Staying ‘country’

When ‘country’ beckoned, the Smalleys built a new house on the backroads of Scant City

Story and photos By David Moore

It’s said that every picture tells a story.

At Dan and Mary Nell Smalley’s house, at the end of a long drive tucked into the backroads of Scant City, every room tells a story, bears a memory, nods to family history. Even if the house is relatively new – they moved there in July 2019 – and even if the Smalleys downsized from their original house, they still have 5,700 square feet, and that can hold a lot of stories, memories and history. Just for instance …

On the mantle in the “outside” kitchen sits a pipe rack with pipes that belonged to Mary Nell’s granddaddy, Billy McDonald Nunnelley, who lived in the HulacoBaileyton area.

Hanging on the mantle in the living room is Dan’s great granddaddy’s “rabbitear” 12-gauge, so-called because of the dual hammers that stick up from the chambers.

That big grandfather clock standing at attention between the hall and Mary Nell’s kitchen? Dan’s dad, Jerrel, traded someone a diesel fuel tank for that.

On Mary Nell’s custom-built, square dining table is displayed a quilt made by grandmother Beulah Smalley. Comfy old

They filled it with lifetimes of memories and stories and family history passed down

quilts made by Dan’s mother, Louise, hang on a rack in the hall near the grandfather clock.

“Every room has a story,” Dan says. “It makes the house special … it makes it warm because everybody had touched everything before we got here. We can reminisce over family and friends and history.”

“And why we are like we are,” Mary Nell grins. “For better or worse,” Dan adds.

That “for better or worse” business was agreed upon when they married in 1972. But back in school in Arab, Dan and Mary Nell knew each other only peripherally.

Born in Ohio to Mary and Henry Linsky, she moved to Arab before turning 1. At age 5, Mary Nell got a jump on her education when, with her mom’s permission, she simply walked off to school with the neighborhood kids.

That put her a year ahead of Dan, who even at an early age was a budding mover and shaker.

“I was,” he says in his trademark, baritone deadpan, “president of my third grade class three years in a row.”

“It takes a lot of repetition for him,” says Mary Nell, who knows her man well. “He majored in freshman English.”

Son of Louise and Jerrel, Dan spent his early years living behind Burger King. Jerrel owned the Shell station where Wilks Tire is today, and later moved his family to the farm he bought on Fry Gap Road.

Dan grew up farming – working Jerrel’s chicken houses, hauling hay for cows. But he got to work high school summers as a life guard at the Arab pool.

“It was lot better than hauling hay,” he insists.

While Dan and Mary Nell had common friends, they remained on each other’s periphery until her senior year at Arab High.

“We got to know each other at a Beta Club Convention,” she recalls. Despite his claim to multiple third-grade presidential terms, “Dan was Beta Club president.”

They dated off and on several years after she graduated AHS in 1966. She got degrees in music education and math at Birmingham-Southern.

“I had no intention of going back to the farm,” says Dan, who graduated from AHS in ’67. “I was going to be a pharmacist until I got to Samford University and found out they spelled pharmacy with a ph.”

He ended up with a business major and, despite his declaration to never farm, soon found himself working with Jerrel after college.

Meanwhile, Dan and Mary Nell’s offand-on dating ended in the “on” mode.

“He found out I was going to teach school and could support his farming,” she laughs. She taught music a year in Decatur and, after they married, math for 10 years in Guntersville

Dan worked for his dad three years until his business acumen kicked in.

“I figured I would never get ahead at $80 a week,” he laughs.

So he went out on his own. Jerrel, a good sport and giving dad, sold Dan 60 acres at the foot of the mountain on Fry Gap Road, for the balance he owed.

Dan convinced the former Security Bank & Trust to lend him 100 percent of the money to build his first chicken house. In 1982, Mary Nell quit teaching to play a big part in the success Red Hill Farms was becoming.

“I came home one day and Dan said, ‘I believe if you quit your job and kept the books, you could pay for yourself.’ I

Dan and Mary Nell, far left, have two grown children. Jeremy Smalley, pastor at First Baptist Church in Bayou La Batre, and his wife, Amber, expect their first child in October. Dana and Brian Camp, who live off Fry Gap Road, have a son, James, 8. Dana teaches pre-K at Arab Primary; Brian is assistant director of Arab Park and Recreation. Dan has a sister, Jan, who is married to Brad Kitchens. Jerry Williamson, owner of Peacock Decor, not only helped the Smalleys with wall hangings, but he found a large cedar log from which he made round tables in the living room, upper left, as well as the mantels there and in the “outdoor” kitchen, above. That’s Mary Nell’s grandfather’s pipe racks and pipes on the second mantel. Hanging below them is the 12-gauge shotgun that Dan’s father, Jerrel Smalley, got once in a trade – for a black angus calf – with the uncle of late Arab businessman Sid McDonald. Jerry Williamson also built Mary Nell’s 16-seater dining room table, on which they display an heirloom quilt made by Dan’s grandmother, Beulah Smalley.

looked at the books and I did pay for myself. They were a mess.”

Those were the days … or, at least, some of them.

When Dan and Mary Nell married, they’d moved into a 1,600-square-foot house overlooking Browns Valley from atop Brindley Mountain at Fry Gap. They raised a family. And millions of chickens for Gold Kist.

Over the years they added onto the house, almost regularly, until it encompassed 6,700 square feet plus a basketball gym for good measure. It was home to hundreds of memories and stories.

Family and house are not all that grew. Red Hill Farms expanded into a 16-chickenhouse operation with 407 acres – one of the largest poultry farms in the state.

Dan went on the Gold Kist board in 1985 when it was still a co-operative. He later became chairman. After Gold Kist went public in 2004, it was bought out the next year by Pilgrim’s Chicken. From then on, Dan grew birds for that company.

With an eye toward “one day,” he and Mary Nell bought a second house in 2004, an old, block, lake house on Browns Creek Road.

“We never went inside,” Dan says. “We bought it for the lot.”

Red Hill Farms took a direct hit the fateful morning of the 2011 tornado outbreak. Nine of 15 of the Smalley’s chicken houses were destroyed. They decided not to rebuild, rather they continued operating three more years out of their remaining houses, then retired in 2014.

It was about then they decided to peek inside that old lake house. It was actually solid inside with wood floors and tongue and groove walls. They cleaned it up, remodeled and moved in.

Though they held onto most of the land, they sold their big, old house at Fry Gap and the chicken operation in the valley.

So the Smalleys took up lake life … or tried to.

Meanwhile, Dan toyed with somewhat grandiose ideas for building a new lake house. He worked with architect Susan LeSueur at the Glenn Group in Arab.

We wanted a lot of glass and everything,” Dan says of those initial plans.

Mary Nell grins at him. “When he started doing plans, I said that we didn’t need that much house.” So she applied the brakes.

“I eventually told Susan I had it exactly how I wanted it, the size of rooms and everything. ‘Now you just have to cut 2,000 square feet out of it,’” says Dan the deadpan. “Susan is great to work with, but she probably would not say the same about me.”

“She is very patient,” Mary Nell nods.

Cutting out lots of space wasn’t the only big change looming with the new house

Dan’s office – man cave, Mary Nell insists – is full of stories, from the desk of D.W. Brooks, founder of Gold Kist and advisor to seven U.S. presidents, to a framed paper bag on which his dad wrote his only letter to Dan. Quilts his mom made hang in the hall, above. Mary Nell’s kitchen is full of conveniences, such as pop-up sockets in the island. At far left is the guest bedroom.

plans. Even trimmed down, it was a lot of house for the lot. Privacy became an issue, especially with lots of glass. Plus, the realization dawned on the Smalleys like their morning views to the east, they never utilized the lake much anyway.

“We like the country,” Mary Nell explains. “We’re country people.”

Answering that call, they looked elsewhere for land, and Dan came across 20 acres off Brashiers Chapel Road. They walked the ample property. The privacy. They noted the view off the mountain. The distant lake. And they were sold.

Working with Susan, they modified their lake plans and built a place in the country to live with their stories and memories. It’s also a place of light.

“We like open and a lot of light,” Mary Nell says.

“When we decided to build up here with the trees, we put lots of glass back into the house,” Dan says. “And we got it all on one level.”

While their grandparents might be unfamiliar with the Smalleys’ open floor plan, they’d feel at home with the wood walls and ceilings.

“I wanted it to look like Grandma’s old house,” says Dan. “So we used tongue and groove on the walls and ceilings, but nailed it up backwards, knowing the cracks would separate some when it dried.”

There was no question as to hiring Parker and Sons Construction in Arab to build the house. Dan and Randy Parker have built 10 or more houses together over the years.

It was Randy who suggested installing crank windows to close in a planned outdoor porch kitchen, located across a hallway from Mary Nell’s big, open kitchen. The windows keep appliances cleaner and allow for yearround use of the room.

“But we have,” Mary Nell grins, “gotten laughs for having two kitchens right next to each other.”

Though highly livable, the expansive house in the country remains a work in progress.

The backyard, nearly all of it on solid rock, still needs grass. Shrubs and tomatoes await planting in the front. Off to the front side, a pole barn is under construction. It’ll be some sort of hybrid rec room with a kitchen and garage space.

“I’ll know what it is when I finish it,” Dan promises.

Besides a tractor, he needs parking space for two vehicles – a boat-size 1976 Cadillac and a 1989 Dodge Dakota convertible truck. Dan got the truck through Billy King back when Billy managed Bob Scofield’s dealership in Arab.

Dan traded multiple loads of chicken manure for the vehicle.

Just another story, just another memory … for a home that’s built for them.