Cullman Good Life Magazine - Spring 2021

CULLMAN COUNTY

Cullman woman reinvents herself as a Kiwi and world traveler

Forget a loft in New York City, they get a Cullman bang for their buck SPRING 2021 | COMPLIMENTARY

Anita’s meandering woodsy garden ... beauty and memories entwined

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Dental Arts has provided high-quality dental care to our area since 1981. In 2015, Dr. Kari Bartlett took over Dental Arts continuing the tradition of dental excellence.

With the old office on 2nd Avenue growing crowded, Dr. Bartlett built a state-of-the-art office on 4th Avenue to better serve her patients. She and her growing staff – complimented by her associate, Dr. Abby DiLuzio – remain committed to providing top-quality dentistry and friendly, personal service for you and your family.

We’d love to have you visit our new office and help you smile more!

Dr. Abby DiLuzio, associate Dr. Kari L. Bartlett, owner

Dental Arts is located in the new North Alabama Wellness Center on 4th Ave NE, across the street and a half block south of the Folsom Center.

205 4th Ave NE Suite 101 Cullman, AL 35055

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Welcome

Contributors Deb Laslie has become the happy hermit. “My home is how I want it, filled with my husband and dawg.

We turned off TV. We keep a computer for magazine work, weather and emails from our kids for money (we laugh).” House and garden work keep her on her knees a lot, “Which is where I need to be.”

Photo of the old post office under construction in 1912 shows trees where Greens’ building is now.

Fog of history lifts away – partly

F

olks at Cullman County Museum have cleared at least part of the fog from a minor history mystery.

The painted sign across the second-story roofline at 216 Third Street SE in downtown Cullman reads: West Side Furniture est. 1914. The building is owned

by Gene and Carol Green, who bought it in 2005 and built a great loft apartment there.

Photographing it and interviewing them for a story in this issue, I couldn’t help wondering how old the building is. They said they’d love to know, too, but their efforts to track it down, including the use of fire insurance records, had been unsuccessful.

The Greens bought the building – and learned what they knew – from Charlie Thompson, whose father, Leonard William “L.W.” Thompson, bought it from Fred Buchmann’s widow.

“I think Fred owned it and George Metz leased or rented from him,” Charlie says, citing family stories.

George established West Side Furniture in 1914 about where today’s post office is. L.W. began operating it circa 1930. According to stories, the men opened a second store on U.S. 31. Later, keeping the name, they moved it farther east to Buchmann’s building. L.W. also bought the business and building.

Kindly checking fire insurance maps for me, museum personnel found the building is not on the 1910 map but is on the next one, dated 1917. And a 1912 photo of the old post office under construction shows trees where the Greens’ building now stands.

History remains a bit foggy, but if anyone asks, Gene and Carol Green’s building was constructed between 1912 and 1917. Know anything more?

Mo Mc PUBLISHING LLC 6

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

WSCC English instructor Seth Terrell writes about a garden in this issue, reminding him of his former work for a food ministry in Nashville. “I ran the garden and we supplied neighborhoods in food deserts with healthy, garden-grown veggies and flowers.” A different garden, but once a gardener ...

So massive was the EF4 tornado that tore across Cullman County on April 27, 2011, that Steve Maze was able to photograph it from his distant back porch in New Canaan. Forever etched in his mind, he hoped those in its path were in storm pits, like those he writes about in this spring issue.

Like most folks, David Myers feels as if he has been on the sidelines because of the pandemic. At least he and his wife, Rose, venture out for GLM restaurant assignments. But he’s hopeful they’ll soon be back to full-time culinary action. They have a lot of catching up to do and are more than up to the task.

It’s still deep winter as ad/art director Sheila McAnear is working on this issue of GLM. But advertisers and others are making plans for spring, and she caught the bug. “I have been dreaming of sandy beaches and building sand castles,”she says. “But with Covid and cold weather lingering, I’d settle for a snowman.”

David Moore just had some big pines removed that loomed over his house and the area sown in winter rye. “As I work on this issue in January, I find myself eagerly running outside to see if any green is showing through the hay,” he says. “I feel that same eagerness about spring this year.”

David F. Moore Publisher/editor | 256-293-0888 david.goodlifemagazine@gmail.com

Vol. 7 No. 3 Copyright 2021 Published quarterly

Sheila T. McAnear Advertising/art director | 256-640-3973 sheila.goodlifemagazine@gmail.com

MoMc Publishing LLC P.O. Box 28, Arab, Al 35016 www.good-life-magazine.net

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Inside 10 | Good Fun

Some big events are on tap ... with a Covid asterisk attached

14 | Good People

Wayne Cook believes creativity – and the show – must go on

20 | Good Reads

John Grisham and Fannie Flagg cut new ground in old soil

23 | Good Cooking

Pat Horton likes to keep it simple, which translates into simply great

33 | Good Getaways

Looking for a true escape?

Spend a few days up at Mentone

36 | Loft living

Carol and Gene Green looked at lofts in NYC but got a better deal

44 | Good Eats

Downtown Grill has all of the ingredients of a classic diner

46 | Storm Pits

Once used to shelter family, neighbors from extreme elements

49 | Chicken House Fairview thrift store offers deals and blessings for all

54 | Anita’s garden

She carries on Alton’s vision with meandering paths of green moss

63 | Abbay King

She’s reinvented herself as a world-trekking New Zealander

01 | Out ‘n’ About

Spring ... like Liz Smith needs an excuse to grab her camera On the cover | Lacecap hydrangea welcomes the month of April in Anita Murphree’s garden. Photo by David Moore.

This page | Cullman native Abbay King photographed her fiance at 1,904-foot Sutherland Falls in New Zealand where she now lives.

What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen ... unless you can make Thelma Cake What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen. That might sound steamy, but it refers to cooking and recipes at Augusta’s Sports Grill.

“I’m not a recipe person, but people always ask me for my recipes,” says owner Deb Veres.

The recipe for her delicious meatloaf is one example.

“I can tell you what I put in it.

Here’s the point where I tell you what I put in it ...” Deb sits silently. “Not gonna do it,” she laughs.

Over the years she’s managed restaurants where salt, pepper and other dry ingredients were sprinkled on steaks. That’s inconsistent because all “sprinkles” are not created equal.

“So for Augusta’s we came up with a sauce that has all of the spices in it,” she explains. “We baste the steaks on the grill. It absorbs while it’s cooking and is more uniform, too.

Will I give you the recipe? No.” Even if Deb was crazy enough to share her proprietary intellectual property, her recipes are not written down. They’re all in her head.

“And that,” claims Josh, her son/ partner/chef, “is a scary place.”

Coming up with recipes for their menu is sometimes more trial and error than culinary science.

“We try this and that and taste it and end up sprinkling whatever else it needs,” Deb says. But their perseverance pays off scrumptiously.

Deb’s white chocolate raspberry cheesecake with chocolate ganache, above, took only a few attempts to perfect. She has been known to tell customers the ingredients to her potato soup, right, but not the measurements.

Her steak baste is an Augusta secret.

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As a seasonal special in November, Deb and her kitchen manager Shelby Allen – a graduate of Wallace State’s culinary arts program – set out to create a cheesecake with a pecan pie filling.

“One time all the pecan pie filling sank to the bottom,” Shelby says. “It was good enough to serve, and everybody loved it, but it had no consistency. We finally figured it out – but not until the very end of November.”

“I did write down the recipe on that one,” Deb says.

“I hope so!” Shelby says.

Speaking of writing down recipes, Deb’s grandmother Augusta – the restaurant’s namesake – used to make fresh strawberry pound cake. She called it Thelma Cake, but no one in the family knew the recipe.

When Augusta died in 1995, Deb inherited the kitchen realm, including a hand-written notebook that included a Thelma Cake entry. At first she was thrilled ... but it turned out to be just a list of ingredients. No measurements.

Eventually, Deb figured out all of the measurements but the sugar. She can’t seem to ever get it just right.

“I hope someone sees this and says, ‘I have your grandmother’s recipe for Thelma Cake,’” she says.

If it’s someone who once asked for her meatloaf recipe, Deb might find herself having to negotiate.

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• April 17-18 – 36th Annual Bloomin’ Festival Held 9 a.m.-5 p.m. both days on the campus of St. Bernard Abbey and Prep School, this spring tradition traditionally draws some 25,000 visitors annually, and its juried show attracts more than 150 booths of artists and artisans demonstrating and exhibiting their work. The festival is the largest fundraiser annually for the operation and maintenance of the school. Special discounted rates are offered for the weekend to visit Ave Maria Grotto. Completing the weekend is the giveaway for some great prizes, including a fine vehicle. Admission donation is $5; children 5 and younger get in free. For more info: www.bloominfestival.com.

Good Fun • March 13, 20, 27 – Countywide yard sales Cullman County Agricultural Trade Center on U.S. 31 North will hold its annual yard sale March 13. It will be followed by yard sales March 20 at Sportsman Lake Park and March 27 at Smith Lake Park. Times for all sales are 7 a.m.-3 p.m. Admission is free. Vendors can rent spots for $10 or pavilions for $35. For registration times and more info, call: Smith Lake Park 256-7392916; Sportsman Lake Park, 256-7343052; Ag Center, 256-739-4959.

• April – Historic walks Local historians will pick their routes and themes for this annual event of the Cullman County Museum. Held every 10

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Best to check with organizers/Facebook first

Spring events tentatively planned Saturday this month, the free, hour-long strolls begin at 10 a.m. (rain or shine) in front of the museum. Dress comfortably for a pleasant walk back in time.

For more info: Drew Green, museum director, 256-739-1258.

• April-October – Farmer’s Market, crafts Festhalle Farmer’s Market will be open 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. You can buy fresh, locally grown produce in season, plus craft vendors are at the market, too.

Please wear a mask; hand sanitizer will be available. Produce sellers and craft people interested in booth space can contact: info@cullmanrecreation.org and 256-734-9157.

• April 3 – Sportsman Lake Park Easter Egg Hunt Bring the youngsters starting at 9 a.m. for a fun time at the park the day before Easter. Thousands of plastic eggs with candy will be hidden, but you better come early. The Easter Bunny is fast. Admission: free. For more info: Sportsman Lake Park, 256734-3052.

• April 7 – Allegro Dance Theatre Performance Time and details for the event were not complete at press deadline, but it is set for the Betty Leeth Haynes Theatre. For more info: 256-3528277; or visit Wallace State Fine and Performing Arts FB page.

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• April 9 – Sportsman Lake Rock & Glow 5K Rock & Glow 5K event is 7-11 p.m., and it’s on, rain or moon-shine. The 3.1mile “race” starts at 8 p.m., but it’s only a race if you want it to be. It’s more about having a “glowing” experience and fun. Wear creative running gear – if it’s bright, blinks, shines, glows, or looks like something from another planet, it’s perfect. A DJ will pump out hits to keep you motivated. Afterwards, runners and walkers can dance the night away with local entertainment.

Get a T-shirt if you register early. Forms are available at the park or register online: www. cullmancountyparks.com. Registration starts at 6 p.m. – $25 (pre-registered) or $30 the day of, children 12 and under are $15 (children 6 and under can race for free). Park admission: free.

For more info: 256-734-3052.

• April 16 – Big Band Dance Wallace State Jazz Band’s annual Big Band Dance will be at the Burrow Center for the Fine and Performing Arts. Time and details for the event

were not complete at press deadline, but admission is $15 per person. For more info: 256-352-8277; or visit Wallace State Fine and Performing Arts FB page.

• April 22 – Wallace State Choir Concert Time and details for the event were not complete at press deadline, but it is set for the Betty Leeth Haynes Theatre.

For more info: 256-352-8277; or visit Wallace State Fine and Performing Arts FB page.

• April 26 – Wallace State Band Concert Time and details for the event were not complete at press deadline, but it is set for the Betty Leeth Haynes Theatre.

For more info: 256-352-8277; or visit Wallace State Fine and Performing Arts FB page.

• May 1 – Strawberry Festival Celebrate Cullman’s agricultural history with the 82nd anniversary of the state’s oldest Strawberry Festival, featuring arts and crafts, food trucks, live music, strawberries and more.

It all happens at the Festhalle and Depot Park in the Cullman Warehouse District and is presented by Cullman Parks, Recreation, & Sports Tourism Department.

The fun runs 8 a.m.-10 p.m. For more information: visit Cullman Strawberry Festival on Facebook; or Cullman Parks and Recreation, www. cullmanrecreation.org.

For info on booth space contact Cullman Parks and Rec: 256-734-9157; or: info@cullmanrecreation.org.

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The legacy of the corner bank is alive and well in downtown Cullman.

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SNAPSHOT: Dale “Wayne” Cook, Jr.

• EARLY YEARS: Born Dec. 23, 1966, in Birmingham to the now Jackie Hamilton Cook Porter and the late coach Dale Cook, who died in 2005. Eldest of three children, Wayne has a sister, Ann Welborn, who teaches second grade in Hoover, and a brother, Jackson, who is in industrial sales in Birmingham. Family moved to Cullman when Wayne was in the 11th grade.

• EDUCATION: 1985, graduated from Cullman High; 1990, earned a BA in from Samford University; 2000, earned his Master

of Divinity from Beeson Divinity at Samford; later studied at Athens State University for certification to teach English and drama.

• PERSONAL LIFE: 2006 married Robin Bowling Cook of Columbus, Ohio, who teaches English and coaches tennis at CHS.

Their son, Carter is 6; attends Cullman Primary.

• Career: 1987-2008, Cullman’s Seventh Street Baptist and later Northbrook Baptist churches, first as youth pastor and later as youth pastor/assistant pastor; 2008-2010, First Baptist, Eclectic, Ala., pastor; 2009-present, co-founded and ran Relative Trendz gift company, selling Believer Bands; 2012-2013, City on a Hill, a planted church in Dodge City, pastor; 2012-present, started Finders Keepers antique store in Cullman; 2014-present, Cullman City Schools, high school theatre teacher and director of CHS’s award-winning Cullman Theatre; founder of the Cullman Community Theatre.

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Good People

5questions Story and photo

by David Moore

A

s with all educators, Covid-19 has drastically altered how Wayne Cook teaches his theatre classes at Cullman High School. Though they meet on a hobbled, hybrid schedule, classes and learning continue.

Because of the coronavirus safety issues, however, Wayne’s had to postpone major musical productions he had planned in 2020 for Cullman Theatre – his troupe at CHS – and the volunteerbased Cullman Community Theatre, which he also heads.

Last spring, community theatre was gearing up for its production of “Hello Dolly,” but the plug got yanked because the coronavirus showed no signs of abating.

“We were going to have to invest a lot of preliminary money on licenses, and did not want to get that far and then have to cancel,” Wayne says.

But the show, ‘tis said, must go on.

And big stage productions don’t happen overnight, so in December, with two promising vaccines in production, the group laid tentative plans to return with a musical this summer.

“The plan now is to do ‘Hello Dolly,’” Wayne says. “We want to pick up where we were last year.”

Also, by the time this spring issue of Good Life Magazine is published, he and his drama students hope to have completed their postponed production of the bluegrass musical “Bright Star.”

That the show was expected to go on using required social distancing, masks, reworked stage directions … in short, a lot of creativity.

But creativity has always come naturally to Wayne – though irony is perhaps found in its source.

B

etween 1953-57, Wayne’s father, “Dale” Wayne Cook, Sr., set a record as

Wayne Cook

The shows must go on at Cullman High and with Cullman Community Theatre a Cullman Bearcat, lettering 12 times in football, baseball and basketball. He went on to play for the legendary Bear Bryant.

Dale’s high school football coaching career spanned 21 years, including a 5740 stint at Cullman in 1984-1992.

One doesn’t usually find football coaches who are also artists, but Dale was.

“He had a sense of the arts … a knack for painting,” says Wayne, who proudly has a number of his paintings hanging in his house. “He was a Renaissance man with raw talent.

“Some of my creativity I attribute to that. My dad was really good about being open. He didn’t push me when I didn’t find my niche in sports, which is very unusual considering he loved sports.”

Wayne knew football was not his thing early on. He was in the second grade in 1973 when one of Dale’s football players died on the field.

“I told my parents football was a dangerous sport,” he recalls.

Instead of sports, Wayne’s creativity drew him to artistic endeavors, starting with singing in the choir, parts in programs and dance lessons. In turn, these led him to theatre.

Dale and his wife, Jackie, moved the family to Cullman in 1984. Performing had already emerged as Wayne’s direction in life. He wishes CHS had offered drama then, but he settled for playing in the band and performances at church.

“P

erforming was my niche,” Wayne says. “It was the thing I could do, and people responded. I had quickly learned how to conquer a stage at a young age. I wouldn’t say I always did it well, but I did it and enjoyed it.”

After graduating from Cullman in 1985, he went to Samford University where he sang in the acapella choir and was involved in theatre shows.

“There were times we didn’t do so

great, but we did some amazing things,” he recalls. “We had tough people who demanded a lot of us. Someday I will produce a list of all the people who influenced me throughout my life. It’s like a hall of fame.”

He was also influenced in another way important to his life.

“I thought I might could be a performer, but in college I found a different view,” he says. “I stated pursing the ministry. It was calling, and I was always a spiritually-focused person.

That’s important to me and will always be. I was interested in that and took that on as a career.”

In fact, after just a few years at Samford, Wayne became youth pastor at Seventh Street Baptist Church in Cullman. Happily, he found it easy there to apply his singing, performing and directing … his creativity.

“I took what I had done in the secular world to the church setting – because that’s where I was drawn – and used it extensively at church.”

Wayne was at Seventh Street and later Northbrook Baptist for 21 years, serving as youth pastor and later youth and assistant pastor.

D

uring that time, Wayne earned his master of divinity from Beeson Divinity at Samford.

It was at church in 2004 that he met Robin Bowling of Columbus, Ohio.

“Her sister, Julie, is married to Dr. Eric Fillinger, the foot doctor,” Wayne says. “Robin’s mom thought she was maybe going to Alabama for a short visit …”

They married 2006.

Two years later, they left for the Montgomery area, where Wayne pastored at First Baptist in Eclectic and Robin taught at Wallace State Community College Selma.

In 2009, Wayne and a friend, Michael Pew, started Relative Trendz, a FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

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company that made and sold Believer Band bracelets and marketed them to Christian bookstores and churches nationwide.

“It was a trend we jumped on,” Wayne says. It got so big I became a full-time employee for several years. If we had known what we were doing, we could probably have been millionaires.”

After he went full time with the company, he and Robin returned to Cullman. Wayne pastored part time at City on a Hill, a short-lived, start-up church in Dodge City.

Having always loved old things, in 2012 he opened Finders Keepers antique store in Cullman with his mother, Jackie, and help from her second husband, the now late Barney Porter. She still runs it for him.

I

n December 2013, Wayne talked to Cullman High principal Dr. Elton Bolden and then assistant principal Kim Hall about filling an opening for a theatre teacher at the school. Bolden knew him through his creative youth ministry work, and so in January 2014 Wayne started at CHS. “It was kind of a trial deal,” he says.

“It wasn’t guaranteed, but it was my opportunity to come in and do some things I loved – investing in the kids and investing in the arts.”

It was the first year for the new auditorium at CHS, and Wayne jumped in, directing “The Wiz.” Until 2020, he had followed that up with two annual productions, including a major musical in the spring.

Among their shows have been “Beauty and Beast,” “Shrek,” “Little Mermaid,” “Hunchback of Notre Dame” and last winter’s production of “Elf The Musical.”

Wayne also enters his students in the qualifying district competitions for the 80-year-old Walter Trumbauer Festival. There are categories for both individuals and one-act shows.

Cullman Theatre has won district competition and gone to state finals at Troy State University four out of the last six years. In 2016, Cullman won best in show for its production of “Scrooge The Musical,” and several of Wayne’s students have won individual top honors.

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FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

C

ullman had a community theatre 40 or so years ago.

“When it folded back in the ‘80s they were doing a lot of shows,” Wayne says. “I think the people involved in it just got worn out. Theatre is hard work … building and painting sets, creating lighting, rehearsing.”

So after Cullman Theatre was up and running, resurrecting community theatre became his goal. He set up a team that included CHS choir director Sarah Jane Skinner, Cindy Pass (featured in the 2020 fall issue of GLM) and Melba Jackson, a retired teacher who had brought her directing talents to Cullman.

“There’s no way I can name everyone who’s been involved,” he says. “But those were highly instrumental.”

With Wayne directing and 50 or more participants, CCT staged “Music Man,” and “Oklahoma.” Last spring Melba directed “Rumors” as a dinner theater program at Stone Bridge.

One of Wayne’s guiding principles for Cullman Community Theatre is quality over quantity.

“Even with amateurs and being community led, we have to be quality enough for people to support the shows.

That’s my first thing. I’d rather do fewer shows and do them well, than to do more and compromise quality.

“We have not done anything at Cullman Community Theatre,” adds Wayne, “that I have not been proud of.”

1.

You mentioned earlier that performing is your niche and that you wanted to invest in students and the arts.

Can you expand on what you get out of working with Cullman Community Theatre and the drama program at the high school?

I always used my performing skills in the church, and now I use them at school and with CCT – but I can’t say I have used any of them lately. I’ve become a director, mostly. I don’t recall the last time I actually performed. One day I’m going to do it just to show I actually can!

Investing in others is one of the things I’ve found that makes life fulfilling and meaningful. I had people invest in me, and I have learned that when I invest in others I am fulfilling my life’s purpose.

At one time I thought I had to go into the ministry to do that, but I have learned there are all sorts of ways to invest in others. For instance, teaching is a great way to invest in others, and I have always connected fairly well with young people – I did spend 21 years as a youth pastor.

Going into the classroom was a chance to connect with a lot of things I love, plus connect with young people in a different way, yet still impact them.

Secondly is my passion for the arts.

I can give young people an opportunity that I didn’t have in high school. I always wished we’d had theatre when I was a student here. People in our high school didn’t get to experience this.

When I came back to Cullman, I really wanted to get Community Theatre going again because it was important to me and I felt the city needed it. I still feel strongly about that.

And I went to the high school because I wanted to go, not because I had to. I had a lot going on, but this job goes hand in hand with that. It was a win-win for me.

2.

“The show must go on,” right?

But how has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the performing arts, both here and nationwide?

Covid hit the performing arts probably more than anything. Broadway and theatre across the nation is completely shut down. I had planned to take a school group to New York City to see shows, but that got canceled.

The theatre industry is having to do everything virtually … even offering virtual shows. But it’s not the same quality or quantity-wise. A lot of companies make their living off providing rights and licensing for groups like us to do shows. And the loss goes deep. With theatre closed, people who, say, do lights and sound are out of work.

This goes for TV, movies, dance, concerts ... all of the performing arts.

As far as the high school goes, we had to postpone our bluegrass musical, “Bright Star” in 2020. We had a lot of money invested in the rights, so we postponed it to the end of this January [after this magazine went to press].

We have to have limited-capacity to allow for social distancing in the auditorium and live-stream it for people

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who choose to watch it that way. We can’t have a live band.

We practiced all semester, though it’s been like swimming in molasses. We had to change all of the blocking, how you determine where people go and what they do on stage. It’s a challenge doing that in a play these days.

In addition to wearing masks, we had to eliminate personal touching in social interaction. No hugging. It’s very challenging to do social distancing in a play with romantic parts if you can’t touch another actor.

Unless something changes, we have to do the same with “Into the Woods,” which we plan for May. It’s a full musical and we’re in the process of securing the rights.

Cullman Community Theatre faces the same obstacles with “Hello Dolly,” but barring a Covid shutdown we’ll make it work. You have to operate within what you have. You can’t go forever without doing something.

Theatre outlived the Black Plague. I hope and believe that it will thrive again now. But for those who love theatre, we miss it something terrible.

I feel – and we feel – it’s important to do these shows and still maintain integrity as far as people’s health goes.

We’re not compromising that. But we’ve had to get creative. The show must go on.

3.

Why are arts important in the development of a community, and perhaps especially for a growing city such as Cullman?

Art is the soul of a community. That’s my rallying cry.

Art is how we tell our story, how we express ourselves. It’s important to cry, to share, whether it’s something of joy or sorrow, art in all its forms allows you that expression, and we need those outlets in our community.

I am amazed at people who act like the arts are not important, but they watch TV and movies and things on their computer – all of that comes out of the arts. I cannot imagine a world without it.

It’s important that we invest in art.

Not too long ago, it was like a hole … tiny maybe, but missing in our community. Fortunately, people have done things to try to fill it.

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FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

We have a lot of leadership, numerous things and groups in our community working to fill that hole.

There are a lot of excellent elements here that bring an emphasis to the arts. Dance teachers, visual artists … they bring an emphasis to the arts and opportunities for our kids to develop in the arts.

But we need that exposure at all levels. We need ways to introduce more arts through the schools … not just dabble in it but offer deeper opportunities. Take theatre into middle school. Offer full-time art curriculum choices at all of the schools across the county.

There are kids out there who could find their niche and develop themselves if they had the right opportunity, but it’s not always there. I would say our school board and administration are incredibly supportive, but I’ll always push that envelope as much as possible.

Another good example of leadership is Cullman Parks and Recreation through its children’s theatre camps and art camps. Plus, they’ve now partnered with Cullman Community Theatre.

Finally, the arts are good for business and the quality of life here in Cullman. As our city grows and people consider moving here, the arts will only enhance what we already have to offer.

The arts also let us be a more diverse and cultured community.

Some people see the arts as nonessential, optional, but the arts are something we should not diminish.

4.

You mentioned community theatre’s partnership with Cullman Parks and Recreation and Sports Tourism.

What’s that mean for you guys?

Community theatre goes hand in hand with what CPR wants to do.

Through recreation and sports they want to uphold business and help make Cullman a hub for shopping. By hosting tournaments and events, they bring in tourists who eat and shop here. It all works to help Cullman be a wellrounded and attractive community.

Art plays an important part when promoting Cullman, too. It shows us to be an educated-type of community.

An art emphasis encourages people and

lets them know that not only is there a heartbeat here, but there’s a soul.

One of the things we hope to do with CPR and Melba directing is a Shakespeare in the Park program this year and maybe hold it at Heritage Park.

To be honest, community theatre probably couldn’t function long without Cullman Parks and Recreation. We sell tickets, of course, but CPR is underwriting us and helping us stay on top of things.

We approached them about working with us in the beginning. It’s been a good relationship. They have the structure and everything in place to manage the money, publicity and such. They help us with the things we don’t want to do! They are freeing us up to be creative and put on shows.

And everything they do is even more important in this time of Covid. We had to shut down and put a pause on things for a year. Now we can start right back up – at least that’s the plan. I have a feeling community theatre groups elsewhere are not going to be able to operate so smoothly or as quickly as we will with CPR’s help.

5.

What’s something most people don’t know about Wayne Cook?

My students know, but a lot of people probably don’t know that I was trained as a dancer well beyond the third grade.

That’s a pretty unusual thing about me.

I took dance lessons from the third grade through my senior year from Dale Serrano, who has a studio in Birmingham. My sister also took lessons from him. We drove to Birmingham for our lessons.

I enjoyed them, and as I got older and thought about becoming a performer, dance lessons became more important.

It’s part of the trifecta for performers – acting, singing and dancing. If you want to make it as a performer, you usually need the performer trifecta, which means abilities in all three areas.

It was good. I enjoyed dancing and had a lot of good experiences with it.

I use dancing as a fun thing in my classrooms. I can demonstrate tap dancing to the students. They are always begging me to tap dance for them.

Good Life Magazine

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19

Good Reads

Latest Grisham novel harkens back to a familiar character

Revisit Whistle Stop with a book that’s needed today

he third book in John Grisham’s series that began with “A Time to Kill,” then “Sycamore Row,” “A Time for Mercy” brings us back to Clanton, Miss. It’s 1990, and Jake Brigance and his young family are struggling to get by with the money he makes at his law practice in a rural The responsibilities were town drawing up wills and dealing with the left to him, the oldest. occasional incarcerated With their mother gone, drunk driver who will be he had no choice but to unable to pay his fee. step up and become a When the local judge man. He and he alone places the fate of a timid had to save them from a 16-year-old boy accused of the murder of a local prolonged nightmare. deputy in Jake’s capable hands, all heck breaks loose in Clanton.

The town demands a quick trial and a speedy trip to the gas chamber. But, as with most cases –all Grisham books – there’s a lot more to the story.

As Jake’s finances wither and costs of litigating a potentially very large payout with a long-standing civil case looms on the horizon, Jake has to decide whether to put his energies and the time of his small staff into a murder trial for which the state will begrudgingly pay him $1,000, or continue with the civil case and a “sure thing.”

Grisham surely does know how to tell a story. Lots of twists and turns and a familiar cast of characters that are now a part of my family. You will enjoy every page.

– Deb Laslie

very once in a while, I come across a book that has it all: truth, humor, pathos and just plain great writing. Fannie Flagg’s “The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop” is one such book.

And what a needed book it is in these times.

Ms. Flagg takes us back to the town of From now on, no matter Whistle Stop, just outside Birmingham, and revives how hard the doom-andher marvelous characters gloomers try, they’ll never from “Fried Green convince me the world is a Tomatoes” – Idgy, Ruthie terrible place and people and, of course, Buddie are just no good. I know Threadgoode (who lost there are some rotten his arm to that horrible train accident). Their lives apples out there, but take continue, and we’re along it from me, this old world for the ride. of ours, flawed as it may Dot still writes her be, is a much better place missives in the Weems than you have been told.

Weekly, keeping us up-todate on all the happenings of Whistle Stop and its inhabitants. There are some new characters, but many happy remembrances of our dear old friends. And friends they are.

I laugh with them and cry with them as they work their way through this thing called “life.” I miss them already and I just finished the book a hour ago. You will too.

Do yourself a favor and get a copy of “The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop.” Don’t loan your copy to a friend; buy them their own (you’ll want to keep yours).

– Deb Laslie

T

20

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

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CULLMAN

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FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

Good Cooking

Pat Horton turns ‘simple’ into ‘simply delicious’

Story and photos

By David Moore

“H

ow would you describe your cooking?”

Pat Horton thinks for only a second before popping her answer out of the oven.

“Simplicity,” she says.

The answer is cooked perfectly, but pressed she adds a bit of garnishing.

“I like simple things that don’t take a lot of ingredients,” says the Holly Pond woman who as a five-year widow now does more catering than cooking for herself or her grown kids.

“Country cooking, home cooking …

I like recipes out of church cookbooks where you know you’ll already have the ingredients and not have to go hunt exotic spices,” Pat continues. “Even in my catering I try to keep it simple. People around here, that’s what they mostly want.”

Besides, she adds, sometimes a dash of restraint is good.

Don’t confuse simple with cutting open cans of store-bought vegetables.

Nothing beats fresh ingredients. Prior to the death of her husband, Donald, they always had a garden for ready access to fresh ingredients and food. But she long ago learned that the Festhalle Farmers Market provides the same freshness with none of the weeding.

“I go there all the time,” Pat says.

As her catering reputation spread, instead of “simple,” those who know her cooking probably think of it as “simply delicious.”

P

at, who works at the Wallace State Community College bookstore, catered on

In recent years Pat Horton has come to love baking cakes. “It’s a stress reliever,” she says. “I’ll bake one and just give it away.” When she donates an Italian cream cake, above, to the WSCC Foundation auction, and more. Recipes for the cake – from scratch and the easy way – are found on page 26. and off for a few years in the 1990s. That went the way of life, but about eight years ago she started back, this time with Tina Jones, events coordinator for Wallace State. They cater part time, mainly to people they know.

“My mom was all business in the kitchen,” Pat says. “Tina likes to have fun.

I like to have fun, too, but when you get to a certain point you have to get serious.”

One of those “certain points” was a wedding where they fed 300 people.

But generally she doesn’t find cooking to be too hard once a job is planned and organized.

“Probably the hardest part is the

cleanup,” Pat laughs. “By that time you are exhausted.”

She enjoys trying new recipes but mostly adheres to simplicity. If clients want a big dinner plus appetizers, they try to talk them into one or the other because of the waste as opposed to the work.

Pat finds most clients easy to work with. Two of their popular requests are her chicken salad and spinach dip.

In recent years she’s come to love baking cakes. Until Covid hit, she taught quarterly community ed classes in cake decorating at Wallace. Some of her students went on to open bakeries.

“I tell students not to get frustrated FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

23

CHICKEN SALAD 4 cups chicken, cooked, chopped or pulled 2 cups seedless grapes, sliced ½ cup slivered almonds, toasted ½ cup mayonnaise ¼ cup sour cream 1 Tbsp. lemon juice 1 stalk celery, chopped ¼ cup bell pepper, chopped Salt and pepper to taste Ground ginger Combine chicken, grapes, almonds, celery and bell pepper. Set aside. In separate small mixing bowl combine mayo, sour cream, lemon juice, salt and pepper; Add to chicken mixture, sprinkle with ground ginger and toss well. with decorating. Just take your time. If you do it wrong, scrape it off and do it again. It’s meant to be a fun thing and not stressful,” she adds. “Many don’t realize that and come in scared to death.”

A

s a kid, Pat fell under the kitchen tutelage of her mother, Bertha Self.

“She was a good cook and got me into it,” Pat says. “If it didn’t work once, we tried it twice. If it didn’t work then, we cooked the dish a third time.”

Bertha worked at the time, so by age 9 or so Pat made sure dinner was on the table for her father, Emries, a construction worker, and her brothers, Talmadge and Albert. Her menus centered on their family-raised pigs, chickens, potatoes and beans.

“Back then, when you had food on the table you ate it or left the table without eating. They were good,” Pat grins, “with whatever I fixed.”

Raising a garden, she also learned to can. “It was basically a way of life then.”

As Talmadge got older, Pat – perhaps flexing some of the independence Bertha instilled in her – passed some of the cooking off on him.

She was a seventh grader when the family moved from Cullman County to 24

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

Illinois because of Emries’ work. She and Donald were already kids in love, and as proof he soon followed her up North.

The couple returned “home” to get married in 1965, then returned to Illinois for three years before moving back to Holly Pond for good.

T

he Hortons raised two sons. Greg – owner of Northside Auto Collision in Arab – and his wife, Gina, have sons, Nicholas, Giles and daughter Lexi; and three grandchildren Briley, Luca and Maggie.

Billy, who lives in Holly Pond, is the chef at St. Bernard Abbey – a pleasant surprise to Pat since he never showed any cooking interest until his foot was crushed in a work accident some 10 years ago.

“He just decided one day he wanted to go to culinary school,” she says. “I didn’t think it would profit him that much, but he proved me wrong.”

Donald retired in 2005 after 40 years with Cullman Products. He died in 2015.

After they married, Pat worked 20 years at the local textile plant. After it closed, she enrolled in a displaced homemaker program at Wallace State.

Determined, Pat earned her GED, went on to graduate with a commercial foods certificate from the college’s culinary arts

program and later earned her AAA there in business administration.

She first went to work at Wallace in 1997 doing part-time janitorial work in the dorms, going to full time in 1998 remaining in dorms for 15 years. That’s also when she started catering with a friend, Mary Dean Lamar.

“We did it several years, made some money and had a good time,” she says.

In 2012 Pat transferred to the bookstore.

Since it was outsourced 2 years ago to Barnes and Noble, she’s worked there in shipping and receiving and enjoys it.

P

at still loves to cook for her kids, especially on holidays. But she misses cooking for Donald and doesn’t cook much for herself. Catering, she says, has become a kind of a substitute with rewards beyond money.

“It’s one way of helping people. So many caterers charge an arm and a leg. I like to keep it as reasonable as possible to help people out.”

Simplicity.

“Everyone has one thing that’s their best thing. I guess cooking is mine,” Pat grins. “That’s what they tell me at church, anyway.”

Good Life Magazine

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Home • Auto • Farm • Business • Life • Boat • Motorcycle FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

25

ITALIAN CREAM CAKE (FROM SCRATCH) 1 stick butter 1 tsp. baking soda ½ cup vegetable shortening 2 cups all-purpose flour 2 cups sugar ½ cup sweetened coconut, shredded 5 egg yolks 1 cup chopped pecans 1 cup buttermilk 5 egg whites, beaten 1 tsp. vanilla extract

ROAST BEEF PINWHEELS 1 cup (8 oz.) sour cream 2 Tbsp. dry ranch dressing mix ½ tsp. minced garlic ¼ cup green onions, finely chopped 4 flour tortillas (10 in.) ½ lb. deli roast beef, thinly sliced In small mixing bowl, combine sour cream, salad

dressing mix and garlic. Stir in onions. Spread one tablespoon of mixture over tortillas, top with roast beef. Roll up tightly, and chill for about 1 hour. Cut into 1 inch pieces; secure with toothpick. Chill until serving; discard toothpicks before serving.

Yields about 3 dozen.

ITALIAN CREAM CAKE (THE EASY WAY) 1 box white cake mix 3 large eggs, separated 1 cup buttermilk, mixed with ½ teaspoon baking soda 1 stick margarine or butter 1 tsp. vanilla 1 cup flaked coconut ½ cup pecans, toasted and chopped Mix cake mix, egg yolks, buttermilk with soda, butter, vanilla and coconut.

Fold in pecans. Fold in egg whites, stiffly beaten.

26

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

Bake in three nine inch cake pans for 20 minutes on 350.

Cream cheese icing 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese 1 stick butter or margarine 1 tsp. vanilla 1 lb. box of confectioner’s sugar ½ cup pecans, toasted Combine cream cheese, margarine, sugar and vanilla. Cream together and add pecans. Frost the cooled cake layers.

Preheat oven to 325. Spray a 9x13 pan or three 9 inch pans with nonstick cooking spray. In a large mixing bowl mix together butter, shortening and sugar until smooth.

Add egg yolks one at a time, mixing with an electric mixer after each egg, until blended. In a small bowl mix together buttermilk, vanilla and baking soda. Add a half cup of flour at a time and one quarter of the buttermilk mixture. Repeat this process until all the flour and buttermilk is added. Blend well with hand mixer each time you add an ingredient. Gently stir in the pecans, sweetened coconut and beaten egg whites, until well blended. Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake for 40 min for 9x13 pan, 25 to 30 for three 9 inch pans. Reduce heat to 225 and bake an additional 10 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.

Frosting 1 stick butter softened 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened 1 tsp. vanilla 1 lb. box powdered sugar Shredded sweetened coconut Chopped pecans for topping In large bowl, with electric mixer, stir together butter, cream cheese, vanilla, and one quarter of the box of powdered sugar. Mix on high until smooth and add more powdered sugar. Continue this process until the box is empty and frosting is completely smooth. Frost the cooled cake and top with coconut and pecans.

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27

PECAN TARTS Crust 8 oz. cream cheese softened 2½ cups self-rising flour 2 sticks butter Cream the cream cheese and butter together. Add flour and blend well. Chill.

Press into muffin cups. Mixture may be sticky. Use flour on fingers to press.

Filling 1 cup pecans, chopped 1 lb. box brown sugar 6 eggs, beaten 1 tsp. vanilla ½ stick butter, melted Dash of salt Sprinkle pecans into muffin cups.

Mix remaining ingredients. Pour over pecans.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

28

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

CABBAGE BEEF SOUP

ONION CHEESE BALL

1 lb. ground beef ½ small cabbage head, chunked 1 med. bell pepper, chopped 1 large onion, chopped 2 stems celery, chopped 1 qt. tomatoes 1 can red kidney beans Salt and pepper Lawry seasoning salt

8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened 8 slices cheddar cheese, cut into thin strips 1 small onion, diced 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp. garlic powder Dash hot pepper sauce ½ cup lean ham, minced, fully cooked Fresh vegetables or crackers

Brown beef in skillet. Combine all ingredients except cabbage in large saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes to 1 hour. Add cabbage the last 15 to 20 minutes of cooking time. Season to taste.

In mixing bowl, blend the cheeses.

Add onion, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder and hot sauce; mix well. Shape into a ball and roll in ham. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Serve with vegetables or crackers.

CARAMEL FRUIT DIP 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese 1 small container marshmallow cream Hershey’s Heath brittle baking bits ½ to 1 cup brown sugar

Beat the cream cheese until smooth Add marshmallow cream and mix until smooth. Gradually add the brown sugar until smooth. Add Heath brittle bits right before serving.

CULLMAN

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"I love our small town! Traditions and strong values learned here are lifelong and I can't imagine anywhere else I would have rather raised my children." – Amy Kinney, Cullman High School Guidance Counselor FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

29

CHICKEN SPAGHETTI 1 whole chicken, cooked (or chicken breasts) 1 large green pepper, chopped 1 cup onion, chopped 1 stick butter or margarine 16 oz. Velveeta cheese, cubed 12 oz. pkg. spaghetti 1 32-oz. pkg. chicken broth 1 can diced Ro-Tel tomatoes 1 small jar chopped pimentos Cool chicken, remove from bone and chop. Set aside.

Cook spaghetti in chicken broth until done and drain.

Sauté pepper and onion in margarine.

Add Ro-Tel tomatoes, cheese and pimentos along with pepper and onion to spaghetti.

Add chicken.

Mix until cheese melts. Add more margarine if too dry.

Put in casserole dish and bake at 350 until it bubbles.

CRANBERRY SALAD 3 cups boiling water 3 pkg. cherry Jell-O 2 cans whole berry cranberry sauce 1 small can crushed pineapple, drain reserve juice 1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese 30

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

1 cup chopped nuts Mayonnaise Dissolve Jell-O in boiling water.

Add cranberry sauce and pineapple.

Mix well.

Pour half of the mixture in a large serving dish and chill until set.

Meanwhile combine cream cheese with enough mayonnaise and pineapple juice to be spreadable.

Spread cream cheese mixture on top of Jell-O mixture that has set.

Sprinkle nuts over it and pour on the rest of mixture.

Return to refrigerator.

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After the old hotel burned, rental cabins, many on the brow of Lookout Mountain, grew popular in Mentone.

Cupid’s Past, above, is built of old heart pine logs. At an elevation of about 1,700 feet, the cabin offers expansive views of Big Wills Valley, more than 800 feet below.

Good Getaways

Escape to Mentone Story and photos

by David Moore

M

aybe sometimes you want to get away to Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge and join the bustle of people pounding the seemingly endless strips of tourist attractions, souvenir shops and pancake restaurants.

Then sometimes you want to go to the mountains and truly escape from all the hassle and skip the five-hour drive.

Nestled on the brow of Lookout Mountain northeast of Fort Payne, Mentone is an hour and 45 minutes from Cullman. Along with nearby DeSoto State Park, Little River Canyon and their waterfalls, it makes for a scenic and quiet destination – though it was not always quiet.

Founded in the late 1880s as a tourist town, Mentone’s namesake is a small port on the French Rivera. It supposedly means “musical mountain spring,” which may be local FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

33

Visiting Mentone? Be sure to check out Wildflower Cafe, voted “Best Cafe in Alabama.” Owner Laura Catherine Moon and crew can prepare you a great Canyon Burger, above, as well as more fanciful dishes, such as tomato pie and black ‘n’ blue prime rib. Mentone Market is a great place to pick up a burger or pizza, too. Mentone has long been an art colony, and no artist has been showing her work there longer than Sharon Burke, who lives in Arab but still runs the delightfully eclectic Gourdie Shop, photo submitted. The Mentone Arts Center is also a testament to the creative population. Mentone Springs Hotel had its 19th century glamour meticulously restored in 2010-11 – third photo from the left, courtesy of Mentone’s Groundhog newspaper – and residents still mourn its demise by an electrical fire March 1, 2014. But the rugged, natural beauty of Lookout Mountain, DeSoto Falls and Little River Falls at the head of the canyon, right, continue to draw people to this scenic corner of Alabama. lore, as is the claim that Hernando DeSoto explored the area in 1540 (he entered Alabama near Piedmont and headed south on the Coosa River).

Musical or not, mineral springs were Mentone’s first attraction. Capitalizing on that was the grand dame Mentone Springs Hotel. Built in the 1880s, it drew thousands of tourists to the area’s supposedly healing waters. Tragically, the hotel and its neighboring White Elephant Galleries burned to the ground in 2014. Thus, in an infrastructural sense, Mentone is a shell of its former self.

But the entrepreneurial spirit that built the big, fashionable hotel and the artistic soul that spawned the galleries are both vibrant today.

And the rugged, wooded beauty and vistas Lookout Mountain offers are still in full force. As a testament to this, many people today enjoy second homes here, more are under construction, and some are very reasonably priced rentals.

Over the years, Mentone was said to have attracted the highest density of summer camps in the country. Cloudmont Ski and Golf Resort is nearby, where you can ski on machine-made snow when overnight temps drop to 28 and colder.

Hiking trails abound at Little River Canyon National Preserve and DeSoto State Park – the latter which, like Cloudmont, also offers accommodations.

Mentone, simply put, makes for a fine getaway.

Good Life Magazine TRAVEL TIP: There are several routes from Cullman, but perhaps the prettiest is Ala. 69 to Guntersville; from there, take Ala. 227 to Geraldine, then Ala. 75 north to Rainsville and Ala. 35 east to Fort Payne. Follow Galt Avenue northeast to Valley Head and Ala. 117 up the mountain to Mentone.

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35

Loft living

It turned out to be a good bang for Gene and Carol Greens’ bucks

Story and photos

By David Moore

I

“During construction, we tried to keep the integrity of the old parts of the building as much as we could,” Carol says.

Good bones were left. That which was spent was removed. To wit:

size – with custom-built, double-paned glass. The light that streams in makes it a favorite room of the Greens. To that fave list, Gene adds the well-appointed kitchen, which is open to the dining area, a fave of Carol’s.

“That’s where we entertain, where the memories are made,” she says.

In fact, she had local artists Marion Frey and Karen Lee paint on the dining room walls: “Eat. Drink. Make Memories” and in the elevator lobby “The true joy of life is in the trip.”

“It’s indicative,” Carol says, “about how we feel.”

t was an exciting idea – buy a loft apartment and live in New York City.

Why not? Gene and Carol Green enjoyed visiting NYC, their girls had grown up and moved out, and the couple found the notion of loft life very appealing.

So back in 2001 they returned to New York, this time shopping for property – and reality hit them with the weight of a skyscraper.

The big bang of 1.6 million bucks would buy them a measly 600 square feet of living space.

“We decided putting that much money into just a onvenience and big closet was not what we efficiency are key aspects of wanted to do,” Gene says. loft life the Greens love.

“Our dreams of living Old buildings can be in a loft in New York were drafty, so it’s perhaps short lived,” Carol laughs. surprising that energy “But we didn’t give up on efficiency is high on Gene’s loft living.” list of praises. It starts with It took a while, but since thick exterior walls builders 2008, they’ve lived in – and – possibly of German loved – their 2,500 squaredescent – constructed foot loft at 216 Third Street using three layers of brick SE in downtown Cullman. separated by two insulating Not only do they own their air pockets. stylish loft outright, they “Doggone, they knew own the entire building The elevator, left, exits into a hallway to the second-floor lofts. The what they were doing,” Gene laughs. that formerly housed West entrance to the Greens’ residence is through double metal doors.

To that built-in wall Side Furniture, which was established in 1914. As a insulation, he added thick ISO board to the roof bonus, they lease out two “Taking the old stucco off the brick during the extensive remodeling and apartments there as well as the polished walls was a gamechanger,” Carol says. again after some damage to the roof in the offices of Byars Wright insurance.

“The first thing people notice is the 2011 tornado.

A private entrance hall off the street beautiful brick.”

With the exception of the stove top and level lobby leads to the elevator the Ditto keeping with original wood two gas fireplaces, the rest of the house Greens installed during a protracted floors. runs on electricity. Nonetheless, monthly construction period. Upstairs, double iron “If you had seen that wood before,” utility bills average only about $290 – and and glass doors open into the living room Gene says. “There were different layers of that includes sewer, water and garbage. area, where it requires a few moments to “Even though it’s something I absorb the surroundings – old brick walls, all kinds of paint over it. We tried not to grind into the wood so we could leave the strived for, the efficiency surpassed my exposed rafters accenting lofty ceilings expectation,” Gene says. and four eight-foot windows that paint the ‘character’ marks.”

“People walk in and look up at the The Greens also enjoy the convenience finely appointed room with light. exposed beams,” Carol says. “I love that of living downtown.

It’s hard not to say, “Wow.” we did not cover them all up. Everyone “It’s very nice to walk to restaurants who sees that seems to appreciate it, too.” and shop in the boutiques downtown,” he allure of the Greens’ loft is They filled the building’s original Carol says. “I love it because it’s a central rooted in the preservation of its inherent window holes – each slightly different in location.” old charm.

C

T

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FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

And part of Cullman’s vibe are its many events, including Oktoberfest, the Strawberry Festival and Second Fridays.

“There are lots of activities,” Gene says. “We’re very involved in enjoying downtown.”

T

he Greens moved to Cullman 20 years ago to live on Smith Lake, but Carol’s ties go back further. Daughter of Charles and Alyne Williams, she was born in Cullman, though the family soon moved.

She grew up in Florence and Birmingham, graduating from Banks High School in 1970. She worked for BellSouth when she met Gene two years later through his brother, Larry, who went to her church.

OK … it wasn’t love at first sight, but it was a good enough for a start.

“The first time I saw him walking up, I thought he was very handsome. I wouldn’t call it love,” Carol laughs. “But I was very interested.”

On their first date they saw “Song of Norway” at the Alabama Theatre.

A Birmingham native, Gene graduated

Through 2014 the Greens worked six years with Family Life Missions, which has oversight of Por Los Ninos, a children’s home in Honduras. Their attitude is expressed in Robert Ingersolls’ quote on stained glass in their living room: “We rise by lifting others.” They have several Himalayan salt crystal lamps, top right, purchased from a former retail tenant in their building. Roger Smith custom-built their dining room table, above, using a huge floor joist from the old building. For the most part Carol was able to decorate their loft with furniture they already owned.

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

39

from Gardendale High in 1969 and joined the Army at age 17, which made him too young for combat in the jungles of Vietnam.

First at Fort Riley, Kansas, the private was fortunate to become an aide to a colonel who did not want an E3 as an aide. So he soon promoted Gene to E4 (corporal) and months later to E5 (sergeant). Gene later was assigned to supervise a chaplain’s division, then became a recruiter, which, for recruiting purposes, included some special forces training.

“My military time is very enviable,” Gene laughs and adds, “I was a part of the beginning of the all-volunteer Army.”

Home on leave in 1971 when he met Carol, he soon left the Army to attend college and they married Dec. 1, 1972.

O

ver time, the Greens raised two daughters: Misti Phillips and her husband, David, live in Louisville and have two children; Amanda Golden lives in Trussville, has two grown children and the Greens’ first great grandkid is on the way.

Gene earned a business degree from Jefferson State College and Northwest Missouri State University plus took marketing courses at UAB. When they got married, however, he worked in accounting at U.S. Pipe, but Carol’s father was an insurance agent and encouraged Gene to enter the business, which he did.

From 1975-1979, Gene was with National Life. Then the company moved them to the Baton Rouge area and eventually to Nashville.

An offer from Vulcan Life in Birmingham put Gene in marketing and the family moved to the Pinson Valley area for 15 (long for them) years. He and Carol also bought a log house franchise, which influenced the big house they built there.

After five years with Vulcan, Gene spent 20 years with Torchmark as marketing VP for one of its operating companies, often traveling from Monday – if not Sunday – to Friday somewhere in the U.S. or Canada.

It was during this period that he and Carol considered – albeit briefly – loft living in NYC. All of this time Carol had a productive and mobile career with what had once been BellSouth, retiring in 1997 from AT&T. A year later they moved to Dogwood Point near the southeastern end of Smith Lake, close to where Gene’s dad had a cattle farm.

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“We loved living there,” Carol says of those nine years. “It was a beautiful home.”

S

everal eddies began swirling together in the flow of Carol and Gene’s life.

Their daughters, now pulled into currents of their own lives in Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon and Utah and could seldom visit Carol and Gene at the lake. For their part,

the Greens still felt the tugging lure of city life that loft living offered and looked into buying an old building to convert in Birmingham and Huntsville.

Then a friend, Charlie Thompson, offered to sell a two-story building in Cullman that had been in his family for years as a furniture store. Adding to the Greens’ attraction was Cullman’s efforts to

The guest bedroom is accessed through a repurposed sliding door from Southern Accents, upper left. Prior to buying the building, Carol toured a number of loft apartments in Birmingham. Gene says it was mostly her vision that quickly saw the potential of their old building. The photo at left shows part of the western wall prior to any renovation. The first window in the picture is now in the guest bath, far left. The center window is over the tub in the master bath, which also features a large shower and a unique gas fireplace for warming the room to the high temperature Gene likes for bathing. The distant window in the old photo is now in their bedroom. keep downtown viable, and they bought the building in 2005.

They intended to renovate the entire 8,000 square feet for a residence, but their girls said that was crazy. The Greens decided to make the first floor commercial and the upstairs their home, but even that began to feel like more than they needed.

Working with Cullman architect Jock

Leonard and Carol’s brother-in-law, Frank Smith, an architect in Charlotte, N.C., they decided on a 2,500 square-foot loft for themselves, a second loft to rent and an apartment – initially planned as an office for them – on the first floor next to the large commercial area.

It wasn’t until April 2006 that they could present finished drawings to the city’s

planning commission and start construction.

By then they’d sold their house and moved into a garden home in town.

“We negotiated for a six month lease,” Carol laughs. “We were really optimistic.”

It would be May 2008 before they could move into their loft.

T

he renovation of the old building

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

41

The master bedroom overlooks Third Street. Gene loves Carol’s use of arches in the loft, such as the one over their headboard. was a Herculean effort in a molasses of red tape. The latter, Gene says, is in part because the city had no precedence when it came to permitting renovation and construction for residential/rental space above commercial space.

“We were literally the first to do a loft where we had to go the city and get approval for a multi-use building,” he says.

“The city cut their teeth on us,” Carol adds.

For starts, they say, city code called for a certain kind of licensed, mixeduse contractor; no one in Cullman found it was worth qualifying for the licensing, and Gene didn’t want a general contractor on site from out of town. Turns out there was a loophole – because he would own and live in the building, he could be his own general contractor as long as he didn’t pay any one subcontractor more than $50,000.

“I laughingly told Rick (Fuller, Chief building inspector) I couldn’t even swing a hammer.”

The city required him to remove the building’s old mezzanine downstairs and 42

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

a big freight elevator. Wooden studs were not permissible, so Gene had metal ones built by Harris Steel.

Fire-rated Sheetrock and plywood decking (three-quarter-inch, tongueand-groove) were required with Duroc concrete boards over the decking. A structural engineer had to approve the load-bearing ability of the floor and roof – which somewhat helped Gene’s concern when 41 tons of bundled Sheetrock were loaded onto the second floor.

“As we went through it all,” Gene says, “whenever the inspector came out he could never find anything that didn’t exceed code.”

N

o. At their age now, the Greens wouldn’t do it again. Gone is the stamina for so much hands-on work.

Yes. It was worth it. Even with the inevitable, unforeseen costs.

“It’s the same old story of anyone who has renovated an old building,” Carol shrugs.

Much of that cost, however, resulted in energy efficiency. Insulation relegated

street noise to a background hum. And owning the building provides them good rental income.

Then there’s the convenience of living downtown, their immersion into its vibe.

Carol loves the view of Sacred Heart’s two towering church spires with their golden crosses.

“At Christmas,” Gene laughs, “the city decorates ‘my yard’ for me.”

Even with renters, they say, loft living affords more freedom than regular homeownership. For instance, they have been able to live six months in 2017 and three months in 2020 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

“It really suits us,” Carol says of loft life. “And I can see it being suitable for a lot of lifestyles that are different than ours.

“I think our whole New York loft thing was just …” she pauses. “You enjoy vacationing there, but living there is a different thing. Same with Jackson Hole. I wouldn’t want to live there, either. We love the Cullman culture.”

“It turned out,” Gene adds, “to be a good bang for the buck.”

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43

Good Eats

Downtown Grill – all the ingredients of your classic, old-fashioned diner Story by David Myers Photos by David Moore

I

admit. When Rose and I go out for dinner, she usually dictates where we eat.

That’s because I’m a fan of simple food, like beans and rice. I also hold a good burger in the highest esteem. My wife prefers a more uppity menu, and she knows I’ll eat anything.

So on a recent lunch outing, with no input from me as usual, I was tickled to end up in an old-fashioned diner in downtown Cullman that is known all over town as the place to go for a burger or wings.

The Downtown Grill on Fourth Street makes you hark back to the old days.

Corrugated tin lines the walls. Local sports team memorabilia serve as décor while country music plays in the background. A counter with stools rounds out the ambiance perfectly.

Owner Justin Lee is a Cullman boy himself who grew up chowing down in the restaurant. He played football with a son of the previous owner, Wayne Smith.

“This was a large part of my childhood,” Justin says.

After graduation, he worked in his family’s cabinet shop and did construction until one day he heard Wayne wanted to retire. The Downtown Grill was for sale, and Justin happily took it over.

T

hat was six years ago, and apparently Justin knew what he was doing. He kept Wayne’s tried and true dishes that Cullman counts on, but he added some others that have grown into customer favorites.

Wayne had a version of Ranch Fries – basically perfectly cooked French fries 44

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

topped with melted cheese, ranch dressing and a sprinkle of a secret seasoning. Justin would be run out of town if he took those off the menu.

“It’s one of our biggest sellers,” he says with pride. “Most anytime somebody orders a burger, they add on Ranch Fries.”

That’s because they are delicious. Take my word for it.

Speaking of burgers – one of my favorite delicacies as well as one of my favorite topics – the Downtown Grill wasn’t really considered a burger place when Justin took over. He was determined to change that – and he has.

The beef and bun star he slid onto our table was one to remember. We talked through stuffed mouths about how remarkably tasty and juicy it was. Justin attributes the flavor to using the freshest meat – all six-ounce patties – and to an experienced cook slapping them on the grill.

“Our biggest goal is to try to make everything as fresh as possible,” he says.

“We want that good burger flavor. It’s hard to run a grill without over- or under-cooking the meat. Our cook has been here over four years – and he’s mastered it.”

M

y only complaint was that Rose

Clockwise from upper left: Try a classic cheeseburger; Justin offers up some Buffalo Wings; a beer and Ranch Fries is a great appetizer; Chicken Bacon Wrap – what’s not to love; and don’t forget the Fried Banana Pudding for dessert. The Downtown Grill serves lunch on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with a variety of sandwiches and meat-and-sides choices. It’s open until 9 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday with its regular menu and meat-and-sides dinners. It’s closed Sunday and Monday. wouldn’t let me get a second one. Oh well …

I consoled myself with the fact that I had to sample the wings.

Now as much as I love beef, I’ve got to say that I’m a huge wing kind of guy. So when three different flavors hit our table, I dug in. While we gnawed away on the crispy, generously sauced wings, we chose our favorite sauce.

I fell for the Honey BBQ because I like a little sweetness, but the Ragin’ Cajun also got my vote since I hail from Cajun country.

My wife went crazy over the Buffalo Wings, which ranked medium on the heat scale but still lit her up pretty good.

Here’s a tip. The Downtown Grill has a 75-cent wing special on Thursday and Saturday, which you can wash down with $2 draft beer.

If you’re feeling competitive, you can get in on the Wing Challenge with 10 minutes to eat 10 spicy wings in hopes of getting them free plus a shirt or hat.

Not too surprisingly, there’s also a popular burger challenge, which is growing – literally.

Each time someone wins by eating a multiple patty burger, the next challenger must tackle a burger with an additional patty. It’s up to 12 patties now – so big it

has to be laid sideways over the plate. Rose refused to let me compete.

W

e wouldn’t leave without sampling the signature dessert of the Downtown Grill – Fried Banana Pudding. It’s like Grandma’s banana pudding wrapped inside a delicate tortilla and deep fried, sprinkled with powdered sugar. I went bananas over it.

Other highlights include meat and vegetables plates, daily specials such as Philly Friday and Saturday breakfast. Local Goat Island beer is a big seller. That’s not too surprising either.

Good Life Magazine FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

45

Storm pits Where families and neighbors gathered seeking shelter from extreme elements ... and perhaps a shoulder amidst the storms of life

Story and photo

By Steve A. Maze

B

etween the harshness of winter and suffocating heat of summer, spring is a time of the year we anxiously welcome. It’s a time when unborn grass lies waiting to grow green. A time when the fleeting accent of white dogwood blossoms are in abundance.

A time when weather-beaten trees mourn for warm weather.

It’s also a time when the wind speaks to us. Sometimes it speaks softly; other times it wreaks havoc and destruction.

That’s why storm pits have always been a part of rural life. Often under a mound of dirt, these prevalent structures were of vital importance to farming families.

Our forefathers were not privy to today’s severe weather warning systems and hyped-up television meteorologists.

Even the radios of the era did not carry local 46

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

weather forecasts, much less severe weather warnings. Folks had to rely on their eyes and past experience with storms to determine when it was time to head to the storm pit.

In fact, it was critical that families seek shelter well before the impending storm hit.

The lightening, hail and driving rain would take a toll on them if they didn’t. If a family did not have a shelter of their own, they headed to the larger community pit of some nearby neighbor.

M

y grandpa, Jay Hugh Maze, built a storm pit during the late 1930s with a pick and shovel, which was little more than a hole in a ditch bank with a few planks thrown over the top.

Before his passing in 2007, my dad, Marlon Maze, spent his share of time in Grandpa’s storm shelter and learned what Grandpa would look for whenever a bad cloud came up.

“Dad would resort back to the old signs that people used at that time to see how bad a storm was going to be,” Marlon said. “Things like observing wind direction and the color of the clouds.”

Lightly colored clouds moved faster and meant there was a lot of wind in them. A yellow-tinted cloud would be swollen with rain and was sometimes accompanied by hail. The dark rolling clouds were the worst. They sometimes resembled a tornado and were always accompanied by high winds with lots of thunder and lightening.

“I wasn’t too crazy about running into the storm pit on a dark night,” my dad said. “I knew that spiders and snakes liked to find a cool, damp hole to crawl in. Dad would take the kerosene lantern and go in first to make sure that a copperhead or a black widow wasn’t lurking nearby.”

1950s and ‘60s. Automobiles would be lined up and down the road while the beam of a flashlight led folks safely to the entrance of a neighbor’s larger pit during severe weather.

The noise inside the shelter would be deafening during a bad storm. High winds whistled past the door while falling hail mimicked the sound of hundreds of men banging the tin-covered roof with hammers.

W

S

ome of the neighbors who didn’t have a storm pit would walk to Grandpa’s shelter.

They didn’t travel in a wagon or buggy since they wanted to leave their mules and horses in the barn for shelter.

“When the rain and wind subsided, dad and other men would look out to see if the storm passed,” Marlon said. “The women, however, would not allow the children to peek out in case it was still lightening.

“We didn’t seem to have the number of tornadoes then that we do today,” he added.

“And property losses were usually limited to wind damage to trees and crops.”

Thankfully, the size and structure of storm shelters improved over the years. A wooden floor and a tin roof became commonplace.

Eventually, more of the storm pits were constructed of cinder block walls with a concrete floor and roof.

Storm pits were still very popular in the

hen the precipitation subsided, men dressed in overalls stood outside the shelter rolling cigarettes, all the time looking up at the threatening sky and waiting for the storm to completely pass. The croaking of frogs, as well as raindrops slowly dripping from nearby trees signaled the end of the storm.

When the cloudburst ended, neighbors paused to visit for a few minutes before heading home. The men talked about their crops and what possible damage the storm may have caused them. The women asked about the sick in the community and commented on how much the neighbor’s children seemed to have grown. Kids might scurry up and down the road trying to get in a quick game of tag.

One version of today’s storm pit is a fiberglass, sphere-shaped shelter that can be buried completely underground. It comes with built-in bench seats and carpeting.

Storm pits, as I knew them, are basically a thing of the past, but I still see a few functional shelters while making my way around the backroads of the rural South. Some folks in our area continue to use their pits, but many have succumbed to the passage of time.

Weather-alert radios, early severe weather warnings on local television and basements in many homes helped eliminate the need for storm pits. I am not complaining about these new safety devices, however – they are certainly needed, and will continue to save many lives for years to come.

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It was an era when folks knew who their neighbors were, and a time when neighbors helped each other unconditionally.

It was also a time when a neighbor’s comforting shoulder could be used for shelter, regardless of what type storm was raging in a person’s life.

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Chicken House Thrift Store Story and photos

By David Moore

I

t’s nearly 8 a.m., chilly and threatening rain. But it’s almost opening time and shoppers are gathering at the sliding front door of the Chicken House Thrift Store. More vehicles pull off Ala. 69 into the unpaved parking area next to what’s literally a green chicken house a mile east of Fairview.

It’s a little like a pre-pandemic Black Friday shopping extravaganza. The merchandise, however, is not new. It’s all donated. But the bargains are great, especially for – but not limited to – those whose wallets and purses have little heft.

Long sleeve shirts and tops sell for $1. Short sleeved garments sell for 50 cents. Used household items and furniture sell for dimes on the dollars.

Some of the merchandise goes out for free.

At 8 a.m. the door rolls open. It’s not a mob scene, but 20 or more shoppers briskly walk across the old carpet remnants that cover the dirt floor of the long narrow building. Most seem to have a goal in mind – maybe the organized racks and tables of clothing or the long shelves of shoes; maybe kitchen appliances are the target, or a leaf blower. Youngsters are drawn to the “toy department” just inside the front door.

Prior to opening, volunteers Dennis Mobley and Charlotte Haynes stand inside at the front counter for a last look around. Afterward, Dennis opened the door behind him to the shoppers waiting to discover what’s new this week at the Chicken House.

Charlotte Haynes mans the cash register up front and greets the regulars she’s come to know. Another seven or so volunteers assist customers or toil in the back workroom organizing piles of new donations.

The shoppers come from across Cullman County, from neighboring Morgan, Marshall and Blount counties.

Some travel farther just to shop here.

Some are simply passers-by who stop to investigate the early-morning commotion along this stretch of rural two-lane.

So it’s been for 20 years of Saturdays as volunteers from nearby Concord Baptist Church offer this outreach mission from a repurposed chicken house – not just to offer affordable deals, but to bless both those who receive and those who donate.

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

49

Kids browse the toys as their parents shop for deals ranging from polo shirts to kitchen appliances and much more. At left, volunteer Pat Drake pauses in her work long enough to model her Christmas tree tiara. “I bought it at the Chicken House,” she laughs. More seriously, and probably speaking for all of the volunteers working there, she adds, “It’s my God thing.” Below left, Juanita Haynes works in the back, sorting through the bags of new donations that come in during the week. Juanita’s son, Dr. Dennis Haynes, below center, another volunteer, talks with Charles Erwin of Holly Pond as he waits for his wife to shop. “She enjoys it,” he says. “It lets all of these women get the shopping out of their system,” laughs Dennis.

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FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

Volunteers work hard to sort and display the flow of donations for shoppers at the Chicken House Thrift Store.

I

t was November 1977 when Charlotte and her husband, veterinarian Dr. Dennis Haynes, bought the first portion of their farm near Fairview. They built a nice home incorporating the site of an old corn crib, raised their family there and, over the years, expanded the farm across the beautiful rolling hills.

Part of their first purchase included a chicken house on the highway, and Charlotte continued the contract to raise birds there until about 1998.

In fall 2000, after considerable prayer, the Concord Baptist Women’s Missionary Union decided to hold a yard sale to help raise money for a fellowship hall. They didn’t want to hold the event on church grounds, so they cast about for a suitable location, and someone suggested Charlotte’s old chicken house, conveniently located on Ala. 69.

“That’s a terrible place,” Charlotte had responded. “It’s nasty and dirty.”

“Oh,” they insisted, “it’s great. We can store all the stuff inside the sliding doors and move it out front the Saturday of the sale.”

Charlotte relented. The sale was held.

Turnout was great – and an eye-opener, too.

“We didn’t realize how great the need was in our community,” Charlotte says.

They had leftover items, so they collected more and held another sale the next Saturday.

“By that second week, the customers were bringing us stuff,” Charlotte says.

“We prayed more and said, ‘This is unbelievable. We don’t need to be doing yard sales. We need to be doing this as a ministry of the church to help people.’

“It was,” she adds, “all about sharing.”

T

he chicken house was available, if not a little dirty. The location was obviously good. And there was a need.

So the group of church members decided to create a thrift store to meet that need, open it on Saturday mornings and stock it with donations.

At the time, the Haynes’ son Joshua attended Wheaton College near Chicago.

While visiting him, Joshua took his parents to a thrift store where nothing was sold but students could swap out used clothes and other items. It was

called the Corinthian Co-op after the book in the Bible that refers to the cheerful giver and includes: … Now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want …

Charlotte and the volunteers adopted the name for their new ministry, collected items for the store and opened in early 2001.

“We hung clothes on the old chain feed track,” she recalls. “We have electricity now, but it’s for lights, not heat – we just have to dress warmly.

Back then, I saw customers come in with flashlights in the winter. We used blackout curtain on the outside of the building to block the wind.”

Needy shoppers might be chilly, but the atmosphere is open and loving.

“Sometimes customers share prayer requests with the staff, and we pray with them,” Charlotte says. “No one feels uncomfortable. It’s not intimidating to anybody.”

S

ome of the 20 volunteers from Concord Baptist work at the Chicken FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

51

The thrift store is open 8 a.m. to noon Saturdays. Volunteers have built a drop-off shed onto the east side of the building, which is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Seventy-five percent of all sales goes to missions (Annie Armstrong Home Missions Offering, Lottie Moon Foreign Missions Offering, Southern Baptist Children’s Home and a missionary in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, The Link of Cullman County, Women First, Fairview School and other community events); 25 percent goes to Concord Baptist Church.

House several days a week, mostly sorting and stocking items people leave at the drop-off room on the side of the building.

The seemingly never-ending source of donations provides perspective on America’s materialistic mindset and highly wasteful buying habits. On the other hand, rampant consumerism can eventually result in generous donations for the less fortunate – “miracles,” as Charlotte refers to them.

One of her favorites miracles involved two horse trailers full of mattresses from a nursing home. Charlotte had expected three or four and wondered how they’d ever move 85 mattresses.

That Saturday, they sold two. Monday, she got a call from a man opening a rehabilitation facility in Cullman. They had beds but couldn’t afford mattresses.

Would Charlotte, just maybe, know where to find some?

“How many do you need?” she asked.

“Eighty-three,” he said.

“They are here now,” she beamed.

52

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

“And you owe nothing for them. God shipped them here for you to pick up.”

Once someone donated a refrigerator, and the first person in the door Saturday said she had five children and didn’t even own a refrigerator. Another time, someone was unloading an oven even as a person at the co-op needed one.

“It went from truck to truck,” Charlotte says. “You cannot out-give God. It’s amazing. That’s our prayer: God you know what they need. You bring it, and we’ll pass it on to them.”

I

t was the mid-2000s that Joshua Haynes designed the logo using the name Chicken House Thrift Store. But the ministry remains Corinthian Co-op.

“We never intended to be a perpetual Saturday morning yard sale,” Dennis says. “ Our hope was to honor those who received and to honor those who gave with kindness and in the spirit of II Corinthians 8:14. Our community cooperates in stewardship of material things in the giving and receiving.”

He says take to heart the words of Henry Blackaby, a Southern Baptist pastor and mission leader, who encourages believers to see where God is working and join Him in it.

So volunteers keep going.

Bargain hunters and those in need keep coming.

The community keeps donating.

And the Lord keeps providing.

“We all are amazed that an effort started in an old, abandoned chicken house has become a valued institution in our community,” Dennis says. “It certainly is not about our family or our church – it is simply a God thing. We do not focus on the negative. All of us simply rejoice in working together to minister to the community that is the Corinthian Cooperative.”

That’s why the door rolls open every Saturday morning for the early birds awaiting the substantial pickings and blessings offered at the Chicken House Thrift Store.

Good Life Magazine

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Anita’s garden

An emerald carpet of moss meandering through the woods, where memories and beauty grow entwined Story by Seth Terrell Photos by David Moore

“A

light exists in spring,” Emily Dickinson writes, that is “not present on the year at any other period.” There is a color there, too, the poet suggests, that communicates with a person in ways that are better felt than spoken.

Perhaps such light and such color converge in no greater realm of spring than in a garden. Here, there is longing and renewal.

A primal connection to the rhythms of life and loss.

For Anita Murphree, a garden is an invitation into memory and hopeful imagination, as it was to her late husband, Alton. It is the emblem of community and the transcendent satisfaction of hard work.

A few hundred yards from a meandering county road near Holly Pond, brilliant oak-leaf hydrangeas are the first banners of welcome to Alton’s Living Garden.

Interspersed among native azaleas, the hydrangeas are quite the enthusiastic greeters with their green leaves waving. All the while their stark white and pink blooms become trail-markers toward a luscious garden refuge rarely found beyond the pages of fairy tales.

Following the gravel drive on through the canopy of hardwoods, the fortunate traveler arrives at the heart of Anita Murphree’s 40 acres, now in perfect view of a magnificent, giant beech tree.

Twenty yards away, there is a swing.

The swing is one of many, along with 54

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

Anita and her late husband, Alton, started their estimated five-acre garden – shown here in its early April greens – about 1997. She loves the peace and quiet there and calls it, “a little bit of heaven on earth.”

several wooden benches, that Anita and Alton have placed throughout the sprawling, meandering, woodsy garden. But this particular swing, within eyeshot of the beech tree and perfectly nestled near the creek, is Anita’s favorite spot in the entire garden.

She comes here to sit and contemplate and remember.

“A garden brings calm and peace and sacredness,” Anita says, when answering the question of just what it is that makes a garden such a special place. “But, too, it’s about being able to work and get my hands dirty.”

I

n a rare moment of respite from all that

work – “It’s a full time job,” Anita would have you know – she smiles, remembering the almost serendipitous way the garden came about. Alton, who passed away in 2018, had first envisioned a garden that would span the southern and western sides of their acreage.

Today that garden is home to the

aforementioned azaleas and hydrangeas, irises, camellias, buttercups, various species of ginger and ferns. It is a cornucopia of flowers, those growing both wild and free and those curated over the years to bloom brightest. But such beauty only arose out of determination and ingenuity. Creeks had to be forded, land had to be cleared, but never

at the cost of diminishing the natural beauty that radiates from this place.

“Alton worked hard,” Anita says, “a one man crew.”

It was 1990 when Alton and Anita bought the land. They later built a house and moved in 1996 to their hideaway in the deep woods.

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

55

Then one day, as a stroke of vision hit them, Alton decided to mow down a patch of woods and weeds that had become overgrown. Anita took to the old Murray lawnmower to carve a path, and soon the notion proved worthy – along the very path where the mower had cleared, grew a fine, emerald carpet of moss.

Soon, the Murphrees began clearing more and more until the moss path became a thoroughfare amid an entire mosscarpeted wonderland. When the allure of the hydrangeas and azaleas and irises all fade in winter, the prized green moss remains as the garden’s hallmark.

“That was my inspiration to keep it going,” Anita says. “But Alton was my true inspiration.”

Her eyes begin to soften with fond tears. Tears that tell of sorrow in losing her husband of 45 years, but also tell of a connection with the land … and a connection with the beauty of nature in which Alton’s presence is ever near.

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FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

Anita, upper left, strolls in her garden in early April. The yellow wildflowers at top right are volunteers. Above is a memorial to her late husband, whose vision lives on their sprawling garden in the woods.

Above, young ferns bloom next to one of two bridges the Murphrees built across the creek that runs though their fave-acre garden. Scattered about in the woods are azaleas that add explosions of color.

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

57

T

he garden and surrounding woods are full of bluebirds and wrens, woodpeckers and cardinals. A retreat that teems with all sorts of life. Walking deeper into the garden, Anita is followed by her dog, Reuben. She often stops and looks back the way she came; a plant here and there ignites some pleasant recollection.

“That,” she says pointing, “is wild ginger we found on a hike up the creek.”

Each little patch of growth throughout the garden has an origin story. Including, especially, the hydrangeas.

Alton bought a set of them at a yard sale in the garden’s beginnings. They were Mother’s Day presents for Anita.

Since that early chapter of the story, there have been countless explorations and experimentations with new and unique plants.

She and Alton would often roam the woods of South Alabama with Anita’s sister Melba Jo, looking for, as Anita puts it, “whatever we could find that we thought might grow.”

There are stands of holly trees that Alton inherited from a family friend. Even the rocks that line the garden path have arrived as offerings from other interested friends and neighbors. There are old sinks and road signs that accent the garden, fixtures Alton received from his various places of work, including his time as grounds manager at Camp Meadowbrook.

There are camellia bushes that were given to the couple as presents, but more as gifts of encouragement to keep this sacred space going for the world to see.

A

nita recalls a time when a young family had taken a detour from the main road and stumbled upon the garden, mistaking it for a public park – albeit a lost park off the road. But with the serene beauty alive here, it’s an understandable oversight. When the family had gathered all their picnic items, ready for a full spread on a lovely summer day, they realized they were on private property.

Anita came from the house to greet them. “’It’s not a park,’ I told them,” Anita says, “‘but you’re welcome to picnic here if you want.’”

Herein lies the true beauty of the garden – it is meant to be enjoyed and savored.

At the head of the trail leading through the stands of irises and sleek magnolias 58

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

A French hydrangea, top, adds some powder blue to the gardens in June. Oakleaf hydrangea grow throughout the grounds and on the gravel road to Anita’s house.

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Surprises often await along the moss-covered paths through Anita’s garden. The street sign below holds no significance – the Murphrees simply liked it and erected it. Want to visit the garden? Call Anita and she’ll give you the address: 256-708-9123. that survived the drought of 2016, Anita draws her attention to a ceramic cross that reads, “Alton’s Living Garden.” It’s a gift from her sister, Melba Jo. Alton was a member of the Cullman Native Plant Society and had done some networking with Cullman area gardeners, swapping advice and sharing visions. But even as the garden’s allure grew, Alton was hesitant about its progress, worried it wasn’t quite perfect.

It was Anita that urged him on.

As Alton neared the end of his battle with cancer in 2018, Anita recalls one memory in particular that captures the pleasure and contentment Alton had, even in the midst of dying.

“I won’t be here in the spring,” Alton told the nurses who helped take care of him in his final days, “but y’all come see that garden. It will be beautiful!”

T

hese days, the legacy of Alton’s vision and Anita’s hard work are still primarily enjoyed by her family: her 60

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

daughter, Allison, and her grandchildren, Cloey and Landan. Anita hopes that no matter what, the garden will continue to thrive, offering inspiration and peace for them as it has for her.

“I reckon I’m the keeper of it now,” Anita says, a woman who admits she is never afraid of callouses on her hands.

“And I think I’m doing pretty good keeping it up.”

There is a grin of humble assurance.

A contentment that understands regardless of season and sorrow, the garden’s joy lives on.

As Anita Murphree makes her way back through the emerald labyrinth, the red-lady ferns and Christmas ferns tremble in the earliest of spring breezes.

Nandinas will soon be ready for their full glory.

And daffodils open themselves to a warming world.

Reminders all that memory and beauty often grow sweetly together in the very same places.

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Abbay King is forging a grand adventure that encompasses the world Abbay leaps with abandon at New Zealand’s iconic Cathedral Cove beaches on the Coromandel Peninsula.

One of the distant country’s most photographed locations, it was used filming a scene in the 2008 fantasy movie “Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian.”

So ... how does a girl from Cullman end up becoming a risk-taker, sabbatical lover, world traveler and expatriate living on the island nation of New Zealand?

It didn’t happen overnight.

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

63

Story by Abbay King Photos shot or provided by the author

L

ike most young girls who dream about their future, I often remember wondering, “What will I be like when I grow up? Where will I live? Where will I work?” And that was along with all of the other grown up things that are too big to ponder on for very long.

But I would have never in a million years guessed that I would end up living in New Zealand (about 8,000 miles from my home in Cullman) and engaged to a kind Englishman who is as British as they come.

I graduated from Cullman High School in 2007, an eager and over committed high school student – basketball and tennis teams, honor societies, SGA president and church groups.

My mom, Sharon King, an avid collector of childhood memorabilia, still has a 2007 Cullman Times article pinned up in our house – a nice feature about my involvement at CHS and “having a full plate” on and off the basketball court.

My fiancé, Chris, came across this memento while visiting my home in East Cullman in 2019. In line with a stereotypical British sense of humor, he found it quite funny and still loves to give me a well-deserved hard time for being a classic “over-achiever.”

My reply to him is that my hard work paid off, resulting in a full-ride scholarship to The University of Alabama in 2011 where I was a member of Delta Delta Delta sorority and graduated with a degree in accounting.

This ultimately landed me a job as a CPA in a Birmingham accounting firm, RSM (formerly SRHW).

S

o how does a girl from Cullman end up becoming a risk-taker, sabbatical lover, and world traveler? It didn’t happen overnight.

Like many in Cullman, I grew up loving trips to our nearby Alabama and Florida coastline. Those annual family trips to the Gulf of Mexico and the 30A highway area with my dad, John, mom and older sister, Lindsay King Jones are still some of my favorite memories.

Continuing the beach trend, my very first job was in the hospitality industry as a summer front desk agent in Seaside, Florida.

But it wasn’t until 2016 that the international travel bug bit me. The itch started on a 10-day trip to Europe with some girlfriends from work, including Addie Grissom Brown, who now lives in Cullman.

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FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

At upper left, Abbay watches her footing crossing a mountain stream in Tongariro National Park, on New Zealand’s North Island, a few hours south of her home in Aukland. The dramatic landscapes include lava fields and areas that could be on the surface of Mars, she says. On another hike she takes in the view after an 1,100-foot climb at Avalanche Peak in Arthur’s Pass National Park on South Island.

The filming site for Hobbiton in the “Lord of the Rings” is a few hours drive from Aukland at Matamata. “It would not be on the map if it wasn’t for Hobbiton,” says Abbay.

Abbay and Chris’s big trip began with three weeks of hiking in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. They spent time there because they were unsure they’d return. On their trek, they canoed the Mekong River in Vietnam; visited temples in Bali; rode a tuk tuk in the Philippines; saw Komodo dragons in Indonesia and koala bears in Australia. “The more we traveled, the more we missed New Zealand,” Abbay says.

We went to Oktoberfest in Munich, rode bicycles in Amsterdam and tried to find the best fish and chips in London.

The trip convinced me to apply for an international placement through the accounting firm where I worked. I had never lived outside of Alabama other than that summer stint in Florida and one in Washington, D.C., interning for Congressman Aderholt.

But my Europe trip sealed the deal for me – I wanted a taste of living abroad.

W

ithin a few months of applying,

66

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

I was on my way to practice accounting at the bottom of the world in the small, English-speaking island nation of New Zealand where locals are known as Kiwis.

It was way out of my comfort zone … but it felt like a bigger risk not to go.

I knew very little about New Zealand when I applied for my placement. In fact, New Zealand is such a well-kept secret that it’s sometimes left off world maps. It’s most famous, at least in pop culture, for its stunning locations used in filming “The Lord of the Rings.”

As I settled in, I realized that living

abroad wasn’t that scary at all – it was actually better than I had imagined.

Like working a muscle, living out of my comfort zone became easier the more I did it. It started with small things – eating by myself in restaurants and driving on the wrong side of the road – and graduated to eventually staying in New Zealand longer than my original placement.

Exploding with new information and experiences, I couldn’t get enough of it – or enough of New Zealand’s incredible landscapes.

My new home, this relaxed island

nation, quickly developed a lasting impression on my heart and the way I want to live, work and vacation. Kiwis have a tremendous amount of respect for life outside of work. Three- to four-week long vacations are the norm along with taking a career break for year-long sabbaticals.

I

nspired by the Kiwi mentality, I began to think about what extended time off would look like for me.

Then, in December 2018, Chris and I took a break – a huge one, in fact – from our corporate jobs to slow down and see

the world. We left with no return date or ticket and traveled for 269 days visiting four continents and 16 countries before we eventually returned to New Zealand.

As I began to understand what becoming a full-time traveler means, I began to get what all of the fuss was about.

My worries became amazingly few. I quickly forgot about emails, deadlines and routines. I had more time to think about my future and dream about the notion of a new career.

Travel can be powerful this way … it allows us to disconnect from our “normal”

and reconnect with ourselves and our inner-dreamer.

Sometimes our itineraries were highly detailed, and sometimes they were wide open, giving us room to change our minds or plans on short notice.

However, we knew the first logical step on our westward adventure was to visit New Zealand’s neighbor across the Tasman Sea, a land down under, also known as Australia.

We fed kangaroos, spotted koalas, and took naps on white sandy beaches with turquoise shorelines.

Our travel style was equally as varied FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

67

as our travel planning – from staying in luxury boutique hotels to rural home-stays and camping.

F

rom Australia, we continued to head west toward Europe, spending about two months in Southeast Asia along the way.

We got up close and personal with Komodo dragons and cheeky monkeys in Indonesia.

We drank rice wine with locals in Vietnam. We visited an Orangutan sanctuary in Borneo. We explored the tiny islands in the Philippines by “tuk tuk,” a motorized version of rickshaw. And we caught waves while staying at a surf and yoga camp on Sri Lanka’s south coast, to name a few stops.

From Sri Lanka, we caught a plane to England where we celebrated Chris’s nan’s 90th birthday and spent quality time with his friends and family.

England also served as a great base to explore other parts of Europe by train, so we visited Germany, Austria, Italy and Greece.

Next stop on our westward route: Alabama.

It was time to regale my friends and family with our travel stories. It was also a good time to introduced my English fiancé to all the Southern things he would need to know, being engaged to a girl from Alabama – including buttermilk biscuits from Cracker Barrel on Ala. 157 (which are very different from English biscuits, aka cookies), slow-cooked pork from Johnny’s BBQ and Cullman’s version of Mexican fare.

Not only did we feed Chris well, but we took him to an Alabama football game in heat that only early September can deliver.

A

fter nine months of traveling including that visit home, I came back to New Zealand not only with great travel stories and photos but also with a passion to start my own business. At the end of 2019, I launched Abbay’s Escapes to help others create their own stories through travel experiences.

To say that the adventurous path I’ve forged would have surprised my younger self might be the understatement of the year so far. I would have never guessed in a million eons that I would live so far away from home or learn so much about myself and others by traveling the world.

One important thing I now realize is that my parents, through their process of raising me, gave me the tools I would need to do this – a strong sense of independence and unwavering support (even though I know they want me to come home).

I’m still forging this grand adventure. And, as Susan Sontag once wrote, while I haven’t been everywhere it’s on my list.

Good Life Magazine 68

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

Chris and Abbay have a laugh at Mill Garden near the English spa town of Lemington, far left. They spent six weeks in England because his family is there. They also visited several Greek islands, including Santarini, above. “It’s popular for a reason,” she says. “It’s very idyllic.” They also visited a Greek friend of Chris’s on a far less touristy island near Athens. In Sir Lanka they enjoyed Indian-inspired food, its interesting culture and wildlife, plus Chris surfed on some of the beautiful beaches. But when it comes to beaches, one of Abbay’s all-time faves is at Abel Tasman National Park on the north end of South Island in New Zealand.

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Out ‘n’ About It doesn’t take much to draw Joppa photographer Liz Smith out of her house to shoot pictures. But spring is always her favorite time to grab her camera and see what’s blooming anew this time of the year. She calls the photo at upper left “Alone in a Crowd.” At the immediate left, her attention was grabbed by color and light on a field off Ala. 67. ‘Tis sometimes said that anyone can shoot a sunset, but it takes some dedication to wake up and shoot a sunrise, which Liz had for the other three early morning photos here.

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021

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