

The road ends with the intersection to Merichem Chemicals and Southern Ionics, a mysterious corporation which currently owns parts of the property formerly held by Reichhold Industries. To the left of this dead end lies one branch of Merichem with extremely high security and a no-visitors policy. To the right, the road extends for some ways until it meets up with a timber industry and an old house at the end of a driveway marked with an "M".

The homes range from barely-standing to well-maintained. The house above even had a nice set of hens running around the driveway alongside the multiple signs warning of guns and danger to trespassers. My adventures along Reichhold Road deserve a sequel- as well as a Bruce Springsteen song. There is so much history to be mined here.

"The Bonding", a poem by Tuscaloosa poet Helen Blackshear.

Image of Sam Friedman, Helen's father, discovered in a drawer at the Friedman home and shared with the world by the kindly folks at Tuscaloosa News.

After polishing off Helen F. Blackshear's memoir, Mother Was A Rebel: In Praise of Gentle People, I reread a few of her poems with the additional reference points. There is something so juicy and summer-laden about reading poems informed by the poet's biography, especially when the same scent of soil and sun runs through both lives.

Helen wrote this poem while wandering through her family's property along the banks of Bee Branch, one of the major tributaries to Hurricane Creek. It reveals her family's deep ties to the local landscape and its natural beauty. Next week, I'm going to ask her daughters about her ghost and whether Helen kept this poem-promise. In the meantime, savor the poem and ask yourself if there is some landscape which bonds you to your family. Or, explore the artwork of Helen's daughter, Sue Blackshear.

THE BONDING

These woods have captured me.
Ghosts wait where the past turns.
My grandfather, immigrant Jew from Hungary,
bought this land, searching for coal
and bored these prospect holes along the creek.
Perhaps, stopping to smell pink
honeysuckle clinging to the cliff,
he too fell captive here.
I feel his presence.

My father knew these pines from boyhood
when he swam naked in this stream.
Later he built a summer cabin here
for our holidays.
In his eighties he still took walks
most mornings, tree pruners shouldered
to free some tender dogwood sapling
from entangling vines.

If it is true that ghosts may linger
in places they have loved, perhaps my children too
will find me here,
caught in a woods spell. 

When to fish and farm in Alabama: Folk wisdoms.

The summer of scorched hydrangeas.

    I'm still savoring The WPA Guide to 1930's Alabama. Here's an excerpt from the chapter on folklore and folkways pertaining to folk wisdom on fishing and farming:

    The lore-wise farmer knows one must not plant "eye crops"- potatoes, sugar cane, Jerusalem artichokes, and sweet potatoes- at night because then the eyes will not be able to find their way to the surface. Cotton and grains should be planted during the light of the moon, while root crops do best when planted in the dark of the moon. For bulk and plenty of leafy growth, crops are planted on the growing of the moon, while for keeping qualities and weevil resistance, corn, peas, beans, and sweet potatoes should be seeded during the waning of the moon. Meat cures and keeps best when hogs are killed on a decreasing moon, but it is better to kill them on the growing moon for fresh pork sales, as the meat will weigh more. By the same principle, firewood should always be cut in the shrinking (waning) of the moon so it will dry out thoroughly and burn well. Good Friday is the time to plant all tender (frost-susceptible) garden crops.
    After planting time, the farmer gets out his Ladies' Birthday Alamanac to see whether the signs are right for fishing. On days indicated in the almanac as dominated by Pisces, the fish will bite well- if there are no other conflicting signs. He holds his temper against annoyances because "if you get mad, the fish won't bite" but if it is thundering they will not bite anyway. He also keeps in mind the old verse:
    Wind in the north blows the bait off;
    Wind from the east makes the fish least;
    Wind in the south puts the bait in his mouth;
    Wind in the west, fish bite the best.
With all of these in his favor, the farmer fisherman sticks a wad of plug tobacco in his jaw and begins fishing, after flavoring his bait with a sauce of tobacco juice.

Local folk-say about twigs breaking, dogs howling, owls screeching, and more.

This image of a young African-American girl with a calf was taken circa 1900-1929 somewhere in Alabama. It is available at the Alabama Department of Archives.

According to notes taken by Lillian Finnell during her time as a Works Progress Administration writer in Tuscaloosa circa 1930, black sharecroppers had a explanation that went something like this:

A twig breaks behind you while you walk through the woods

"When you are walking along and hear a stick crack behind you, it's two dead folks arguin' bout whether it's you or not. One says, "It wasn't her"; another says, "Yes, it was". So they break the stick to make you turn round right quick so they can see you and whether it is you."

A dog goes under the house and howls

"When a person is sick and a dog goes off under the house and howls, the persons's going to die."

An owl screeches on your house

"When a screech owl comes and sits on your house and hollers "He-e-e-eh", it's a sure sign of death. But run and put a poker in the fire and heat it red hot and it'll keep Death away."

How to cure the chicken pox

"When chillun have the chicken-pox, make them go into the fowl house nine morning's in a row and shoo the chickens off the roof; the chickens flying over them will cure the chicken pox."

How to soothe arthritis

"When people get old and their joints get stiff, kill a buzzard and boil it. Then skim the grease off the water in which it boiled. Rub your joints with the buzzard oil and you'll get spry again."

Oak Hill Cemetery in Eutaw, Alabama.

The stories written on the stones invite us.

My husband and I bonded over a secret fascination with cemeteries. Some of our early "courtship" included strange dances and discussions around fallen tombstones in graveyards across the country. What stayed hidden by convention during the day somehow slipped from our lips in the silver colors and shadows of the graves at night.

We stop for cemeteries- for the questions, the stories, the names carved in stones that ring like talismans on a chain when we read them aloud. So we stopped at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Eutaw last week on our drive down to the beach. I left the sleeping-reading kids in the van and made a brief pilgramage, a short poetry reading of names (Bunion was prominent among them) across the crooked rows of gravestones.

Driving down to the beach alone with the kids only left me with a few moments of insipid longing for my husband. This stroll was one of them. Because cemetery-love and lore rests so snugly between us that neither needs to comment on what is so "cool"- it just is. I prefer the graves between us to the graves I discover alone.

Oak Hill Cemetery, now known as Mesopotamia Cemetery,  was once home to the Mesopotamia Presbyterian Church. But the church moved, and the sacred dust remained. You can see more images and get driving directions from the Magnolias and Peaches website.

Travels through Linden, Alabama, with a local desperado.

Linden, the seat of Marengo County, was founded in 1823 by French settlers who came to Alabama after the fall of Napoleon. It's name was orginally Hohenlinden, commemorating the French victory over the Austrians in 1880. Civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy hailed from Linden, but its current attractions are for those who appreciate beauty muted by age.

It is a small town of the sort that would horrify boosters and lead New Jerseyites to mutter a stream of epithets about "dying" and "rural decay". For all intensive purposes, Linden has been buried by the decline of agriculture and the rise of the smokestack towns. 

The inviting road behind First Missionary Baptist Church.

So it is fitting that we stopped to stretch our legs and explore Linden's history in a charming cemetery where trees embroidered with Spanish moss remained unmoved by local winds.

Like all Coryell family discoveries, this, too, was an accident. We stopped in the parking lot of a nondescript First Missionary Baptist Church because Milla's fire ant bites required immediate attention and the din from the backseat had reached undrive-able proportions.

Max wandered around the gravestones and decided that he would take it upon himself to right all the fallen vases stuffed with colorful plastic Chinese flowers- his tribute to the deceased and their families.

I'd be lying if I didn't confess that watching his growing hands tenderly reset the a dozen vases moved me somehow. 

A gravestone from an early Linden dweller who was born in 1848.

Some of the names leaned German or Dutch rather than French.

Patrick shared a story from our beloved The WPA Guide to 1930's Alabama- a book that should be somewhere in every Alabama household or vehicle ready to spark imaginations. As the kids sat playing with blades of grass between tombs and gravestones, he read the story of Rube Burrow:

"Widespread attention was centered on the town in 1880 when Rube Burrow, one of the South's most notorious desperadoes, was killed here while attempting an escape. He had been captured the previous day and brought to Linden for safekeeping. At the county jail, when his captors found that the sheriff was out of town and that there were no keys to the cell blocks, Burrow was handcuffed, placed in a chair, and bound securely with a stout rope. Several members of the posse then went in search of the sheriff, leaving the prisoner in the custody of two armed guards. Until after midnight, Burrow joked with the guards and recounted his exploits. As dawn approached, he asked the guards to hand him some cakes from his knapsack. Satisfied that the bag contained only food, they passed it to Burrow, who asked that his handcuffs be removed. When this was done, he opened the knapsack, took out some corn cakes, and ate silently for several minutes. He reached into the sack again, but this time brought out two .45 caliber pistols, and forced the guards to release him. But on the main street he was met by one of the possemen who shot and killed him."

It is said that African-American folk songs from this area still include endless verses about that "bad Rube Burrow". You can learn more from the Alabama Folklife Association's journals.

Imagining Norman McMillan's childhood.

Reading Distant Son: An Alabama Boyhood by Norman McMillan has served well in tandem with our travels along the backroads of Tuscaloosa County, as well as our meandering journey down to the white-sand beaches of the state. The other day, as we drove through historic Leroy tracing what Micah dubbed the "farm city" along County Road 34, I found a house that reminded me of a few lines from McMillan's book. 

"We took our fun where we could get it, catching June bugs colored with the turquoise, black, and blue of peacock feathers and tying string to their legs and flying them like airplanes. We caught fireflies at dusk and made a lantern by putting them, vibrating with yellowish-green light, into a pint jar, or we made rings for our fingers by pinching off their phosphorescent tails. We observed the tumble bugs pushing pieces of excrement far too large for them and wondered at their persistence. We coaxed the doodle bugs out of the ground by saying

Doodlebug, doodlebug,
You'd better go home.
Your house is on fire
And your children are alone.

We buried sticks in the ground and conducted funeral services, taking turns preaching the funeral sermon. If the stick were long, we said we were burying Longfellow, if it were short, Longfellow's baby. It didn't take too much to keep us occupied." 

Though McMillan never lived in Leroy and spent more of his growing years in Ralph and various parts of southern Tuscaloosa County, something about the house just made his words vivid again.

Yellowhammer: An Alabama tall tale.

An Alabama Tall Tale retold by S. E. Schlosser

Once long ago, Sam, a young slave from Alabama, was sent to the market in Georgia with his master's cattle. After delivering the cattle to market, Sam was given some free time as a reward for good service. Sam decided to explore the city.

Sam went walking along the streets, admiring the fine residences of the Georgia folk. He was passing a particularly fine-looking mansion when he heard something give a scream. Sam was startled. He looked around for the screamer. There, up in a tree, he saw a parrot.

"Hush," Sam told the parrot.

Well, that parrot didn't hush. Instead, he started cussin' and ragin' something fierce. Sam didn't like having a bird swear at him. He picked up a stick and tossed it at the parrot. A houseman was nearby. He saw Sam throw the stick at the bird and yelled out: "Don't kill that bird. It's valuable."

"Valuable?" Sam said. "Don't talk crazy! We got millions of them yellowhammers in Alabama. And ours got more manners!"

Well, the story of Sam and the parrot spread like wildfire around Georgia. Ever since, folks in Georgia have been calling Alabama the Yellowhammer State.

Source: American Folklore website

This might be a fun intro for discussing the Alabama state bird with your kids. It also might be a little story worth sharing with your in-laws if, like mine, they live in Atlanta.

Tuscaloosa's very own geodesic dome home.

Driving along Hurricane Creek today, looking at the property which will be destroyed and turned to rubble should Mayor Walt Maddox have his way with the Eastern Bypass, we came across a geodesic dome home! I can't help wondering if this particular geodesic home was built by New Age Construction, a Duncanville company that specializes in geodesic domes.

The Geodesic Dome in Green Acres

    A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles (geodesics) on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the structure. When completed to form a complete sphere, it is a geodesic sphere. A dome is enclosed, unlike open geodesic structures such as playground climbers.
    Typically a geodesic dome design begins with an icosahedron inscribed in a hypothetical sphere, tiling each triangular face with smaller triangles, then projecting the vertices of each tile to the sphere. The endpoints of the links of the completed sphere are the projected endpoints on the sphere's surface. If this is done exactly, each sub-triangle edge is a slightly different length, requiring links of many sizes. To minimize this, simplifications are made. The result is a compromise of triangles with their vertices lying approximately on the sphere. The edges of the triangles form approximate geodesic paths over the surface of the dome.
    Geodesic designs can be used to form any curved, enclosed space. Standard designs tend to be used because unusual configurations may require complex, expensive custom design of each strut, vertex and panel. (Source: Wikipedia)

 It's hard to find comfort in the prospect that the destruction of this home will supposedly "pave the way" for strip malls and 70 mph traffic in this beautiful area. It's hard to square the destruction of this entire neighborhood which borders Hurricane Creek with any notion of "economic progress". Once upon a time, the South was known for its regard for history and traditional culture. These days, the nihilistic frenzy of prefab development keeps our souls numb and our eyes focused on consumption. 

Years from now, Tuscaloosa residents will read about these treasures destroyed in the name of progress and wonder how the local officials got away with it. 

The Alberta City Gathering Place: A study in creating beauty and hope.

Just a hop, skip, and jump away from our home, beautiful things are happening thanks to beautiful people who can't help themselves from sharing their talents with the world. The Alberta City Gathering Place is a volunteer opportunity for local residents to pitch in from June 2nd to June 10th. Volunteers are needed from 7 am to noon and from 5 pm to 8 pm everyday.

Officially, the Gathering Place is a community project focused on building a useful and creative gathering space in an area of Tuscaloosa ravaged by last April's tornado. 

The Alberta City Gathering Place Project is a community project focused on building a useful and creative gathering space in an area affected by the April 27th tornado. It will take place in the heart of Alberta, at Jaycee Park. An area affected by the tornado, Albert has been slow to recover. It is our dream that by June 10th, we can provide the residents of this community, as well as the residents of Tuscaloosa, with an artistic and imaginative gathering space. The focal point of the Alberta City Gathering Place will be a small amphitheater seating roughly 80 people. At the center of this amphitheater will be a concrete performance stage. Tall metal pillars will be erected around the boarders of the amphitheater in order to anchor a mesh roof to provide shade. A walking path will meander through the amphitheater, making its way toward a raised observation point. Picnic tables, benches, and barbecue grills will be included in the park.All of these features will include materials salvaged from the tornado. We are limited only by our imagination!

In order to make our vision a reality, we need your help. The Alberta City Gathering Place Project is an effort for the community by the community. We need volunteers to design, plan, and erect this park. On March 8th we are holding a meeting to reveal our building plan to the public, as well as to train volunteers in building and leadership techniques.  

If you would like to be a part of this process, please contact kjpuzinauskas@ua.edu and let her know! Or check out the Facebook page and mosey on over to lend a hand. You can donate to the Pomegranate Center as thanks for their gift to our community.

 

A sneak peak of the University of Alabama Herbarium.

Laurie and I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with John Clark and Steve Ginzbarg about plant life at Hurricane Creek on Friday. What began as a discussion about a bioblitz extended into a chat about education, orchids, exotic Colombian plants, and a little trip to the fascinating UA Herbarium.

The first room included a coffee pot, tables, references, and stations for mounting various plants onto special paper. It looked as if a few aged samples were being re-mounted or salvaged.

A possible salvage operation at the herbarium.

Then we passed through another heavy door into a room filled with freezers of various shapes and sizes. Plant samples are placed in the freezer for two weeks to kill any damaging bugs, bacteria, or prey that can destroy the plants. There was also a special freezer with -82 degree temperature which is used to store plant DNA.

Steve Ginzbarg opens a freezer in the freezer room.

Then Steve took out a special key and opened the door to the mammoth room where all the plant samples reside.

Shelves and shelves lined with jars containing snakes, amphibians, and various reptiles.

One turtle among many.

The plants are stored in files on movable shelves. Can you imagine how many plants must be housed here?

The collections include extremely rare and endangered plant species. The orchids are especially interesting due to their status as a source of international crime rings and theft.

This orchid was collected by John Mohr long ago.

The men under the pecan tree.

Mrs. Liddell knew how to tell a good tale. Here is a historical ditty about how the Presbyterian church put an end to the practice of "telephoning for catfish":

The men under the pecan tree never tire of talking about hunting, fishing, dogs, and whatever game is in season. Here is where they bring their turkey beards for comparison, bring in their fox tails, their deer, their biggest catches of fish, the longest rattlesnake, the biggest bobcat, often taking pictures for further proof.

When it was discovered that sending an electric current generated by an old crank-type telephone, into the water would cause the scaleless fish, stunned by the shock, to surface and they could then easily be caught and hauled into boats, fishermen went wild catching catfish by, as they called it, "telephoning for them".

When strangers dropped by the pecan tree, the men had no end of fun betting them that they could catch a boatload of fish merely be telephoning them to come up out of the water. Many bets were made and lost, always to the consternation of the newly initiated. But as the news spread, the method of thus catching catfish was so abused that, in time, it was outlawed.

But the practice did not subside, the pecan-sitters say, until the deacons of the Presbyterian church had caught all the catfish in the river for church suppers, and all their generators had been dumped overboard to destroy evidence.

(V. Liddell, A Place of Springs, p.141)

 

Robert Sloan's oil pastel pecan tree can be found online.

Viola Goode Liddell A resident of Alabama's Black Belt for nearly all of her life, Viola Goode Liddell (1901-1998) recounted the stories of many Wilcox County residents, including her own, in three memoirs. These works tell the story of her home and, through her own life experiences, the story of the South during the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, and into the 1970s. Liddell also published several short stories and a book of poems.

Viola Jefferson Goode was one of nine children of Robert and Annie (Gaston) Goode and was born on December 18, 1901, in Gastonburg, Wilcox County. The town had been named for her maternal grandfather, David Finis Gaston. After high school graduation at age 16, Viola followed in the tradition of her older sisters, attending Judson College in Marion, Perry County. She graduated in 1922 and married Oxford Stroud. The couple lived briefly in Demopolis, Marengo County, where Viola gave birth to their son (and future Auburn University professor and literary figure) Oxford Stroud Jr. Soon after, the family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her father, apparently having misgivings about her newly chosen spouse, handed Viola $100 as train fare home if the marriage ended badly. Indeed, in 1931, Goode divorced Stroud and moved with her son to Linden, Marengo County, where she taught French. The following year, they settled in Camden, Wilcox County, the birthplace of her father and the residence of her oldest sister, Mary, whom she called Mamie.

(Excerpted from Encyclopedia of Alabama)

The Loop Group, a community for those in East Tuscaloosa.

Thanks to the hard work of Laurie Johns, last week included a delicious outdoor get-together for members of the Loop Group, a group of local citizens who reside along the Loop Road area. Everyone brought a dish, drinks, and chairs or picnic blankets and hung out on the property of Hudson Strode, a former University of Alabama professor and author known for his creative writing classes. Strode left his home and land to the University of Alabama, and it is currently used as a home for visiting writers on sabbattical.

 The tradition of writing continues in our corner of East Tuscaloosa, as Ted Pearson, visiting writing, is currently residing in the Strode home and working on his latest book. Also representing a more obscure but equally fascinating genre was Mr. George Hamner, Jr., author of Quaternon Orgnanon, a fictional journey into quantum field theory and the search for existential meaning. 

Since I had a few materials on Hudson Strode from the Local History Workshop I hosted for local homeschoolers a few years ago, I gave a brief spiel on his life. You can download your own version below to learn more about a man whose life continues to represent that eccentric and mysterious hybrid which I've come to believe characterizes Alabamian intellectuals.

Download Tuscaloosa Bio for Hudson Strode 

If you'd like to get involved in the Loop Group, send an email my way and I'll forward it along to Laurie Johns, who is also the Community Garden maven for our part of town. I have to confess that I left this event interested and excited by the prospect of doing more with my lovely neighbors. Alas for the poor neighborhoods who lack their own Laurie to get such community-oriented events going.

Our local history excursion.

Mrs. Henderson's native honeysuckle thrives in the front yard.

Sometimes the greatest adventures begin with an informal chat at the Geological Survey of Alabama. This one began when I stopped to talk to Lewis Dean while scouring the shelves for publications about Hurricane Creek- I owe him a cupcake for encouraging me to talk to a marvelous lady whose every word leads to another story, delicately woven into the fabric of local life. That little chat led us on this little journey.

The spectacular Mrs. Aileen Henderon as photographed by Tiffany Stanton.

Yesterday, Tiffany, Max, Ellie, and I drove down some dirt roads in Brookwood until we arrived at the beautiful home of Mrs. Aileen Kilgore Henderson, author of every type of book you can imagine as well as a fascinating storyteller. Mrs. Henderson published her first book at 75 years of age, and she shows no signs of slowing down. On her birthday, April 10th, you can listen to the first Creek Conversation, a podcast series devoted to capturing oral history about Hurricane Creek. Mrs. Henderson's lifelong devotion to the creek made her a perfect first conversation.

After our conversation, Mrs. Henderson's daughter, Anne, led us down to the creek and whispered all kinds of enchanting facts about the turkeys and bobcats and wagon trails on their property.

The unidentified flower in Mrs. Henderson's yard. Photo by Tiffany Stanton.

Anne describes why the trees trunks remained curled after a tornado long ago.

Anne is an author of children's books, and I couldn't help purchasing a copy of My Brother Needs A Boa, a book inspired by her time in Costa Rican jungles and dedicated to all the future herpetologists of the world. Anne left a lovely birthday dedication for Micah inside the cover, and I can't wait to see what she thinks when she opens it later tonight. Educators will he happy to know that a free Lesson Plan and Curriculum Guide is availble online from Starbright Books.

Anne Weston leads us down to Hurricane Creek.

The creekside mountain laurel.

Ellie samples the water.

Alina asking Anne about creek critters. Photographed by Tiffany Stanton.

It's hard not to just dive in- clothes and all. Photographed by Tiffany Stanton.

I couldn't leave without purchasing a copy of Mrs. Henderson's latest book, Eugene Allen Smith's Alabama: How A Geologist Shaped A State, and then spent much of the night awake and reading delicious descriptions of local rock formations, ancient ferns, and the even the possible solution to a natural mystery. In October of 1880, Eugene Allen Smith sent a copy of a strange new plant he had discovered at Pratt's Ferry to a state botanist. Smith was convinced he had discovered a new species which he described:

"It makes almost impenetrable 'privy thickets' as they are called, and the peculiar aroma of the leaves as you feel your way through, is exceedingly characteristic.... Some of the bushes are ten feet high and the stems 2-3 inches thick. It grows low and spreading... The seed pod is something like that of a castor oil plant". (Henderson, 42)

The plant was acknowledged as a new species whose nearest relative was native to South America. It was named Croton alabamensis. The Alabama croton, as it is now known, is a native plant which currently exists in only a few Alabama counties, including our own. So Mrs. Henderson inadvertently set me on a mission to find an Alabama croton plant. If you know where one might be discovered, please let me know so I can get a photo. In the meantime, find this book at your library (or purchase a gift copy) and then try not to stay up as late as yours truly devouring eveyr page.