Six Thousand Attend Birmingham Rally in 1935

For more than a year now my brother Richard and I have been conducting a deep dive into the massive amount of family memorabilia at mom's house in Huntsville. Much of it comes from dad's parents, Rosa Mae and Amos J. Wright, Sr., who lived in the Gadsden. I've previously written about my grandfather's World War I army training at Auburn and the contents of their daughter Beulah Vee's cedar chest. 

In a recent round of exploration, we've found a lot of material related to Amos Sr.'s years working for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. According to an entry in one of Rosa Mae's journals, he began his employment with L&N on May 15, 1923, and retired September 1, 1962.He was a yard foreman for many of those thirty-nine years. 

One item we found was the October 1935 issue of the railroad's employee magazine. Inside was an article titled "Six Thousand Attend Birmingham Rally". So what was that all about?

On September 26, 1935, the L & N Railroad held its third in a series of rallies in cities along its rail system. The event took place at the Municipal Auditorium n Birmingham. Both Vice-President T.E. Brooks and President James B. Hill addressed the 6000 employees and family members in attendance. Brooks had served for many years as division superintendent in Birmingham.

The anonymous author noted that the purpose was primarily one of entertainment, but apparently Hill had some extensive remarks before the fun. He noted that the "railroads are almost completely regulated in everything they do" unlike competitive forms of transportation by road, air and water. Plus, almost 7.5% of gross earnings were paid in taxes. Remember that in 1935 the nation was in the depths of the Great Depression.

The article does include a portrait of the L & N Railroad both nationally and in Alabama at that time. President Hill noted in his remarks that L & N operated in 13 states with 26,000 employees, 5000 miles of track, 1000 locomotives, over 50,000 freight cars and more than 700 passenger cars. In Alabama 4700 people worked for L & N, which paid $776,000 in taxes to the state, $350,000 of which went to schools.

So what about that entertainment? "Talented members of the L & N family entertained the large audience with 17 acts that would have done credit to the best vaudeville circuit," wrote the author. Most of them were from Birmingham or Boyles, a community that no longer exists but was the site of L & N's Boyles Yard. Others came from Kentucky. The audience enjoyed a piano trio, tenor solos, a tap dance, and baritone solos. Two male employees "provided many laughs with their blackface act."

Black employees appeared in "Darktown Strutters" accompanied by a pianist. "The finale featured the  Southland Colored Ensemble and Quartette, fifty voices directed by Paul Cooper." the author wrote. "This chorus was composed of many colored employes [sic] at Boyles and members of their families. They rendered an enjoyable selection of spirituals and melodies."

I don't know if my grandparents from Gadsden attended this rally, but perhaps they did. 

My grandfather Amos J. Wright, Sr., is on the left posing with his crew in the Gadsden L&N railroad yard sometime in the 1930s. 

Birmingham's Municipal Auditorium ca. 1937. The facility was later renamed Boutwell Auditorium after Albert Boutwell who was mayor from 1963 until 1967. 

Source: BhamWiki

Branch Books in Hartselle

On June 24 my brother Richard and I made our way to Hartselle to check out a used bookstore new to us, Branch Books. We do that sort of thing when we can. We were not disappointed by the visit. 

The store has two large rooms and a few small ones filled with tall, stuffed shelves. As you can see from some of the photos there are numerous sections, including some not shown such as children's, rare and vintage books and westerns.

Naturally Richard and I picked up some goodies. I was especially glad to find several Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels and a couple of John Creasey's adventure novels featuring The Toff, an English upper class sleuth. 

A second store by the same name has recently opened in Cullman. The Hartselle store's Facebook page is here. The prices are good and selection large, so I recommend a visit if you are in the area. 

I've written a number of blog posts about Alabama bookstores past and present. There's even a blog post linking to many of them. I've also posted about a "quick visit" to Hartselle. 

A few more comments are below. 

Richard is looking for some Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald that he hasn't read. We're both making our way through those books. 

The store has a science fiction, fantasy and horror room.

There's even a Christmas section!

Of course, I had to check out the Alabama & Local Authors section. 

Alabama Authors: C Terry Cline & Judith Richards

In 2017 I wrote a post on this blog about Babs and Borden Deal, an Alabama couple [until their divorce] who both wrote numerous novels and short stories. This post is about a similar writing duo. 

Judith Richards died on September 23 of last year; she was born in Illinois. Her husband C. Terry Cline, a Birmingham native, died May 2, 2013. Cline and Richards married in 1979, and in addition to their own writing became well-known in the Fairhope area for their willingness to help younger writers.

Cline wrote for radio and television and ran an advertising agency before publishing his first novel, Damon, in 1975. He published nine more by 1989. Three of those are "borderline" science fiction according to his entry in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia. Other novels are thrillers. His final work, The Return of Edgar Cayce, claimed to be communications from the early 20th century psychic. Cayce had an Alabama connection; he operated a photography studio in Selma from 1912 until 1923. An eleventh novel, The Cordoba Connection, was left unfinished at Cline's death and completed by his wife and published in 2016. You can read more about his novels on GoodReads. 

Richards published seven novels between 1978 and 2015. Her first novel Summer Lightning features a young boy growing up in a migrant labor camp during the Great Depression. The later novel Thelonious Rising tells the story of a young boy in the time of Hurricane Katrina. Her novel Summer Lightning was chosen for a 1978 volume of Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Read more about her work on GoodReads. Read more about her fascinating life in the obituary linked below. 

Both writers have stories included in the anthology edited by Sonny Brewer, Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe published in 2002. Cline's is "S.Trident" and Richards' is "How the Story Ends." The biographical note for Richards notes, "Summer Lightning, which is about her husband, author C. Terry Cline, Jr., has been published in seventeen languages..."

Unfortunately, neither author has an entry in Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia of Alabama. 

Source: An article about horror writers with Alabama connections at al.com

C. Terry Cline's books

Damon (1975)
Death Knell (1977)
Cross Current (1979)
Mind Reader (1981)
Missing Persons (1982)
The Attorney Conspiracy (1983)
Violated (1984)
Prey (1985)
Quarry (1987)
Reaper (1989)
The Return of Edgar Cayce (2011)
The Cordoba Conspiracy (2016)

Photo from her obituary at al.com

Judith Richards' books:

Summer Lightning (1978)

Triple Indemnity (1982)

Seminole Summer (1987)

After the Storm (1987)

Too Blue to Fly (1997)

Thelonious Rising (2014)

The Sounds of Silence (2015)

Some Alabama Drink Coasters

I have small collections of many things, and Alabama-related drink coasters are one. Here are a few samples. You can read about the history of drink coasters on Wikipedia. For instance, the first cardboard coasters were introduced in Germany in 1880. 

More comments are below. 

I probably picked this one up when Dianne and I visited DeSoto State Park and the Fort Payne area in October 2012. You can read my blog posts about that trip here, here and here. 

Diamonds has apparently been operating for several decades, first in a smaller location. I picked up this coaster on a visit my brother Richard and I made there a few years ago. They apparently have a sense of humor. 

Lakeview Oyster House closed in March 2009. A capture of their menu for February 2009 can be found via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. 

This brewpub operated in Birmingham from 1995 until 2000. Magic City was the second such business to open after the state legislature passed the Brewpub Act of 1992. The first was Port City Brewery in Mobile in 1993. Both were preceded in the modern era by the Birmingham Brewing Company, which operated as a brewery from 1992 until 1998. 

Terminal Station Brown Ale is one of the offerings from Birmingham's Ghost Train Brewing Company. More information can be found at the brewery's web site. The name of the beer references Birmingham's wonderful railroad station demolished in 1969. 

Design Studio offers these wooden city map coasters for a number of U.S.  locations.

Alabama Postcard: Mentone Springs Hotel

Mentone is a small town in DeKalb County in the northeastern part of the state. Mineral springs in the area led to its development in the 1880s as a resort, and it later became a location for summer camps for young people. Mentone is atop Lookout Mountain at an elevation of more than 1700 feet, and naturally cooler in the summer.

The Mentone Springs Hotel opened in 1884 to serve the numerous tourists coming to the area. The hotel thrived until the 1920s, but then began a decline that lasted into the 21st century. The hotel was purchased in 2010 by two couples who began restoration efforts. Unfortunately, the facility burned to the ground in March 2014. 

James F. Sulzby, Jr.'s classic Historic Alabama Hotels and Resorts [1960, pp 175-179] has a chapter on Mentone and the Springs Hotel. The hotel was originally built in 1884 by Dr. Frank Caldwell of Pennsylvania. The two-story frame structure had 57 rooms with hot and cold water. Caldwell sold the property in 1896, and new owner Charles Loring further developed the popular facility, which was open from June 1 until October 1 each year. 

New owners in 1914 added an annex with 24 rooms, each having a private bath. Ownership changed again in 1918 and once more in 1920, when a group of Baptists purchased it for the denomination's summer activities. That group added a 44-room dormitory, an auditorium for 600 and six classrooms. 

The final Baptist summer was in 1932, as the Great Depression deepened. After that, a series of owners had little success, and the hotel sat unused some years. The 2010 purchasers seemed to resurrect the hotel, but the electrical fire ended its history forever. 

This postcard comes from my collection. It has no date, but 1981 is mentioned in the text on the reverse side, so it was issued sometime after that. The "family from Atlanta" may be one of the unsuccessful efforts at restoration that took place over the years. 

The hotel's zombie web site is still available. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and the Wikipedia article has links to the nomination form for the National Register. That document in PDF format gives extensive details about the history. 

Below the postcard are two more images about the hotel with links to more newspaper articles about it and the fire. 

You can read about the supposed visit of Welsh Prince Madoc to the Mentone area in 1170 here. 

Source: Chattanooga Free Press 3 March 2014

Source: Chattanooga Free Press 28 July 2014

The Underground in Huntsville April 1975

My brother Richard and I were recently at mom's house in Huntsville, and he found this newsletter while exploring some papers from his days at Grissom High School. This tongue-in-cheek publication seems to be a one-off issue for April Fool's in 1975. But who knows?

The long item on page 1,"Suspenders Snap at Students for Illicit Literature"  includes a call for submissions from students and faculty and mentions "here at Grissom." In the piece on the upper left of the back page, meant to be an acknowledgement of "Our Infectious Staff", the names Tom Watson and Marc Smith are given. Watson was one of Richard's best friends in high school.

Between these two bits of reality, high school humor abounds. Some of it is actually funny. Read and decide for yourself! 

This publication came forth at the old Grissom High School; I've done a blog post on that facility. I've  also written one about April Fool's at Auburn University in 1962. The things these high school and college students of yore get up to!

T

Alabama Poultry Queen in 1967

Today's poultry industry in Alabama is worth billions and the largest agricultural enterprise in the state. The trade group is the Alabama Poultry and Egg Association, once known as simply the Alabama Poultry Association. For some years the group ran a contest to crown a queen.

In recent explorations at the Alabama Mosaic site, I found the photograph below of the unnamed Alabama Poultry Queen for 1967. The photograph is one of many taken by Jim Peppler for an article about the National Peanut Festival in Dothan in October 1967. The article appeared in the Southern Courier [Montgomery] October 28-29, 1967, pp. 3 and 6. Several of his photos were used, but not this one. The article does not mention the poultry queen's appearance at the festival. A PDF of that issue is available here. 

The Alabama Poultry and Egg Association has some photos of poultry queens in the 1960s and 1970s on its Facebook page, but no names or specific dates are given. 

I did a bit of research, but was unable to identify this 1967 Queen. If anyone knows the name of this young lady, or anything about the poultry queen contest, let us know in the comments. 

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History via Alabama Mosaic