Dolores Hydock

Master storyteller gets ‘schooled’ on Chandler Mountain

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Jerry Martin

In 1974, Dolores Hydock was on a hunt for folklore for an in-depth paper she was researching for a college class at Yale University.

That unlikely journey from New Haven, Conn., led her up a winding mountain road in northeast Alabama and clear up on the top, she found what she was looking for and some things she never dreamed she would find.

As a student in American Studies, this city girl born and raised in the north, set her sights on the Deep South for a paper on Alabama folklore. Recounting her early planning efforts, she said she traveled across the state and “discovered everything from Mardi Gras to snake handling.”

Alabama’s folklore was so abundant and so diverse, she faced the dilemma of having to narrow her focus. Enter Warren Musgrove, who owned Horse Pens 40 on Chandler Mountain at the time. She had been encouraged to go and see him because of his gift for storytelling and his ability to recognize where the best folklore could be found — right where she was — on Chandler Mountain.

For four months, she lived among its people, developing special relationships that would draw her back to the state after college and put her on a road that led to her life as one of Alabama’s master storytellers.

On her CD, Footprint on the Sky: Memories of a Chandler Mountain Spring, Hydock vividly recounts the people and the places atop the mountain. On the CD and in person, she talks fondly of those months, especially centering around two special friends — Hazel Coffman and Dora Gilliland.

Dwight Rogers, whose parents owned Rogers Store, happens by while Hydock is on the mountain. He points out old school pictures of people she might know.

She talks of their impact — just like people who make a difference in your life, people who are “not powerful but are strong; not wealthy but are generous; not famous but are loved.”

They are, she said, people who “work hard, live simply, love their families and make strangers feel at home.” Just like Hazel and Dora did for a college girl from up north in 1974.

Hydock traveled the snaky road leading to the top of Chandler Mountain with Discover, revisiting some of the places and remembrances that helped shape the story performer and actress she is today.

Her wit, charm and an innate ability to turn a phrase in any direction she wants it to go are simply part of her signature style on stage, much to the delight of audiences large and small.

She is the most requested Road Scholar, a program of the Alabama Humanities Foundations that provides top-notch speakers for libraries and historical groups across the state.

And she is an award winning story performer with national accolades to her credit.

She has taken many an audience back in time to her Chandler Mountain spring, a time of seemingly endless learning for this Ivy Leaguer, the kind of lessons you just can’t get from books.

With a twang in an accent familiar around these parts, she lets audiences know some of the lighter lessons learned there: “Sand Mountain tomatoes are the most famous, but anyone who knew tomatoes knew Chandler Mountain tomatoes were the best.”

If you’re mountainfolks, it’s “on the mountain and off the mountain,” no going up or down.

That spring, she stayed at the Clarence House, a place used only in the summertime for tomato growing season. It had no electricity — only a fireplace to keep her warm.

There, she learned her first lesson. Those “long pointed sticks” piled behind the house were not kindling left by a thoughtful landlady, they were tomato stakes, which she learned after burning a whole stack of them her first week on the mountain.

At Rogers Bros. Store, whose sign advertised “feed, seed, hardware, groceries and gas,” she learned a little more. She had a ringside seat, a crate bench by a wood burning stove where people gathered to “tell stories and a lie or two,” she says.

She talks of their patience when a language barrier seemed to get in her way.

“You ever warm up?,” a woman asked her. Not knowing if she was referring to the weather or her demeanor, she was rescued when Hazel Coffman sensed her panic and stepped in to save the day. “She’s asking you do you ever eat leftovers, you know, warm up? She’s inviting you to dinner, honey, if you’ll eat what she has.”

With an obvious debt of gratitude, Hydock says, “Hazel and Dora Gilliland took me in — helped me understand you might come to Alabama looking for folklore but if you give it half a chance, odds were really good you’d end up finding a home.”

And that she did, moving to Alabama that same year after graduation.

She credits Hazel with unlocking her storytelling ability in later years with an iconic image of her — one leg shorter than the other making her “tilt” when she walked. Dressed in a bonnet, galoshes and overalls, she would scatter feed through the yard for dozens of chickens, calves, cows, a dog and a one-eyed cat. “Come on babies,” Hazel would call.

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t easy to get around, there are “plenty ways of doing things if you want to,” Hazel told her.

“Come on babies,” she calls as they scurry toward her. “I hold this picture of her in my heart,” says Hydock.

In her stories, Hydock talks about the old Chandler Mountain Community Center. It’s closed now, but it once was a thriving gathering place, especially for the women who came to quilt and visit every Tuesday and Thursday.

It was there she made it over another language barrier. What is afternoon to some is strictly evening up on the mountain. “When you’re up at first light and don’t know anything after 8 when you go to bed, anything after noon is evening,” she was told.

How did they learn to quilt so well? “Grow up in a house where you can see through the cracks in the floor, and you know it gets plenty cold in the wintertime.” With five or six kids in a house, “You learn to make them pretty quick.”

Hazel’s best friend was Dora, who Hydock describes as having a high, funny laugh. “Everything just tickles her to death.”

Dora would offer tales of her Aunt Bertie who used to tell scary stories. Dora admitted they did scare her in her early years but as she grew older, she learned not to be so afraid.

One time, Dora told her, Aunt Bertie started one of her stories, saying a man without a head got in bed with her and Uncle Carl.

A sensible Dora stopped her right there. “A man with no head may have gotten in bed where I had been, but not in bed where I was. Imagine a man with no head getting in the bed with you.”

Hazel sold bonnets every year at the bluegrass and crafts festivals held at Horse Pens every fall and spring. She had the first booth next to the music stage, selling the bonnets she made. “She sold hundreds every year. Dora sold handmade quilts.” They were part of what made those festivals a featured state attraction every year.

In later years, Hazel moved to the city, Gadsden, and lived there 14 years before she passed away. Dora stayed on the mountain — “canning and quilting,” Hydock says. She was 96 when she died.

Those two special ladies, Hydock tells her audiences, may be people you know or you know someone just like them. “They live on in the memories of people whose lives they touched and the people who love them.”

And they live on in the stories Hydock tells about a spring spent on a mountaintop and a place where she found a home.

Knapping

Cultivating stone-age techniques
Story by Jerry C. Smith
Photos by Jerry Martin

Longer ago than most folks can imagine, stone crafting gave humans mastery over a world filled with physically superior creatures. It’s also one of mankind’s oldest art forms, born of a need to stay alive and often linked to religious ceremony.

Stone blades were mounted on arrows, spears, atlatl darts, harpoons, daggers, tomahawks, skinning knives, axes, hoes, war clubs, drills, even fishhooks. Decorative and ritual pieces included gorgets, sacrificial cutlery, amulets, medallions, rings and various other pieces of jewelry.

Pell City’s Roger Pate, a 30-year veteran of local artifact collecting, owns thousands of such pieces. He explains that, over the 12,000 years, countless American aboriginal tribes settled anywhere there was a reliable source of fresh water. Their very lives depended on how well they made tools and weapons.

Before mankind learned to refine metal, stone was the key element in practically every hand tool used by most primitive cultures; hence, the term Stone Age which, for isolated American Indians, lasted until they began trading with Europeans for metal goods during early colonial days.

The skill of working stone into sharp implements is called knapping. Simply put, knapping is the act of breaking and chipping away at pieces of stone to produce desirable shapes with sharp edges. It’s become a modern-day hobby among history and craft enthusiasts. Avid knappers love to compete with each other for the most beautiful and authentic pieces. New London’s Gerald Hoyle and his brother, Wayne, have become masters of the craft.

Skilled artisans like the Hoyles are notorious for having cramped, cluttered workspaces. As long as enough stuff can be pushed aside to allow room for their gifted hands and a few simple tools, a properly finished product is all that matters. And Gerald’s work is superb — remarkably so, considering he’s only been doing it for about five years.

He works seated at a waist-high bench, with the piece cushioned on a thick square of leather, and cradled in an authentic nutting stone, a rounded sandstone with a depression chiseled into its flat side. They were traditionally used by Native Americans to hold nuts for cracking.

His knapping implements consist of sharpened deer antlers, rounded “hammer stones” picked up from creek bottoms, leather for protective padding, coarse sandstone blocks for treating edges, and special flaking tools he fabricates from thick copper wire and aluminum rods mounted in regular tool handles. Gerald explains that copper has exactly the same hardness as deer antler, but smells much better when he sharpens it on a grinder.

Gerald carries on a lively conversation as he deftly chips away at a chunk of black obsidian he had just hammered off the corner of a much larger piece. It was misshapen, bulged out in all the wrong places, and looked nothing like the business end of a weapon — more like something one might skip across a pond.

But Gerald’s keen eye had visualized a shape suitable for an atlatl point within this irregular hunk of shiny stone, and proceeded apace to extract it. As he worked, the piece began to take on an isosceles triangle shape with razor sharp point, serrated sides designed to slice flesh, and elegantly crafted barbs and notches at the large end. The end result was a precision, totally lethal weapon tip for hunting or warfare.

Obsidian is an extremely fine-grained form of volcanic glass, similar to quartz and can be shaped into edges sharper than the finest steel. In fact, obsidian is made into modern instruments for delicate eye surgery, with cutting edges approaching a single molecule in width. Its sharpness and crystalline nature were further evidenced by Gerald’s fingers, which began to bleed from several tiny cuts as he worked. Knapping is definitely a labor of love, reinforced with a tetanus shot and Band-Aids.

Other stones are almost as sharp as obsidian when properly tooled. Flint is actually a hard, fine-grained version of chert and was used extensively by local Indians who had no nearby source of obsidian other than trading with distant tribes. Also useful were dolomite, quartz, greenstone, jasper, quartzite, stromatolite, chalcedony, even a type of iron ore called hematite. More exotic-sounding materials include Horse Creek chert, novaculite, sugar slate, Hillabee greenstone and rainbow obsidian.

Modern hobbyists love to experiment with other materials, such as glassy slag from blast furnaces and even old drink bottles melted in trash fires. The Hoyle brothers have made scores of these experimental points, some almost indistinguishable from quartz or smoky obsidian.

Born in Pahokee, Florida, Gerald moved with his family to New London in 1952, and he’s been in the neighborhood ever since. A 1963 Pell City High graduate, he served in the Air Force for four years, then worked as a truck mechanic for 32 years at Ryder in Oxford.

Now retired and a robust 67 years of age, Gerald stays very busy. When he’s not emulating Paleo Tool-Man, he enjoys photography, paleontology, collecting rocks and artifacts from local tribal sites, demonstrating his crafts to school children and preaching the gospel at Mt. Olive Freewill Baptist in Dunnavant.

He also does volunteer work at the new State Veterans’ Home in Pell City, where he entertains residents with lively conversation, games of dominos, and reading to the visually impaired.

Gerald’s wife, Mary Margaret, tolerates his hobby because it provides so many large, multicolored stones for her flower beds. Her avocation is machine embroidery and quilting. Though not a flint-knapper herself, she often helps her husband make fine jewelry from his artifacts. However, his handiwork has caused her some concern at times.

For instance, she was not happy when a pile of flint rocks which he was trying to heat-temper in her kitchen oven, exploded, filling the whole cavity with tiny slivers of razor-sharp stone. Nor does she share his enthusiasm when he loads their car down with heavy stones he’s spotted and picked up while they travel.

It’s nothing new. The Hoyle brothers’ passion for paleo crafts goes all the way back to their childhood, when they spent countless hours searching fields and river banks for stone products. Both men have extensive collections of museum-quality goods. Before he retired, Gerald often knapped on his lunch break while others…well, napped.

Gerald explains that using primitive methods while working with stone helps him reach out and touch the past, when much hardier men depended on such skills to stay alive and prosper. He especially enjoys giving his craftworks to people he likes, free of charge, and eagerly shares his love of history with others.

Would you like to try your hand at knapping? The Hoyle brothers advise aspiring knappers to start out with good materials and tools, seek the advice of experts on basic technique, and practice, practice, practice. Because of the extreme sharpness and minute size of stone flakes, it’s also mandatory that you wear old clothes, gloves and safety glasses, and never allow bare feet anywhere near your work area.

Gerald has jump-started several local folks in this fascinating hobby, including this writer. His advice includes a warning that your first few hours of work will most likely consist of turning larger rocks into lots of smaller ones before you actually create a presentable result.

Most novices will eventually produce an acceptable piece, but it seems there are always a few who never really “get the point” of this fascinating pastime.

• For a special story on the bow and arrow precursor, the atlatl, see the digital or print edition of the June 2013 edition of Discover The Essence of St. Clair

Crazy Horse

Becoming an Argo eatery icon

Story by Elaine Miller
Photos by Jerry Martin

Butch Evans and his wife, Karen, were sitting in their den one evening, bored out of their minds, when the idea of starting a restaurant was born.

“My wife said, ‘Are we gonna sit sit here like this until we’re 80, falling asleep in the recliners?’ “I said, ‘I can fix that.’”

And that’s how Crazy Horse Restaurant was born.

“I had been in the food business all my life,” says Evans, who owns Evans Steaks and Seafood, a wholesale company, on Birmingham’s Finley Avenue. “I called on restaurants. I didn’t know whether people would accept fine dining in Argo, though.”

Apparently, he had no cause for worry. Since opening in the former Denise’s Country Diner location in October 2011, business has been steadily increasing. Hungry patrons looking for something besides meatloaf and mashed potatoes come from St. Clair, Etowah, Jefferson and Shelby Counties to sample the steak and seafood menu.

“The locals support breakfast and lunch, the dinner crowd comes from Trussville and beyond,” says Evans.

Trying to make a unique place in the middle of nowhere, Evans didn’t want a typical meat-and-three kind of place. “Anybody can slap a hamburger steak or beef tips and rice on a plate, but to have a good piece of meat is totally different,” says restaurant manager Tony Green. “Quality is the key, along with freshness.” Gulf Coast seafood is delivered daily and all steaks are cut fresh daily. “Nothing is frozen,” says Green, who is Evans’ brother-in-law.

Fried Large Buttermilk Breaded Shrimp and New Orleans-Style Shrimp & Grits are served daily, but the Catch of the Day, usually grouper, is served only on Thursday nights. Customers can get it blackened with lemon butter sauce or potato crusted. Also featured are grouper fingers. Seafood Saturday offers platters of fried oysters, grilled shrimp pasta with creme sauce and sautéed Gulf scallops in butter sauce.

On the menu Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights are the chargrilled steaks, with the 8-oz filet mignon being the most popular. It’s served with a baked sweet potato and fresh asparagus.

Dessert choices are simple. Strawberry cake (a local woman bakes and delivers) and bread pudding with whiskey sauce are the only meal-ender items on the menu. The popular orange rolls aren’t made on the premises, but customers buy them by the dozen to take home. Soup of the Day is either Beer Cheese (see recipe) or Seafood Chowder, each made fresh daily.

Breakfast consists of “just about anything a customer wants,” according to Evans. Favorites are the Crazy Horse Special and the Stable Hand Special. The former consists of two eggs, any style, with grits or gravy, hash browns or home fries, and a sampling of smoked sausage, ham and bacon, along with biscuits. The latter starts with two eggs, adding pancakes, grits and bacon or sausage. Denise Sims, former owner of Denise’s Country Diner, and Dustin Nelson prepare the breakfasts.

“Saturday morning breakfasts are packed to capacity,” says Green. Capacity is 104 seats, including the 24 on the screened-in patio added in February. Head chef Andrea Peagler, the Regions Bank chef in downtown Birmingham by day, oversees the kitchen at the Crazy Horse on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

Lunch offerings include sandwiches filled with chargrilled burgers, chicken breasts and New York strip steaks, plus chicken salad, hot dogs and fried chicken tenders.

As for the name of the restaurant, that came from two sources: The Birmingham club where Butch and Karen had their first date in 1974, and the fact that Karen has horses. “I came home from work one day, and Karen said, ‘I thought of a name,’” Butch explains. “It seemed like a fit.”

Green grew up working in fast-food restaurants, but in his day job is advertising products manager at Progressive Farmer. When he started at the Crazy Horse, he was only going to be there Thursday nights, which quickly turned into a three-day weekend. “It’s tiring, but fun,” he says. “When it stops being fun, I’ll quit.”

The Crazy Horse Restaurant, located at 281 US Highway 11 in the Argo Village shopping strip, is open Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. On Thursdays and Fridays, it’s open from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. and from 5:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. Saturday hours are 6 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Reservations are taken only for Thursday nights. The Crazy Horse is closed Sundays and Mondays.

• For one of Crazy Horse’s recipes for their famous Beer Cheese Soup, check out the print or digital edition of the June 2013 edition of Discover The Essence of St. Clair

Ralph Compton

Western Author, Odenville Icon

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Jerry Martin

It was a simple question, really: “Can you write a western?”

The reply was equally without complexities:  “I said I didn’t know, but I’d like to try.”

And beginning at age 56, Ralph Compton did indeed write a Western — 23 of them in just eight years — and is mentioned in the same breath with the likes of Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey and Larry McMurtry.

But this story didn’t begin with the birth of an author, it began with the birth of a baby boy in a little log home with a dirt floor. “You walked three miles along the Seaboard Railroad track, climbed a cut bank and trudged another three miles through the woods,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Townfolks and passersby on US 411 who see the sign that reads, “Home of Ralph Compton,” know the destination point of that long ago six-mile trek — Odenville, Alabama.

Born April 11, 1934, Compton says he missed the worst of the depression. “We were in the midst of one of our own when the rest of the country caught up to us. It seemed like we all started poor and went downhill from there,” he wrote.

His mother had a sixth grade education; his father, fifth grade. “By the time FDR’s ‘team of mules, seed and fertilizer’ stake got to us, there were no mules.” His father secured a team of oxen, seed and fertilizer and planted a crop. “In his best year, he made almost enough to repay what he owed the government.”

Compton grew up on Hannah Mountain near Lynch Lake and graduated from St. Clair County High School in Odenville, no small feat for the boy with less than meager means. “In those days, ‘welfare’ families were not looked on with favor,” he said. “There were four of us, and we received the staggering sum of $39 a month. I owe my high school graduation to understanding teachers who provided odd jobs so that I had the bare necessities.”

He singled out his high school principal, Nancy Wilson, who encouraged him not only to read, but to remember what he read. “Because I did read, she moved me ahead, encouraging me to read literature and history more advanced than my grade required. Before my graduation, I knew I wanted to write, although I wasn’t sure what.”

It would be more than three decades before he settled that question. The Goodnight Trail launched his western novels career, selling more than 1 million copies upon its release. The book’s dedication was to the spark that ignited his passion for literature. “To Nancy Wilson, principal of the St. Clair County High School in 1954,” it says.

Ten more “trail series” books would follow, along with a dozen other western novels. Six Guns and Double Eagles, The California Trail and the Shawnee Trail were in the top 50 most requested western novels the year before he died, according to a Birmingham News story on his death in 1998. The story quotes his brother, Bill, who talked of his songwriting days in Nashville. “He played guitar and liked bluegrass music.”

In his autobiography, Compton writes about Bill. After serving in the Army during the Korean War, Compton said he returned home to find his brother “an accomplished guitarist and singer, and the two of us set out to make big tracks.”

They played legion halls, armories, schools and radio stations. “Most little stations provided time for free on Saturday afternoon, usually 15 to 30 minutes for those enthusiastic enough (or dumb enough) to donate their ‘talent’ for the exposure,” Compton recalled. One time they were on three stations — live — and they raced from one station to the other just for the chance to play.

Bill Compton on the Country Boy Eddie Show

They split up in 1960, and Bill went on to play with Country Boy Eddie, a popular television show in Birmingham and in Alabama. Ralph headed north to Nashville with hopes of becoming a songwriter.

“Nashville wasted no time in giving me a hard way to go.” He and a friend eventually started a tabloid magazine, The Rhinestone Rooster. “We went broke, were able to borrow some additional money, and went broke again,” he wrote.

But he saved the logo and used it as a record label in producing recording sessions with limited success. He moved from one odd job to another before finally calling an end to his songwriting career. He had begun a novel in 1989 on a subject he knew all too well — growing up in the south during the Depression.

When he showed it to a literary agent, he acknowledged he had potential and said, “I like it, but I can’t sell it. Can you write a western?”

And that single, simple question launched a stellar career as a bestselling novelist with St. Martin’s Press and Signet Publishers, his historical accuracy becoming his trademark.

He passed away at age 64 of cancer. But his works and his words are his legacy. In his hometown of Odenville the pride of what he accomplished runs a little deeper. A display case at the library features his cowboy boots and a cowboy hat he donated. Nearby are rows and rows of his books, the most popular western author by far at his hometown library, Librarian Betty Corley says. “L’Amour is very famous, very well known, but they still get Compton.”

Outside, the library’s western themed sign, too, proclaims his roots. Perhaps it is because his own story is as inspiring as his westerns are captivating. From dirt floor beginnings to bestselling author certainly has the makings of a story to be told and retold.

In a 1993 issue of The Roundup for Western Writers of America, he recounted the question that changed his life. “Can you write a western? I could, and thank God, I did. My one regret is that I lacked the confidence and courage to do it sooner.

“While the Old West lives only in the pages of history, I believe there’s something within each of us that longs for those days when there was yet another frontier to be conquered, another mountain to cross, and the thrill of the unknown. I believe the Old West will live forever — perhaps not in Hollywood, but in the hearts and minds of men and women who refuse to let it die.”

And the memory of Ralph Compton lives on in the town proud to call him its native son.

A common past

St. Clair Springs log homes

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Jerry Martin

More than 100 years ago, the Jones Road homes of Mike and Cathy Harris and Jimmy Calvert on Jones Road began as simple, four-room log cabins. They were part of the same piece of property, the latter housing the servants’ quarters for the former. Additions and renovations have saved these relics of the past from the ravages of time and neglect, while the personal touches of current and former owners have turned them into modern-day cottages that retain much of their rusticity.

“It feels like half my house is old, half is new, but we don’t know when each was built,” says Cathy Harris, who moved here with husband, Mike, in June 2012 from Raleigh, N.C.

That description fits both the Harris home and the Calvert home. The split personality of the houses is more evident in the Harris home, however, especially from the outside. A stone facade covers the newer half, while the log section, with its tan chinking, dominates the other. Where the two are joined inside, exposed logs remind the owners of the house’s humble beginnings.

“Every floor in this house is (made of) a different kind of wood,” says Cathy Harris. “I think every owner put his own stamp on this house.”

Their stamp happens to be a combination of rustic furnishings from a mountain cabin they used to own and from their Raleigh residence. In the dining area, a faux antler chandelier hangs over a huge round table that belonged to Cathy’s mother. The table is topped by a twig basket on a large lazy Susan, and is surrounded by old hickory chairs.

“I’d rather be outside than inside, so everything is decorated outdoorsy,” Cathy explains as she leads a tour of the house. The master bedroom has prints of green ferns, either elk or deer antlers (she’s not sure which) hanging over the bed, with a rustic wooden bench at its foot. The Great Room has leather sofas and a long, low, wooden coffee table. Coming out of the kitchen on the opposite side of the dining room, the original log section of the house begins. “I call this my living room because it’s a little more formal than the Great Room,” Cathy says.

A stone fireplace and a red front door dominate the room, but the deer head over the fireplace, like the antlers throughout, was purchased, not shot. “We don’t hunt,” Cathy says. “I bought that deer head at an antique store for $40.” More antlers, prints of dogs and horses, a rustic wooden coffee and an end table share space with a Persian rug. A sheep-horn lamp from the old Rich’s store in Atlanta is draped with the halters the grown Harris children used with their childhood ponies. More antlers adorn the walls and built-in bookcases in this room.

But the most striking feature of the living room is the wooden catwalk high above. Steep log steps lead up to the catwalk, which has a small loft at each end that the Harrises use for storage. Arthur Weeks, the late Birmingham artist who owned the original L-shaped house in the 1980s, used both areas as bedrooms, even though their peaks only allow standing room in their centers. It was Weeks who added the skylight that brightens the room, but the catwalk and lofts are original to the house.

Off one side of the living room is a small area with a log ceiling that Mike uses as his office, while off the other side are two small bedrooms and two bathrooms. The ceilings are low and the floors are sloping in these rooms, but a structural engineer pronounced the house safe. The sloping is due to settling. These bedrooms were carpeted and decorated by the former owner, who painted the log walls in one of them. “I don’t know what’s under the carpet,” Cathy confesses.

The Harrises have done no remodeling inside the home, other than painting some of the rooms and adding granite countertops in the kitchen. Outside, however, they literally hit the ground running from the moment they arrived.

Their first project was to take down a huge tree house in the backyard and their pond’s boat house that was falling in. Most of the gardens were put in by Weeks, but they put up new fencing, limbed some trees, planted grass and cleaned up outside. Next, they screened in the open porch at the rear and built a pool equipment house. The swimming pool was already there. A real working well sits unused in a side yard.

“When the weather is nice, we live on the screened porch,” says Cathy. “We need to put a TV out there, we use it so much.”

Arthur Weeks disassembled a small log barn that was behind what is now Jimmy Calvert’s house, just up the road, then reassembled it to one side of the house and used it as his studio. Now a small, two-level apartment rented by Jimbo Bowers, the former barn also has a shed roof that shields lawn equipment from the elements.

Jimmy Calvert says the original 800-square-foot log portion of his 2,900 square-foot house probably was built in the late 1800s, while the two-story cottage-style addition was built by former owners Donnie Joe and Kim Kirkland in 1998-99. The four-room log cabin has three fireplaces around one central chimney, a common arrangement for the time in which it was built.

“It was an emotional buy,” Calvert says about his purchase.

An attorney with an office in Birmingham and Springville, he moved from Birmingham in 2004. His master bedroom was in the original log cabin while renovating the addition, which now has his living room, master bedroom and bath downstairs, two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. He has spent six figures over the course of eight years, and most of his free time during 2009 and 2010, restoring the place.

“There’s not an inch of this place that I haven’t restored,” Calvert says.

With the help of a friend, Walker Peerson, who was experienced in home construction and renovation, Calvert ripped out the floors down to the dirt in the original kitchen and dining room. That’s when he discovered that the logs underneath were laid out in a hub-and-spoke fashion, with the fireplace as the hub. He had to replace many of the floor joists and put down new heart pine floors. He removed the tile covering all the stone fireplaces and rebuilt the hearths. He tore out all the replacement windows and rebuilt their frames, putting plate glass in several rooms while keeping the one window that was original to the house. It’s now in his home office. He re-wired and re-plumbed the log cabin, too.

“A lot of the chinking was coming out, so I scraped out those places and re-caulked them, using a product called Perma-Chink,” Calvert says. “Then I painted the chinking an antique white.”

He removed the walls of the hallway between what was the original kitchen and a bedroom in the log section, then built a modern kitchen with pine countertops and stainless-steel appliances in the former bedroom. He and Peerson then built a 3-foot by 6-foot picture window at one end, overlooking the backyard. The original kitchen is now his dining room. His home office is in what used to be a second log bedroom.

“I’m 80 percent done with what I want to do here,” Calvert says. “What’s left is cosmetic, little things like knobs on the kitchen cabinets.”

He also rebuilt an old skinning shed outside, turning it into an air conditioned workshop and dog house for his two dogs. A 350-year-old oak tree lends shade to the screened porch on the front of the house. The concrete floor of the porch is patchy, but Calvert plans to leave it that way to maintain its rustic appearance. He also built a new deck on the back of the house and took down some old, dilapidated chicken houses.

Calvert has been told that the cabin was re-chinked in 1937 using mud from the pond behind his house. Initials and a date that were written in the chinking on one side of the house prove that point.

“Jones Road was the original road from Springville to Ashville,” Calvert says. “You came up Highway 11, and right onto Jones Springs Road. Then they built I-59 and cut off this road, which now dead ends next to my property. Alabama 23 now goes over I-59 from Springville to St. Clair Springs and up to Ashville.”

Kickstand Up!

Pet passenger an
easy rider in St. Clair

Story by Jerry Smith
Photos by Jerry Martin

Mike Enoch enjoys few things more than a leisurely motorcycle ride with his friend Katt on the seat behind him. That doesn’t sound unusual for a Southern boy on a warm summer day, until you realize that Katt is actually a large brown dog. For Mike and Katt, it’s a wondrous association, both enjoying each other’s company in a unique way, with lots of attention from bystanders.

Dogs on bikes are not new, but they’re usually just shivery Chihuahuas or yapping Yorkies stuffed into a saddle bag or handlebar pouch. Katt, however, is full-sized — a real man’s dog with no self-esteem issues, and she rides on a seat like the rest of us. And besides, it’s safer and more comfortable than riding in the back of a pickup truck.

Pell City folks are becoming accustomed to seeing this eye-catching duo on city streets, but first-timers always do a double-take when passing them on the road or seeing Mike’s bike parked at a local store, with Katt standing guard while he’s inside taking care of business.

Katt is a three year old female pit bull/mastiff mix, so no other security system is needed for their motorcycle. Katt’s domain is a special shelter Mike fabricated to fit over the rear seat, which also serves as a framework for a carrier that holds camping and fishing equipment. She’s a well-behaved dog with a warm, salival persona, but it’s probably not a good idea to mess with her bike.

Mike raised Katt from a puppy. He explains that her name came from the way she scampered and played, more like a kitten than a puppy. As she matured, the name Cat became a bit unseemly for such a noble canine, so he morphed it into Katt instead.

They ride a dark blue 2001 Honda Shadow 1100cc Sabre. This model has ample power, yet is light and agile enough to get them around on two-lane country roads as they explore St. Clair and its environs. The Shadow is his first bike, and Mike has put more than 27,000 miles on it, mostly before Katt started insisting on going along.

He explains that once Katt has sensed he is going somewhere, she jumps up on the bike seat and uses all her doggie wiles to make him feel bad for leaving her behind. After a few such drama sessions, Mike relented and built his friend a special carrier to provide safety and shelter.

It allows her to watch the road ahead from either side, with her snout usually nestled against his leg or waist.

When stopped, Katt absolutely will not jump off the bike unless Mike gives her spoken permission. Mike claims he’s tested her several times, finding that nothing can entice her down, even for hours at a time. In fact, she often sleeps on the bike when they’re at home.

During an interview session at Pell City’s Lakeside Park, Katt sat politely and patiently on her padded perch while we talked, but it soon became clear from her body language that she had doggie needs. Mike finally relented, ordered her down, and she hit the ground running. After a few laps around the parking lot and nearby woods, all within a perimeter established by Mike’s voice commands, she obediently returned to her post.

Mike says Katt already has some 1,000-plus miles under her, uh…collar, with no mishaps or problems at all, and he looks forward to lots more pleasant mileage as they run errands, explore this part of the state, and venture out on fishing and wilderness camping trips.

They’ve taken a few longer treks together, such as Stone Mountain, Buck’s Pocket and a campground in Tennessee, but Mike says the norm is less than a hundred miles each way, with several scenic and pit stops so neither man nor pet becomes uncomfortable.

At age 51, Mike is the owner-operator of Carpet Solutions Cleaning Co., a local firm specializing in cleaning and treating commercial carpets. It’s hard work, and Mike performs it with due diligence, so having a means of rest and recreation is a necessity.

Both he and Katt enjoy the natural camaraderie of a man and his dog, along with a growing notability among St. Clair folks. In fact, the interview was interrupted several times by curious park visitors, all with basically the same questions, as well as several honks from passing cars.

So what’s in the future for the travel team of Honda, Mike and Katt? Mike says he may try to fit her with goggles (Doggles?) to protect her eyes, and possibly even a doggie helmet, as they expand their travel radius to include more vacations and camping expeditions.

Mike also wants to breed her to a full-blooded bull mastiff at least once before she’s neutered, to produce a dog that’s slightly larger than Katt. If her cool demeanor and powerful physique prevails, those pups should make great pets and watchdogs.

Does Mike plan to sell his Honda anytime soon? “Nope, she’d probably leave me and go with the bike, and I wouldn’t blame her if she did.”