New Pioneers of Bessemer

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I have always been interested in the history of the postbellum industrial South. In fact, that history intrigues me far more than the antebellum South. Part of that interest probably stems from growing up in Birmingham – which did not exist during the Civil War and was founded in 1871, six years after the War ended.

The visionaries who brought Birmingham into existence as the first industrial giant of the post-war South were pioneers. As the city has evolved, the heavy industry which was its original raison d’etre has disappeared and been replaced by medicine and finance. Some factories still survive but there are large swaths of abandoned areas which once bustled with shift workers and 24-hour muscle.

I carry James R. Bennett and Karen R. Utz’s Iron and Steel: A Guide to Birmingham Area Industrial Heritage Sites (www.uapress.ua.edu) in my car. It is a handy reference to the industrial history of the region. My parents’ house sits on the side of Shades Mountain just above the site of the Oxmoor Furnace, Jefferson County’s first blast furnace. Oxmoor Furnace was tied to the Red Mountain mines, the site of which has been reclaimed by nature and is now the sprawling Red Mountain Park – one of the largest urban parks in the United States.

About thirteen miles southwest of downtown down I-20/59 is the postbellum industrial town of Bessemer which was incorporated in 1887, when Birmingham was sixteen.

Today, areas of Bessemer are blighted and most of the bustling heavy industry is gone. The Pullman Standard plant stopped manufacturing railroad cars decades ago and the iron and steel factories are long gone. Throughout Bessemer are reminders of its more thriving past — rusted relics of train trestles, factory sites, abandoned mines. During its heyday, when Bessemer was a town populated by shift workers, it was a 24-hour town – as were Fairfield and Ensley, industrial towns and communities between Bessemer and downtown Birmingham that are also reeling from economic challenges.

Bessemer has made an admirable effort to diversify and bring in business. Its location along the interstate is full of the types of businesses that one finds at any interstate intersection. The 109-year-old Bright Star (www.thebrightstar.com) is still a popular restaurant in the middle of downtown and Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q (www.bobsykes.com) on the Bessemer Superhighway has continued to pack people in since 1957. The downtown area is full of interesting old masonry buildings – some still well-maintained and others in dire need of repair. It’s a fascinating small city with a rich history and an abundance of reminders of a more flourishing past.

Last week my mother mentioned that the Bessemer Historical Homeowner’s Association (www.bessemerhistoricsociety.com) was presenting a tour of historic Bessemer homes and gardens over the weekend and that she would like to go. We planned to go on Sunday afternoon and it turned out to be a miserably rainy and windy day but we decided we’d go anyway and see what we could see.

The first stop on the tour was in Bessemer’s Lakewood neighborhood. The Wilson House, nicknamed “The Abbey,” is a sprawling house from 1926 on top of a hill overlooking the lake and its assorted white swans and other fowl. I was interested in checking out a Lakewood home since that community was an annual part of my family’s tour of Christmas lights when I was a boy in Birmingham. I haven’t been to Lakewood to see Christmas lights in five decades, probably, but a Christmas tree frame still floated on a platform in the middle of the lake so I guess it’s still a holiday destination.

“The Abbey” was the only Lakewood house on the tour. The rest of the tour went deeper into the heart of Bessemer’s residential area near downtown and that is where the true meaning of the event began to coalesce. Many of the proud homes on the tour were in the middle of streets that were partially abandoned and dilapidated. Freshly renovated treasures were sitting next to vacant lots and houses that were falling in on themselves.

Some of the houses were true mansions in their time; others remain mansions now. There were grand houses with monikers like “The Castle” and “The Abbey.” It was interesting how many times I entered a house and the first words out of the tour guide’s mouth were how many fireplaces the house contains; the Shaw House on Dartmouth Avenue may have been the winner, I think, with thirteen.

Most of the houses on the tour were recently renovated or in the process. I enjoyed the elaborate grand houses but I was most struck by the smaller and more modest homes that I could imagine myself actually living in. Many of the houses are owned by young couples or singles that have made a commitment of time, trust, and money to come into Bessemer neighborhoods that others might overlook as being past their relevance. These new pioneers – and I find them in many communities these days – are gambling that they can help restore a vitality that has faded in communities that are still worth our notice.

Bessemer’s Clarendon Avenue is a street I have never traveled before last week. Two of the houses on the tour were along that boulevard with its wide grassy median. Sections of Clarendon are in extreme disrepair but a drive down it – even in a raging Sunday afternoon thunderstorm – leaves little doubt of its former grandeur. The imposing house referred to as the “Moody Mansion” is truly impressive but the “Clay-Green House,” the more modest cottage directly across the street, was where I wanted to linger. The young couple who owns and is renovating the place have updated it beautifully while retaining its historic integrity.

The next to last house on the tour, the Matthews House on Owens Avenue, was also across the street from a big grand house, but its charm and warmth attained in a still progressing renovation were what caught my eye and attention. Again, a young owner has taken on the challenge of helping to revive the house and its neighborhood.

The storm got progressively worse and we ended up skipping two of the eight houses on the tour. Even so, the afternoon was well spent and inspiring; there are new pioneers of Bessemer to admire. I wish them well.

Tonic

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The restorative powers of the Friends of the Café dinners at the Alabama Chanin Factory in Florence are palpable each time I go. At the most recent dinner I attended in March, walking through the factory doors had cathartic impact.

For those who have never visited the Alabama Chanin factory (www.alabamachanin.com) – which is the workplace for the artisans and craftspeople responsible for clothing designer Natalie Chanin’s line of organic hand-crafted clothing and other lifestyle products – the space itself has an instant sense of community and a tonic effect. The aesthetics of the place are in a harmonic balance and the products displayed in the retail area are diverse but somehow all work together. Art works and objects of interest are placed throughout; they are spare and do not overwhelm.

The Factory’s Café is helmed by Zach Chanin, executive chef (and Natalie’s son), and serves exceptional and locally sourced menus daily. Periodically, however, the Factory hosts guest chefs and special evening meals that provide camaraderie and splendid dining.

At the March event, the meal was the product of the unpredictable collaboration between Frank Stitt, Birmingham-based chef and restaurateur, and South Carolina pitmaster Rodney Scott. Stitt’s flagship Birmingham restaurant, Highlands Bar and Grill (www.highlandsbarandgrill.com), has been nominated for the James Beard Foundation’s “most outstanding restaurant” award for eight years in a row now. The 2016 winners will be announced in San Francisco at a ceremony on May 2. Scott’s Bar-B-Que (www.thescottsbbq.com) in Hemingway, South Carolina, is legendary among pork barbecue aficionados and gained new followers when the original cookhouse burned to the ground in 2013 and The Fatback Collective, a project of Southern Foodways Alliance (www.southernfoodways.org), teamed up to sponsor a “Rodney Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Exile Tour” to raise money to get Scott’s home turf back in operation. The “tour” travelled throughout the South, introducing his singular barbecue to an even broader audience.

The combination of Stitt and Scott is an inspired pairing and the resulting meal at The Factory was masterful. Diners were greeted with a “Southern Apertivo Highball” featuring vermouth, Capelleti, citrus, bitters, and Birmingham’s Buffalo Rock Ginger Ale. Pass-around hors d’oeuvres were crudités and a tasty combination of pork rind and pimento cheese.

About twenty minutes before seating for the meal, as the diners assembled, Rodney Scott and Zach Chanin brought in the whole hog and displayed it on a table in the showroom. We all gathered like paparazzi to snap photos and take in the sight and the aromas.

Frank Stitt introduced the meal by saying that Rodney Scott prepared the whole hog while Stitt and staff conceived and prepared the side dishes. Stitt was charmingly persnickety about the correct way to pass dishes at table. Grassroots Wines did the wine pairings with the various courses.

After a beautiful asparagus salad with farm egg, “just dug” potatoes, and ham hock vinaigrette, the abundant second course was served family style. Mr. Scott’s magnificent barbecue pork was accompanied by a turnip gratin, a hearty salad featuring farro and barlotti beans with grilled red onion, and a Brussels sprout slaw with pecorino dressing. I recently told a vegetarian friend that even though pork was featured, she would have had no problem getting her fill from the side dishes.

Dessert was Dol’s chocolate bourbon torte with marinated strawberries. “Dol” is Dolester Miles, the pastry chef at Highlands who is also nominated for a James Beard Award this year as outstanding pastry chef. If you have ever eaten one of Ms. Miles’s desserts, you will know that the nomination is highly deserved.

I have written previous essays about the sense of pride and community that permeates events at The Factory. Amazing meals by renowned talents only add to the aura of the place that Natalie Chanin’s singular vision has created. Each time I leave a Factory event, I look forward to the next opportunity to be there. The next dinner at The Factory will feature in-house chef Zach Chanin. Can’t wait.

Eulogy

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My father, Grover E. Journey, died on March 21 at a hospital in Mississippi. Mother and I were on the way to Mississippi when we got the word that he was gone. My brother had left a couple of hours earlier but it was a five hour drive; none of the family got there before Dad passed away.

The service was held on Thursday, March 24, at Elmwood Chapel in Birmingham. Three Baptist ministers – Dad’s current pastor and two preacher friends he knew for decades – shared memories, prayer, and scripture. At Mother’s request the song “Going Home” was played — burned from a homemade audio cassette from the 80s of a scratchy gospel quartet vinyl LP from the 60s that Mother and Dad loved. My brother, Rick, assembled a beautiful video of visual images chronicling Dad’s life, set to Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock.” On the printed program were the lyrics to “The Far Side Banks of Jordan” that I knew from a Johnny and June Carter Cash duet on June’s final album, Press On.

At the brief graveside service in Elmwood Cemetery, after the prayers and scripture, jazz trumpeter Chuck King stepped up to the casket and played “Yea, Alabama!” – the University’s fight song. At the end there was a chorus of “Roll Tide!” from the mourners. My Dad would love that final touch. His grave in Elmwood is not that far from Coach Bryant. It was a sad occasion but also a fitting celebration of a full and well-lived life.

My brother introduced his video and there wasn’t really any discussion of a eulogy from me, although it was mentioned and I declined. My role was to help expedite the week as much as possible. The ministers and the video eloquently said most of what needed to be said. Jim McCain, a minister who was also a neighbor and decades-long friend, got in some witty quips in a very moving remembrance of Dad as a friend and “a good man.” My favorite was his comment that “Grover would sell his lawnmower to eat at the Bright Star,” referencing that favorite restaurant.

At the visitation prior to the service, there were people — strangers to me and people I knew — who were compelled to recount various kindnesses and assistance Dad had offered to them over the years. One man said, “I am the man I am today because of your dad.”

Since then, I have wondered what I would have said if I had spoken and what I might have said that was different from what the ministers – Tony Barber, Jim McCain, and Herbert Thomas – had so beautifully said – all of it punctuated by the images on Rick’s video.

These are some of the things I might have mentioned:

Dad and Mother were a formidable team for over 63 years. They were independent and occasionally stubborn. As a team, they didn’t always agree; Mother was never the kind of wife who felt bound to abide by her husband’s opinions and Dad always respected and valued that in her. He didn’t try to run her life and she didn’t try to run his. However, she would help him in his work and he would help her in hers. I remember when I was a kid and Dad would bring in extra work to help with family finances; we would all chip in and help – sometimes long into the night. Sometimes Mother would take on extra work with the same results – a family project.

There were times growing up when I was a little jealous of my parents’ relationship. They were always good parents to me but they had such a tight bond that I sometimes felt a little out of the loop.

Mother and Dad were long-time Sunday School teachers in the 4- and 5-year-old classes at Circlewood Baptist. Many of their Sunday School kids stay in touch and have gone on to distinguished and successful lives, thanks in part to “Miss Jean” and “Mr. Grover” and others who taught with them for many of those years. I remember many Saturday nights when Mother and Dad would be preparing projects for the next morning’s class.

Mother and Dad were partners in PTAs throughout their sons’ education, but especially with my brother when they were settled in Tuscaloosa (we moved frequently when I was growing up so there were lots of starts and stops in my education). Eventually, my parents moved through the ranks to become officers in Tuscaloosa’s City Council of School PTAs, with Dad eventually serving as city-wide president for the PTAs.

My parents engineered the early success of the shoebox Christmas ministry there at Circlewood, spending hours and hours each fall collecting, monitoring, and delivering thousands of gift shoeboxes packed full of goodies and necessities to be distributed to children around the world. From that start, Circlewood’s Christmas shoebox outreach is still going strong and has grown to be one of the largest among churches in the region.

Dad and Mother had each other’s back through thick and thin. Whenever there was a health crisis, they pulled together and pulled through, advocating for one another each step of the way. Occasionally they fought for each other. On more than one occasion I told my parents that I wouldn’t want to be their doctor; they would challenge the medical professionals if they felt they were not being treated well or accurately. I realize now that with the current state of healthcare, their attitude is a wise one.

Dad was always a good provider and took care of his family through good times and bad. I didn’t fully appreciate the extent of his commitment to Mother until she had malignant melanoma in 1986 and lost an eye to the cancer. Dad encouraged her and supported her every step of the way – convincing her that she could start driving again, bringing her out into the world again, convincing her that she could go on. She has pressed on with dignity and grace for over thirty years now.

When it was Mother’s turn to become a health advocate for Dad, she stepped in with strength and courage. She was resolute and uncompromising every step of the way. During the final five months of his life, while Dad was continuously hospitalized, Mother was at the hospital for hours every day – until Dad was moved 315 miles away to a facility in Mississippi. As soon as she entered the room he would reach out his hand for her and kiss her. She would sit and hold his hand for hours and when she would leave he would always kiss her goodbye.

When Dad got to the point where he couldn’t speak for himself, Mother did her homework, got multiple opinions, asked many questions, and made strong and often tough decisions. Once, when Mother was talking to a respiratory therapist who had also become a friend, she was second-guessing herself and some of her decisions and said, “… but I think if the roles were reversed he would have made the same decisions for me.” I was in the room and was the only one who was watching Dad during this conversation. When Mother said she thought he would have made the same decisions for her, Dad’s eyes darted to Mother and he shook his head “Yes.” I was the only one who saw that but it put my mind at ease that he was on board with the extreme measures being taken to try to prolong his life.

There are many other memories as well. Dad’s barbecue was some of the finest I’ve ever tasted. His fried chicken wings were amazing and unique and I have never found their match since. Dad didn’t like to make reservations or over-plan a trip; this lead to some pretty roundabout and adventurous vacations and road trips over the years. He was an “Ensley boy” – growing up on Avenue D in the shadows of the steel mills – and anybody who knows Birmingham in the early to mid-20^th century knows immediately what that phrase means. Dad would talk about the Ensley boys going across town to take on the Woodlawn boys on occasion.

He would talk about riding his bike with his brothers and cousins from Ensley to a swimming hole on Shades Creek and in later years he would sometimes drive around on Sunday looking for that favorite swimming spot. He never could find it and I suspect it’s located somewhere in what is now the Robert Trent Jones golf course at the Ross Bridge resort.

Dad was a lifelong and die-hard Alabama football fan. Once, he had to take on Bear Bryant; Dad was setting up the Coliseum for winter registration and Bryant, the athletic director as well as football coach, insisted he needed it for a basketball practice. “That Journey man,” as Bear referred to him, held his ground and said, “Coach, I have been told to prepare the Coliseum for registration tonight and that is what I’m going to do.” Registration set-up went on as planned. I never heard where the basketball team practiced that day.

There are plenty of other memories to sustain me. All in all, however, one can’t adequately memorialize Dad without talking about the strength and commitment of his marriage to Mother. I know that would please him.

Communion: Haitian Vodou Flags at the Birmingham Museum of Art

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The Birmingham Museum of Art has always been my museum. It has been there, across the street from the north end of downtown’s Linn Park, as long as I can remember. It’s the first museum I knew; I still remember my first visit on a Sunday afternoon with Mother, Aunt Polly, and a cousin when I was about 7-years-old. When Dad’s office was downtown, I would occasionally go to work with him and idle away a morning or afternoon in the museum collection. Since then, I have always felt at home there. Even when I lived far away from Birmingham I would try to work a visit to the museum into each trip home.

Beyond my sentimental attachment, the Birmingham Museum of Art is also an excellent museum with an impressive and wide-ranging collection ranging from African, Asian, Native American, and Pre-Columbian Art to American, contemporary, folk, European, and decorative arts. One of my favorite places at the museum is a multi-level sculpture garden where I like to be at any time of the year. I didn’t appreciate how good the Birmingham museum was until I started traveling around the country and visiting other museums.

Most importantly, the Birmingham Museum is a city-owned museum that is still free to the public (except for the occasional special exhibition).

I spent the morning there visiting a current exhibit, “Haitian Vodou Flags from the Cargo Collection.” The small but impressive exhibition is shown in a dark room with lights highlighting the colorful flags and accompanied by video of a Haitian Vodou ceremony. Vodou was a religion established with the Africans’ arrival in Haiti in the 1500s; because Vodou was outlawed by the European colonial powers, it was practiced in secret and evolved to include Catholic saints and symbols along with the loa – Vodou spirits. There are links with American “voodoo” but Haitian Vodou has distinctions which set it apart from the American tradition most identified with New Orleans.

The flags on display are generally colorful square patches bedazzled with beads and sequins. As evidenced in the video, the flags may be hung, flown, or draped over the shoulders and backs of celebrants. Images combine iconography of Christian, African, and Masonic traditions and recognizable types include a Madonna and St. Patrick, snakes writhing at his feet. The textiles are stunning in intricacy, vibrance, and design detail.

I enjoyed the exhibit in its own right but another incentive was to view the legacy of Robert and Helen Cargo. In the late-70s, between undergrad and graduate school, I lived in an apartment taking up half of the ground floor of a two-story white frame house on Tuscaloosa’s Caplewood Drive near the University of Alabama campus. My landlords, Robert and Helen Cargo, lived directly across the street. Dr. Cargo taught French at the University. They were good landlords and I remember when I took the apartment Mrs. Cargo instructed me that I could open and close the blinds in the front windows but not to raise them because that would look “tacky.”

When Hurricane Frederick moved inland from the Gulf and Mobile Bay and dumped a tree on my house, I was at work on the University campus. Mrs. Cargo called me to let me know that my apartment was not damaged but that the tree which had toppled onto my house was the “biggest uprooting I ever saw.” Indeed, the house I lived in was included in a segment on Frederick’s damage that night on the “NBC Nightly News.”

I hope I was a good tenant; I think I was. But once I threw a party at my place on the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend and some of the party-goers got the bright idea to go down the street and t.p. writer Barry Hannah’s front yard. I didn’t hear about the escapade until after the fact; I expected to get an earful about it from Mrs. Cargo first and Barry second but fortunately I never got the reprimand from either source.

Not long after I moved on from the Caplewood house, Robert Cargo Folk Art Gallery opened up on 6^th Street in downtown Tuscaloosa. The Cargos were important collectors of folk and outsider art – I had admired some of their pieces on the very few occasions I had been in their house – and the downtown storefront provided a place to share the collection, interact with dealers, and continue acquisitions. The Robert and Helen Cargo African American Quilt Collection was probably the most notable part of the impressive collection.

Robert Cargo died in 2012, preceded by Helen Cargo a few years earlier. A year after Dr. Cargo’s death, their daughter Caroline donated approximately 700 items of the Robert Cargo Folk Art Collection and the quilt collection to the Birmingham Museum of Art. The gift included over 75 Vodou flags the Cargos collected from the makers over the course of several trips to Haiti during the 80s and 90s. Many of those flags are included in the current exhibit.

Over the twenty years the Cargo Folk Art Gallery was open in downtown Tuscaloosa, I had visited and was well aware of the impressive quilt collection and numerous other works of folk and outsider art but the Vodou flags were unknown to me until the museum announced the current exhibition.

The last time I visited with Dr. Cargo at his gallery was in November 2003, the day after the legendary Tuscaloosa dive, the Chukker, closed its doors. Dr. Cargo was making plans to close the Tuscaloosa gallery and ship the collection to Caroline in Philadelphia where the Gallery would continue. I told him that the gallery’s closing would be a loss to Tuscaloosa. “Ahh,” he mused, “I don’t think it will be as momentous as losing the Chukker, but I hope some people might miss us.”

Robert and Helen Cargo were gracious people and passionate collectors. It was good to remember them and commune with their spirits today at my favorite museum amidst some of the objects they collected and loved.

The Kindness of Strangers

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I refused to turn the radio on as I followed the ambulance in a constant driving rain. I suspected there were tornadoes nearby; if there were, I didn’t want to know. It turns out I was right. And suddenly, after eyes glued to the back of an ambulance for 315 miles, I find myself in Meadville, Mississippi.

I feel like I had a primer on health care inadequacy after a week spent in ultimately futile battle with the inhumanity of Medicare regulations and the rampant cruelty and indifference of large hospital corporate administrators. My father had been released from his hospital five miles from his home and Mother to a facility 315 miles and five hours away.

The critical care ambulance drove nonstop from Birmingham to Meadville, Mississippi, and I followed behind. When we reached the small hospital in a steady drenching rain I was greeted with the news that the area we had driven through had been peppered with tornado watches, warnings, and a few actual touchdowns, just as I suspected.

I have spent plenty of time in Mississippi and briefly lived there on three separate occasions during the ‘70s and ‘90s but I had never heard of Meadville in southwestern Mississippi somewhere between Brookhaven and Natchez. It is a two-traffic light town with a small hospital that houses a unit specializing in weaning patients like my dad off ventilators.

From the outside, the one-story beige brick facility looks like a mid-20^th century elementary school. On the inside is a staff of caring and highly competent medical professionals, under the leadership of “Dr. Ben” Yarbrough, with the common goal of helping people.

My mother’s health problems prohibit her travel with Dad so I came along for the first week to meet his caregivers and make sure he gets settled in comfortably.

When I started the “Professional Southerner” journal in 2014, my goal was to use it as an escape and diversion – to use it as a way of forgetting my job and stresses. In the past nine months, however, that has become a challenge as my father’s health declined and he was continuously hospitalized starting in October. Distractions have become hard to come by.

Instead of focusing on Dad’s hospitalization and treatment, however, I want to write about that much-vaunted Mississippi hospitality; it has been visible in full force since I arrived here a few days ago, soaked and exhausted.

Shortly after we arrived, Mitzi, the ward clerk, asked if there were any special needs. I told her that my parents are life-long Baptists and that Dad likes to be prayed with. I wondered if she might put me in touch with a local Baptist minister so that I could invite him to visit with Dad. Within minutes, I had a name and an email address and the next day Bro. Marvin Howard of Mt. Zion Baptist showed up at Dad’s bedside to talk with him and pray for his healing and recovery. He asked for Mother’s number in Birmingham so that he could let her know he had seen Dad and promised to come by one or two times a week during Dad’s stay. He invited me to come out to his house if I needed a place to stay; he offered to have me out for a home-cooked meal with him and his wife.

Since the nearest commercial lodging to Meadville is a half hour away in either direction, I came prepared to stay in Dad’s room. The accommodations are tight and, despite several nurses’ best efforts to position my convertible chair/bed, I was awakened several times on the first night by nurses or nurses’ assistants climbing into the bed with me to position themselves to turn Dad.

On day two we switched to a recliner in another part of the room but every time I moved the recliner sort of folded up on me. The nurse was very concerned for my comfort but I assured her that it is about Dad’s comfort and well-being and not mine; I can fend for myself.

I usually don’t eat meals on a very regular schedule but, living in the hospital with not much distraction, I find that mealtimes at the small hospital cafeteria are how I gauge the day. The breakfast service includes an array of breakfast staples to choose from – grits, scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon, biscuits and gravy, a selection of breads, jams, and jellies.

Lunch service changes daily but there is a selection to choose from each day, and desserts – pies, cake, bread pudding – are generous and plentiful. It’s a small hospital and the cafeteria ladies quickly learn your face and tastes. Even so, eating in the cafeteria here conjures memories of a childhood of frequent moves with Dad’s work and the constant feeling of being the “new kid” — when lunch time was often the most awkward time of the day.

For supper, a box meal is prepared and waiting for patients’ guests who are staying at the hospital. If you snooze you lose since the boxes are only available for pick-up from 5:30 to 6:00. One of the cafeteria ladies gave me a container of vegetable soup last night to take with me and warm in the microwave if I got hungry later.

On the morning of day three, the ward clerk called me away from Dad’s room and said that the local Methodist church has a former pastorium a half mile from the hospital that is no longer being occupied. She said that she had heard I wasn’t getting much sleep in the hospital and asked if I would care to stay there so I might get a decent night’s sleep. It was like a weight had been lifted since I had already started dreading that night’s sleep in the crowded little hospital room.

I gratefully took the offer. Dr. Bo Gabbert, a retired physician from the area who is active in the Meadville Methodist Church, showed up at the hospital later to pray with Dad, take me to the house, and turn over the key.

As I was sitting in Dad’s room writing this post this morning (after a good night’s sleep), Dr. Gabbert reappeared in Dad’s room with a gift. It’s a prayer shawl knitted by ladies from the church. A card with the shawl contains a prayer for recovery on the front and the signature of all of the ladies who worked on it on the back. The shawl is specifically crimson for Dad’s beloved Alabama Crimson Tide.

This is Dad’s fourth day of treatment in Meadville and marked improvements have already occurred in his breathing and physical health. The treatment will take a while and I anticipate a number of trips back and forth to Meadville but Franklin County Memorial Hospital is giving me a lesson in what a difference a caring community and committed and caring medical professionals can make.

One of Mississippi’s many great writers, Tennessee Williams, penned that famous line about depending on “the kindness of strangers.” Dad and I came to Meadville as strangers among strangers but have quickly and lovingly been absorbed into a community of unmatched kindness and generosity.

It is a time for hope and giving thanks.

Note: My father, Grover E. Journey, passed away at Franklin County Memorial Hospital in Meadville at 9:35 p.m. on Monday, March 21. He was buried on Thursday, March 24, at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham. We will always remember the kindness of the people of Meadville.

A Serenade, an Unexpected New Community: Birmingham V.A. Medical Center

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My father, Grover Journey, has always been reticent about his military service. He served stateside in the U.S. Army during the Korean era. His older brother, Richard, was killed in combat in Korea and his younger brothers, Paul and Huey, served in the Army around the same time as Dad, shortly after Richard’s death. Dad was serving when I was born in Fort Benning and he was in the reserves for several years until his honorable discharge.

But Dad never seemed to want to talk about his active years in the Army. I always wondered if it had something to do with the fact that Richard was deployed to Korea and Dad’s service was all domestic. Richard died before Dad married Mother a few years before I was born but his loss seemed to silently hover over Dad and his family. My paternal grandfather – Dad’s father, Tod – was an angry and bitter man and I often wondered if that was triggered by the loss of his oldest son in combat. Dad never seemed to want to discuss it; Richard still smiles in the small photo on his tombstone at Elmwood Cemetery.

In recent years, however, it seemed that Dad was a little more willing to acknowledge his Army service. When I accompanied my parents to their church for a patriotic service honoring the military, Dad stood proudly when the time came for Army veterans to be recognized. He stood again and, in a faltering voice, spoke Richard’s name when the time came to honor those who had died in battle in various American wars.

Dad’s recent long-term illness and hospitalization (107 days and counting) has created a need in my family to reach out for various sources of help and support to navigate the nightmare that is American healthcare. We have found support and encouragement from a number of sources but our need became more urgent recently when the Birmingham facility where Dad is currently being treated called in another facility five and a half hours from Birmingham to evaluate Dad. Mother was informed at short notice that if the decision was made to release Dad to the other facility and she refuses the move his Medicare coverage could be terminated. Mother’s health is declining and she has not been able to travel long distances without complications for years so moving my father so far has the potential to be devastating to her – to all of us.

Some of the advocates who have supported and advised us have suggested turning to the Veterans Administration for help. When others failed to get V.A.response and action on Dad’s behalf, Mother took on the task and, after a lengthy meeting with a V.A. representative in Tuscaloosa, Dad was enrolled in the system for the veteran’s benefits he earned; Mother was given an appointment with a V.A. social worker at the Birmingham Veterans Administration Medical Center

Mother and I went to the Birmingham meeting on Wednesday, February 3, and met a bemused and kind social worker who wasn’t sure what support V.A. could provide but took copious notes and assured us she would see what might be done to assist my Dad. Her concern and sincerity were obvious; “She’s a nice lady,” Mother said as we walked down the hall after the appointment.

The Birmingham V.A. hospital is a large facility teeming with activity. Veterans of all ages and conditions are in the halls and offices and waiting rooms. The wait for elevators was ridiculously long and as Mother and I waited for an elevator to ground level we heard a harmonica down the hall playing “Anchors Aweigh.” Eventually, the source of the music, a veteran wearing a patriotic tee-shirt and Army cap, appeared around a corner of the elevator lobby, accompanying a Navy veteran in a wheelchair. They stopped to wait with us for an elevator and the man with the harmonica looked in our direction. “What branch did you serve in?” he asked.

“Her husband, my father, was in the Army,” I said.

“So was I,” he grinned and proceeded to serenade Mother with a rollicking version of “The Caissons Go Rolling Along.”

When he finished and Mother thanked him, he looked at an amputee in a wheelchair across the way, said “Hey, Jarhead!” and launched into “From the Halls of Montezuma.” “I hope that was okay,” he said. The Marine thanked him, saying “That sounded perfect to me.”

In fact, the harmonica player proceeded to play the song of every branch of the military before it was over (that’s how long it was taking for an elevator to arrive). Finally, after no elevator came, he looked at Mother and said, “Are you looking for an elevator that’s going down? Follow me.” He led a procession of several of us – walking, with canes, in wheelchairs – to another bank of elevators, chatting amiably the whole way.

At some point Mother mentioned that she is 81 and there was a chorus of disbelief from all of the veterans surrounding her. One called a buddy over and told him that “this lady is 81.” “No way are you 81,” said the buddy.

Mother has been quite sick recently and is exhausted by her regular vigils by my father’s hospital bed. Still, I thought I detected a slight hint of a spring in her step as she made her way out of the V.A., surrounded by admiring and complimentary vets.

I realized too that I had discovered a tight and supportive community that my father is a part of and that I never really experienced until yesterday, at a conference, trying to attend to Dad’s pressing health needs.

It gave me renewed hope and energy. It gave me a new perspective on those who serve.

(The photos at the beginning of the essay are, Left, my uncle, Richard Journey, and Right, my father, Grover Journey. They are teenagers and the photos were taken at their Grandmother and Grandfather Bodie’s farm in Mississippi.)

The Oasis

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I woke up this morning craving a cheeseburger from The Oasis.

If you travel from west to east on University Boulevard in Tuscaloosa you will go through downtown and the heart of the University of Alabama campus. Continuing past Alberta City and the iconic neon sign of the Moon Winx Lodge (which survived the April 2011 tornado despite devastation all around it) you’ll pass through Five Points and a less populated area of Tuscaloosa’s edges. Eventually, University merges with U.S. 11 in Cottondale. Just past that merger point, one might almost miss The Oasis, a ‘50s-era roadhouse on the left.

If you’re in the neighborhood, try not to miss it. I haven’t been there in a long time but the place makes a vivid impression.

The Oasis is the kind of place that would have been referred to as a “beer joint” when I was growing up. It’s in a squat one-story red brick building with double neon zigzags across the top and “OASIS” centered up and left of the glass front door. Pick-up trucks are usually dominant in the front parking lot and motorcycles are often pulled around on the side. A free-standing neon sign tops a pole just to the right of the building. It is topped by the words “THE OASIS” flanked by saguaro cacti and a big neon “BEVERAGES” below. East Tuscaloosa along University Boulevard has long had some great neon.

The small entrance counter and cash register directly in front of you as you come in the door open into a basic dining room to the left with a few booths, tables, and a bar. Of course there was always a great jukebox. A closed off barroom with a pool table is in the back with its own entrance near the rear of the building. I think I have peeked back there exactly once.

Be warned: Because the Oasis is out of the city limits (I guess) the place is still smoker-friendly and one dines there in a haze of stifling cigarette smoke. I guess it was always a smoke-filled room but I didn’t notice it so much in the days before strict non-smoking regulations. Now it hits you as soon as you open the door. I had recommended the cheeseburger to my parents a few years ago and they went in and immediately went out because of their health problems and the smoke (which I had forgotten to warn them about). The waitress came out and took their order and told them she’d bring it out to the car.

The Oasis has always felt to me like a place where one might go to cheat on a spouse. Maybe it’s the country music playing on the jukebox and the smoky atmosphere. Maybe it’s the clientele. I think it’s a combination of all of the above. Even if the waitress approaching the table doesn’t start off with “What’ll you have, darlin’?” you’ll feel like she did. The wait staff is friendly, experienced, and earthy. They have never suffered fools gladly.

The Oasis cheeseburger seals the deal. It’s a perfect old-style all-beef patty cooked on a flat-top grill with American cheese melted on the top. This is nestled beneath a pillowy top bun with the works – onions, tomato, lettuce, pickle, ketchup, and mustard. Some poll ranked the Oasis cheeseburger as among the top five cheeseburgers in Alabama; I find such rankings annoying but this one got it right by recognizing the Oasis (and I think the winning cheeseburger was Chez Fonfon in Birmingham). Accompany your Oasis cheeseburger with a generous order of hot crinkle-cut fries. The Oasis was always the kind of place that would wrap a napkin around an ice cold long-neck beer to absorb the cold bottle’s moisture.

I passed The Oasis hundreds of times before I stopped and ate there. In the 1980s a jazz musician friend took me to The Oasis for the first time for lunch. (On that same afternoon, he convinced me how much better my life would be with a pair of Vuarnet sunglasses and I overspent on sunglasses for years after.)

I longed to be a “bad boy” back then but never really had what it took to pull it off. The Oasis, however, instantly spoke to my bad boy instincts and after that first trip I often looked for a good excuse to make the drive east on University.

I was directing a production of Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love” in 1986. Shepard is a favorite of mine and the twisted and longing love story of an emotionally damaged couple in a run-down motel room in the Mojave Desert is a great example of his singular aching vision. One night after a Friday night rehearsal I told Kitty, the actor playing the female lead, that we were going to do some research on her role after the Saturday afternoon rehearsal and that she should dress in character.

On Saturday afternoon Kitty showed up for rehearsal wearing a little too much make-up and with her honey-brown hair dyed jet black. She wore a low-cut red blouse, skin-tight jeans, and spike heels.

“Perfect,” I said. “Where to?” asked Kitty.

After rehearsal, Kitty, the stage manager, and I piled in the car and headed out to The Oasis. It was mostly a male clientele late on a November Saturday afternoon. I started handing Kitty quarters to feed the jukebox. Every eye followed her as she leaned across the jukebox and picked out the most plaintive cryin’ in your beer tracks.

Kitty, who was already a skilled actor, was finding her character with each sip of a cold one and with each quarter in the jukebox. We paid up and headed for the car. As Kitty was getting in the car, a group of women in a pick-up truck slowed down. One of them rolled down the window and yelled “Slut!” at Kitty. The truck and its women sped away, slinging gravel in the wake.

“Well that was fun,” said Kitty with a sly grin. “Where to next?”

We decided to go to Leland Lanes in Alberta City and bowl for a while.

Satsumas for the New Year

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Few food-related experiences please me more than buying a bag of just-picked satsumas off the back of a pick-up truck on the edge of a pecan orchard in Baldwin County on Christmas week.

Some of the most distinctive icons of nature in the American South – magnolias, camellias, and azaleas come to mind – came over from Asia. Satsuma oranges have Asian origins too and are a part of the mandarin orange family. Mobile and Baldwin Counties on the Alabama Gulf Coast are part of a Southern “Satsuma Belt” that stretches from Texas to Florida and there is pretty specific history about how the tasty fruit got its start in Alabama. The Mobile County town of Satsuma gets its evocative name from the fruit. “Satsuma” ranks right up there with “Sipsey” among my favorite Alabama place names.

Satsumas are a medium-sized, mostly seedless, orange citrus with a distinctive skin that easily pulls away from the fruit, making it simple to peel and eat without much mess or trouble. Satsuma season starts in the fall just before the holidays commence. The fruit gets sweeter as the season progresses and its rich sweetness peaks right around the time Christmas comes around.

I always grab a few bags of satsumas when I am in Baldwin County before Christmas. Last year the weather was uncooperative and satsumas were hard to find. In years past, I usually bought my satsumas from a lady whose truck was often parked on the corner of Fairhope Avenue and Church Street in downtown Fairhope. This year there was a good crop and an abundance of stands, pick-up trucks, and signs on the side of the road alerting the public that there were satsumas to be had. The recent deluge of rain may have put a slightly early end to the season, I hear, but three days before Christmas I saw a man with a tent, a parka, and a large umbrella selling baskets of satsumas during a pounding rainstorm (with distant thunder) on a Fairhope side street.

While satsumas are a tasty treat to just peel and eat, I also usually make an ambrosia with satsumas as the citrus component. This year, between frequent visits to the hospital, my mother and I only had time to grab a satsuma in lieu of a meal on a few occasions. Mother would usually pack a couple of satsumas in her bag of provisions before a day spent by my father’s bedside but just as often she would give them away to a nurse or respiratory therapist.

I had to get to Huntsville to take care of some end of month duties at the house and the satsuma rations at Mother’s house in Birmingham were getting low when I left. Fortunately, in Huntsville today, I saw a sign advertising “Mobile County Satsumas” outside a store and dashed in to grab the last two bags they had for the season.

That should get us into a new year, perhaps into an ambrosia, and tide us over for a few days until the next crop of satsumas makes its appearance before Thanksgiving of 2016.

Happy New Year (and, oh yeah, Roll Tide).

Leaving Point Clear: December 2015

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On my last day in Point Clear I was awakened early by a tornado warning. I walked out onto my balcony to watch the storm system move from Mobile over the bay to the Eastern Shore. The wind picked up; the ancient live oaks around the lagoon shook fiercely as a single white ibis took flight from the water, startling white against the dark grey clouds. The storm was clearly moving to the north of me, toward Daphne and Spanish Fort. Most of the worst of the weather system had moved still farther to the north when I pulled away from the resort a few hours later and began to drive toward ominous skies.

I finagled an abbreviated version of my annual pre-Christmas retreat to the Grand Hotel in Point Clear on Mobile Bay this year despite plenty of concern; my calls back and forth to Mother and the hospital were frequent.

It was a shortened stay with welcome warm temperatures (despite the less than ideal weather threat) and I was able to find time to do some of the things that make this annual holiday season visit so essential to my mental well-being. Shortly after arrival on Sunday afternoon it was time to meet a contingent of the Brunson family for afternoon tea in the Grand lobby. The holiday crowd was large and festive. We adjourned from the Grand to Allison and Richard Brunson’s inviting bayside home where their oldest son John had been inspired to make a Chicago-style deep dish pizza which was savory, rich, and delicious and which seemed to exceed everybody’s positive expectations – including John’s and the brothers who assisted him. At least four other pizzas in delicious combinations were baked to accompany John’s masterpiece and we all overindulged – except for family friend Kenneth who sensibly made a salad for himself from unused pizza toppings.

On Monday, time was spent resting and reading, walking around the grounds, and exploring Fairhope and environs in search of fresh satsumas, a juicy citrus that makes its appearance in Baldwin County right around Christmas and may often be found in my New Year’s Day ambrosia. A massage was scheduled for Tuesday and it was a pleasure to catch up with Judy at the front desk; the massage therapist, Claudia; and the wonderful attendants in the quiet room, J.C. and Al. All of them provide a comforting and stress-free escape from the tension beyond the spa’s peaceful walls.

My good friend Kitty from graduate school and, later, from professional theatre gigs, was visiting with her family in Spanish Fort and met me for dinner in Fairhope on my final night. Dragonfly foodbar was the destination as we savored foodsmith Doug Kerr and staff’s always creative concoctions.

On that drizzling final morning before the trip back to Birmingham, I swung by Punta Clara Candy Kitchen to grab the requisite pralines.

St. Francis on the Point church sits across the road from Punta Clara Kitchen and the Wash House restaurant. Leaving Punta Clara, there was a sign in front of the tiny St. Francis chapel that said “CHAPEL OPEN FOR PRAYER.” I have photographed that chapel many times and have used it on my annual Christmas card but the doors have always been locked on those previous visits. I have tried to photograph the interior through the windows in the past so it was a treat this time to be able to go and sit quietly inside.

The warm and peaceful chapel provided meditation, shelter, and comfort from the various storms I faced on the drive home to Birmingham and, later, farther north to Huntsville and my house north of the Tennessee River. I was grateful for all the people who are “lifting us up” as my family faces the day to day of serious illness. “Lifting up” is my friend Judy Prince’s phrase for prayer.

As I compose this, I am sitting once again in my father’s Birmingham hospital room looking across Shades Valley at the foggy but brightly lit visage of Vulcan standing sentry over this valley and downtown Birmingham beyond Red Mountain. I will still be sitting here in a few minutes when midnight comes and it is Christmas Day. Somehow, with Dad sleeping peacefully at the moment, the twinkling lights of Homewood in the distance, and the stained glass windows of a church down below, this seems a good refuge to sit out the remains of a Christmas Eve. I will be here still when the sun of a fresh Christmas morning glimmers over the mountain to the east.

Merry Christmas. May you find comfort and joy with those you love.

“… a brief meditation …” – Take 3

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Church (c. 1871); Maplesville, Alabama; December 2016

Here, again, is an updated version of an essay, “Why I Mail Christmas Cards,” from December 2014. Each year, I am asked about my Christmas card project so here’s another take:

My Christmas cards went in the mail on December 1. I started designing my own Christmas cards in 2004 and it has become something many of my correspondents seem to appreciate. And now expect.

I looked forward to receiving and looking at Christmas cards when I was a child and many of the people who sent cards to my parents every year were people I never met but felt I knew from the stories my mother would share about them each December when the card arrived. Genevieve O’Brien in Chicago, Christine Allen in Georgia, and Doris and Bill Fuller in Fort Worth are among the annual cards we received without fail from people I never met. When I was grown and out on my own, I would send Christmas cards as often as I could but sometimes work schedules or finances would make it prohibitive.

From a very young age I had set opinions about Christmas greetings and Christmas décor. For example, I am a Southerner and never quite understood why so many Southerners would buy into the Madison Avenue version of Christmas and send out pristine snow scenes and winter scenes depicting images that were not part of my reality of the season growing up in Alabama. I have traveled and worked all over the country and I have had white Christmases a few times. But the Christmases of most of my life have been bracing Alabama Christmases with a chill in the air and no snow. Actually, I’m not a fan of snow and have never once dreamed of a white Christmas.

When I decided to design my own Christmas cards I wanted to feature photographs that represented December in the South. I developed rules: 1) The photograph had to be taken during the month of December and 2) the photograph had to be taken somewhere in Alabama. Those are the only hard and fast rules but over time most of the photographs have been of old country churches I have discovered around the state. A couple of times the image has been landscapes around Mobile Bay where I try to spend some time each December. The project began shortly after 9/11 and every card since then has included the phrase “Peace on Earth.”

The only exception was in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina. I didn’t design the card that year; instead, I purchased museum holiday cards with a detail from a still life of a bountiful holiday table which somehow reminded me of good times on the Gulf and in New Orleans.

I developed rituals: I try to get my card to the printer around October 1 each year. I start signing and addressing the cards by November 1. On December 1, my cards are in the mail. Over time the mailing list has gotten quite large. Most of the people on my list don’t send cards anymore. For me, however, it’s a way of keeping in touch with old friends and acquaintances all over the world. Some of them are people I may never see again but I like to keep a connection. I’ve moved around a lot in my life and the Christmas card list is something that keeps me in touch and grounded.

Most people who know about or receive my Christmas cards are grateful and look forward to them each year. Someone might ask if I’ve picked next year’s image yet or they’ll send me a new mailing address to ensure that they won’t miss this year’s card.

But occasionally someone will grouse “I don’t know why you do it. Who has the time? It’s so expensive. And so much trouble.” Here’s my response: If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. I do it because it gives me pleasure. I look forward to it. I want to do it.

With each card I sign and with each address I write on an envelope, it’s a brief meditation on that recipient.

When I first moved to Huntsville, there was a lady, Grace Clark, who lived in my apartment complex. We didn’t see each other often, but whenever we did we’d have a very pleasant conversation. I added her to my Christmas card list. She never mentioned my cards but when I moved from that apartment to my house I kept sending Christmas cards to Mrs. Clark. A couple of years ago, when Christmas was past, I received a note from a woman I didn’t know. She was Mrs. Clark’s daughter telling me that her mother had recently passed away. She told me that when she was going through her mother’s papers, she found a stack of my Christmas cards. Mrs. Clark had saved each one over the years.

If you don’t have time to send Christmas cards, I totally understand. I’m busy too. I have no time for Facebook and Twitter. We each choose what we have time to do.

The 2017 image, by the way, is a church in Maplesville, Chilton County, Alabama, that was built around 1871, the year that Birmingham was founded. It sits serenely beside a railroad track, down the street from the town’s old train depot

I have realized that the frequent choice of little white country churches for the annual mailing almost makes it seem like I’m sending the same card every year. I’m toying with the idea of some changes for next year’s Christmas card. Stay tuned …

and Happy Holidays.