Got Her Goats

Rental ruminants help clear kudzu from Ashville farm

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Cindy Massey took more than a casual look at the kudzu-covered cliffs that surrounded her Ashville farm and knew she had to put a stop to the invasion.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, describes the invading kudzu as climbing, coiling and trailing perennial vines introduced in America from Asia in the 19th Century. It’s even earned the infamous reputation as ‘the weed that ate the South.’ But never mind the lore behind it. All Massey knew was that it had to go.

She had kept it under control for years through a treatment process. But when that process was skipped a couple of times, the vines enveloped the hillsides and rock formations – top to bottom – that form a natural, dramatic backdrop all around her expansive valley acreage. That is, when you can see them.

She asked her landscape architect, Rodney Griffin at Gardens by Griffin, for advice, and his answer would set in motion a solution not seen all that much around these parts. “Why don’t you rent a goat?”

It was no time for conventional means anymore, said Massey. So, she turned her attention to the internet and made a discovery that’s catching on around the country – renting goats – and lots of them.

She found a company in Tennessee – Rent-A-Ruminant – that would bring a herd of goats to Alabama and let them do what goats do best. And on a warm, sunny day in August, kudzu started tumbling down like a row of dominos given a mighty thump.

 All across Massey’s 135 acres, one by one, members of the herd of 47 goats made their way up and down and all around the hillsides, craning their necks to reach their ‘gold.’ Some stood on hind legs to get an extra boost toward their target. They tracked, tromped and chomped on one hillside and then headed to the next course at Taylor’s direction.

If one man’s trash is another’s treasure, the same holds true for goats. According to Rent-A-Ruminant owner Jax Taylor, kudzu is like the “golden corral” to them. She compared the bottom to broccoli, the next layer to a chocolate fountain and at the very top, they strike gold.

As Maddie, an Anitolian Shepherd, Great Pyrennes mix herded the goats, keeping them inside temporary netting that encloses each section designated for their clearing prowess, Taylor talked of how her story began.

Now a veteran, she was in Kuwait, about to be deployed to Iraq. A library in Los Angeles had donated out-of-date books to soldiers, and she picked up one on suburban homesteading. For the next 15 months, she would read that book over and over again and became “intrigued” with the concept of self-sufficiency and homesteading.

She decided when she returned home, she would buy a goat. And that she did. Her first was a Nigerian Dwarf, Becka, and you might say that goat cleared the path forward for her in more ways than one. After a second tour, this time in Afghanistan, she decided that when her Army career ended, her next career would involve goats. She had already started her farm and had moved to standard sized goats.

Her herd has grown sizably since then, and so has the territory for Rent a Ruminant, a franchise company begun in 2004 in Washington State. Besides Taylor’s franchise in Tennessee, there are others in Louisiana and Texas.

This was Taylor’s first time to herd in Alabama, and she settled into a loft apartment above the barn on Massey’s land for the two and half weeks she was there with the herd. She and her goat caravan have traveled to parts of Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky clearing property and taking care of the environment.

“We try to run the business like animal lovers would run the business,” she said, noting that most are rescues. She calls them by name if they venture where they’re not supposed to go as if they are wandering toddlers.

There are three generations out there, she said, proudly pointing to each. Becka is the matriarch. Fiddle is her first kid, and Banjo is Fiddle’s first kid.

How do they get their names? “Sometimes, they just come to us. Pineapple is “off the wall.” Morgan is named after a niece. Sir Richard? He’s their “problem child.” He jumps the fence. “They do something that gives them a name,” she explained.

Taylor likens their approach to clearing the kudzu to the atmosphere of a Jurassic Park – “like dinosaurs attacking.” 

And when they were done, Massey’s property was cleaner that it had been in years. By the end of their stay and multiple work days, Massey was calling the goats by name, too.

“I saw firsthand that running a goat rental business is not for the faint of heart,” Massey said. “Some of our terrain is quite steep and while it was no problem for the goats, Jax and her husband, Mathhew, had to clear brush and install fencing to contain them.

“I love the fact that they demolished a lot of kudzu, and no chemicals were used. I try to be mindful of the wonderfully diverse ecosystem we enjoy here. The goats neutralize seeds in their gut rather than broadcasing them as with a machete or Weedeater.”

She noted that the goats were extremely efficient and worked quickly, returning her property to the picturesque landscape she first fell in love with.

“The goats and the Taylors were a delight,” she said. “I missed the sounds of tinkling goat bells and ‘baaaaah’ after they left.”

Caroline’s Mill

St. Clair Springs couple returns to days gone by

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

For several of the 40-plus years Tommy and Sibyl White have lived in St. Clair Springs, they have gazed out their living room window at the swampy spring-fed pond across the road and said, “Wouldn’t it be neat to have a water wheel there?”

The pond was on a piece of land that didn’t belong to them, so the couple never dreamed their idea would go anywhere. But the owner decided to sell that four-acre plot, and when Tommy learned about it, he pounced. The deal was sealed early this year, and Tommy set to work clearing the property and building that wheel and a mill to house it.

“Three springs feed the mill pond,” Tommy said. “A stream ran out of it constantly all year round. We thought it would be the perfect place for a water wheel.”

He didn’t have a drawing of what he wanted, but that wasn’t an obstacle. “I had in the back of my head what I wanted it to look like,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time he had plunged feet first into a building project. The host of White’s Mountain Bluegrass Festival for 12 years, he built a wooden train, a general store and an amphitheater and stage at the top of White’s Mountain Lane. Tommy and Sibyl live at the bottom of that lane. When the bluegrass festival got too big for them to handle — they were doing one in the spring and one in the fall — they quit. But the lure of old-time music and old-fashioned folk ways proved too much for them. So about five or six years ago (Tommy isn’t good with dates), he came up with the Chimney Corner Celebration to take its place.

Held the third weekend of October, it is named after the warmest spot in any bygone farm house, the corner between the pot-bellied stove and the fireplace. The Celebration warms up at sundown on a Friday with a jam session of local bluegrass musicians. It continues from 9 a.m. until “whenever” the next day with more bluegrass, bagpipes and other period music and dance. Activities and displays include sorghum syrup and cider making, spinning wheel operations, hominy making, quilting, chair caning and blacksmithing.

“We just love that kind of stuff,” Tommy said. “The old ways of doing things bring back memories of the old days, when people had to make it, grow it or do without it.”

The star of the show this year was supposed to be the new mill, but it wasn’t quite finished in time. Tommy had planned to demonstrate grinding corn and wheat, and the water wheel was supposed to produce the electricity to power a generator for the lights of the mill house. The water level was a couple of feet below what the mill wheel needed. So, the demos would have to wait for the rainy season.

He made the eight-foot by two-foot mill wheel in his shop by modifying a metal spool used to roll electrical wire. It’s an undershot mill, meaning water runs under it to turn the wheel. Two grinding stones, one stationary and one moving against the first, form the basic elements for grinding grain. Tommy cut grooves in the mill stones so the grain could pass through them.

“To harness water power, you must have height and volume,” Tommy explained. “To get the volume, you raise the water level and restrict it to a narrow channel that is called the mill race.” The wheel sits at the discharge end of the race, and water pressure will turn the wheel. A control valve will lower and raise the water level. When the wheel runs, water will pass through the mill race and into a stream that continues under Highway 23 and into Little Canoe Creek.

Made of pressure-treated pine lumber and siding, the mill building is 12 feet by 16 feet, including a porch that wraps around two sides. It has traditional mill-style windows, which are openings cut into the siding with wooden covers that slide out of the way. “I remember Mom had windows like these in her kitchen,” Tommy said. “I would go outside and climb up and open them on a hot day.”nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Mosquitoes were a hindrance to the property clearing at first, but Tommy’s son found a $400 fogger machine online, and it cleared out the mosquito population from the quarter-acre pond in a hurry. Once construction started, curious passersby on Highway 23 stopped their cars frequently, asking questions and admiring the project.

 Begonias, coleus, geraniums, hasta and caladium add color to the place, along with hanging baskets of ferns and an airplane plant, thanks to Sibyl’s green thumb and eye for landscaping. “I had to contain her, or she would have filled the place with flowers,” Tommy said. “She had some good ideas, though.”

The mill won’t sit dormant between celebrations, either. “I’ll decorate it for the Christmas season and use the electricity the wheel generates to power the lights, provided the rains come and bring up the water level,” he said. “We’ll just grind whatever folks bring us, too.”

Meanwhile, at the top of the lane where the Chimney Corner Celebration is held, Tommy has built a number of buildings that help tell of bygone days. He has a general store and post office combination, something that was quite common in the early history of the U.S. Postal Service.

The back room of the building holds some of the old-fashioned machinery he has collected, including two corn shellers, a grist mill, treadle sewing machines, several ice boxes and a cast-iron cook stove that is vented through a fireplace chimney. An avowed tinkerer, he rebuilt the corn sheller that had belonged to Sibyl’s dad as a boy by using another one as an example.

Shelves in the front room are filled with old glass and pottery, such as the soft-drink bottle embossed with the words, “Ashville Bottling Company,” that he found when he cleaned the sludge out of the mill pond. Post office boxes at the front of the store came from the St. Clair Springs post office that closed around 1949. “St. Clair Springs was a town before Springville was,” he said, a touch of pride in his voice.

He restored a cider mill that he uses at the celebrations. “I found it in northeast Alabama, or rather, I found what was left of it,” Tommy said. “A fellow advertised it on the internet, and I finagled a deal.” Sibyl researched it and had photos and diagrams for him to go by.

Both bluegrass musicians, Tommy plays guitar, and Sibyl keeps the beat on a bass fiddle, while friend David Connor plays banjo in the unnamed trio they form. They play at the Chimney Corner Celebration and area events such as the Looney House Festival, and at the annual Christmas Pickin’ the Whites hold in the back room of the General Store.

In another nod to times gone by, all electricity is turned off at the store that night, and those lucky enough to get an invitation play by the light of the fireplace, oil lamps and lanterns.

Tommy and Sibyl’s granddaughter, six-year-old Caroline, has taken an interest in learning how to play the guitar, and Tommy plans on teaching her what he knows. “We’re calling it Caroline’s Mill in her honor,” Tommy said.

A life of ‘firsts’

Beatrice Muse Price:
Serving with the
Tuskegee Airmen
and breaking barriers

Story by Scottie Vickery
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted photos

As she looks back over photographs of her life and loved ones that hang in her room at the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City, Beatrice Muse Price feels the need to pinch herself. “I’ve had a strange life with a lot of firsts,” she said. “It’s been an interesting, interesting journey.”

The granddaughter of slaves, young Beatrice started school at age 4 and never stopped blazing trails. The little girl with humble beginnings grew up to break color barriers in order to serve her country as a nurse during World War II. General George S. Patton was among her many patients, and she made history when she was assigned to help care for the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black pilots to serve in the U.S. military. “We took care of their medical needs and made sure they were in good shape,” she said. “Our job was to keep them flying.” In 2012, nearly 70 years after her service with the Airmen, she was presented the Congressional Gold Medal for her efforts in the war.

At 94, Price can’t think of much she would change about her life. After leaving the Army, she was a nurse at the Birmingham VA Medical Center and started a health and wellness program at her church, which she counts among her greatest accomplishments. Despite growing up during the height of segregation she lived to see Barack Obama become the first African-American president and was among the estimated 1.8 million who flocked to Washington for his inauguration in 2009. Four years later, she was the special guest of U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell during President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address.

“Every time I turn around, I’m involved with something that’s made me think, ‘Can you imagine this?’ I’ve never seen any reason to stop with less than you were capable of doing. Now that I look back on it, I can’t remember anything I was afraid to do, and I think that’s why I had such great opportunities everywhere I went,” she said.

Price was born in Bessemer on Jan. 21, 1924, the second of Henry and Frances Muse’s six children. The family moved to Hale County when she was 3, and she grew up on a farm in Greensboro, where her parents modeled strength, courage and determination. Badly injured in World War I, her father was in and out of the VA hospital for much of her childhood. “Mama had to run the farm, and boy did she run it,” she said. “She believed in doing everything possible to make life better for all of us.”

For that reason, Price got an early start on her education “My sister Ruth, who was 11 months older, was afraid of everything, including her shadow,” she mused. “When she went to school, Mama started me too, even though I was only 4, just to be company for her.”

Price excelled in school, despite her many chores around the farm and the time she spent helping to care for her father. That experience is ultimately what set her on her career path. “My father always said, ‘Bea, you would make a good nurse.’ He told me that from the time I was 3. By the time I graduated high school, he had convinced me totally,” she said.

The problem was, she graduated early, at age 16. “You had to be 17 to go to nursing school, so Daddy got a birth affidavit for me. Because of midwives, a lot of people didn’t have birth certificates, so rather than have me sit out a year, he aged me a year on my birth affidavit,” she said.

Despite never having left Alabama, she boarded a train by herself and went to the Grady Memorial School of Nursing in Atlanta, graduating three years later in 1944 as a registered nurse.

During her college days, “segregation was at its height,” she said, and she remembers the superintendent of nurses telling her and her classmates to “go back to the cornfields and cook kitchens where you belong.” The white students and black students were separated, but Price didn’t allow the racism she experienced to affect her focus. She graduated with one of the highest grade point averages among both groups of students.

By the time she finished nursing school, “they were appealing for Army nurses with every breath,” she said. “We had recruiters at school every week or so, but you had to be 21 to join the Army. Daddy got a birth affidavit for college, but he said he wasn’t going to mess with the military.”

Instead, she spent a year in Trinity Hospital, an all-black private hospital in Detroit before becoming a U.S. Army Nurse in 1945. She joined the Army three days after turning 21 and was one of 12 black nurses sent to work at a hospital in Fort Devens, Mass., after completing basic training. “We were the first black nurses there and when they took us to breakfast the next morning, the forks were hitting the plates so hard we were looking to see how much china was broken,” she said with a laugh.

After earning the respect of her colleagues, she was the first black nurse to be promoted to head nurse at the hospital. Although she can’t remember what he was treated for, Gen. Patton was a patient in her ward. “Everyone called him ‘Blood and Guts’ because he was so forceful and fearless,” she said, adding that he wasn’t difficult or intimidating during his stay. “He disappointed me,” she joked.

After being promoted to First Lieutenant, Price was stationed at Lockbourne Army Air Base in Columbus, Ohio, and was assigned to the Tuskegee Airmen. The pilots, who trained in Alabama as a segregated unit at Tuskegee Institute’s Motion Field, were subjected to discrimination both inside and outside the military. “They were trying to be the best they could be in spite of the fact that people didn’t want them to do it at all,” she said. “I enjoyed working with them to the highest.”

Price said she got to know some of the pilots and flew with them on a few practice flights, even taking the controls on occasion. “They had to keep their hours up and they were so happy to have company along, they taught you everything they knew. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you that,” she said with a grin.

After the war ended and Price returned home, she continued her nursing career at the Birmingham VA Medical Center, where she worked for 34 years. She was married twice and has three children, two stepchildren, four grandchildren, five step-grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Through the years, she’s “adopted” some others and counts them as her own. She credits her family and her career among her greatest blessings.

Price rejoiced in 2007 when President George W. Bush presented the Tuskegee Airmen – which included the nearly 1,000 pilots and support personnel such as armorers, engineers, navigators, intelligence officers, weather officers and nurses – with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor given by Congress. In 2012, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell presented Price with her own medal during a ceremony at her church, Sixth Avenue Baptist.

She is amazed at the honors she has received for what she calls fulfilling her calling.

 “There’s nothing in the world I could have enjoyed more than nursing,” she said. “It has really been the most rewarding career I could possibly imagine. I’ve had a rich, full life, and I’ve just been in the right place at the right time with the right things somebody was looking for. It’s how God works. He finds you and gives you assignments, and you’ve just got to try to carry them out.”

6th Day Creatures

Springville family turns passion into business, teachable moments

Story by Jackie Romine Walburn
Photos by Susan Wall

It’s hard to say exactly when 6th Day Creatures, an exotic animal education and entertainment venture headquartered in St. Clair County, really began for Jamie Hacker, his family and their collection of exotic pets.

The obvious start was when Jamie was asked to do a devotion at a children’s church event seven years ago, and he brought along a couple of small, friendly snakes and a black and white ferret with him “to illustrate how God created and loves all of us – even funny-looking animals and snakes.”

That impromptu devotion quickly morphed into more. “By Monday at school, our seven-year-old had volunteered us to do another program, and another.”

So officially began 6th Day Creatures, a business and mission that brings exotic animals and life lessons to children and adults at church, school and community events across Alabama and beyond.

The name 6th Day Creatures is based on when the Bible says God created all the creeping and crawling land creatures. As noted in Genesis 1:24. “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creatures after his kind, cattle, and creeping things and the beast of the earth after his kind,’ and it was so.”

But, the true beginning for 6th Day Creatures can also be traced to Jamie and his wife’s family traditions of unusual pets and their family’s ongoing love, knowledge and care for exotic animals.

Both Jamie Hacker, who works as registered nurse at St. Vincent’s Hospital in downtown Birmingham, and his wife, Trussville native Leigh Fox Hacker, a nurse who works at St. Vincent’s East, grew up around unusual pets.

The couple’s passion for exotic pets was honed during their childhoods and passed on to their children, daughter Lauren, 18, now a freshman at Jacksonville State University, and son Brady, 14, who is a freshman in high school.

Jamie’s father raised show pigs, modern bantam chickens and cattle in Oklahoma, where Jamie stayed when not with his mom in Mississippi. Leigh’s grandparents bred and raised chinchillas, the rodent native to Peru and Chile that are prized for their dense, soft fur.

They both love animals and value exotic species, but it was Leigh who first bought the children their own exotic pets. For son Brady, she purchased one of the family’s first corn snakes, and daughter Lauren’s got a chinchilla named CeCe. Lauren also around this time adopted a rescue Maltese Yorkie (Morkie) named Sebastian, who became a family pet, too.

As the number and variety of exotic pets grew, the family sometimes raised exotic animals for the pet store market. “At one time, there were 100 snakes being raised in our son’s bedroom,” Jamie recalls. Their pet count got up to about 400 when they bred for pet stores. Now the pet count is about one-tenth of that. Also, they used to breed several kinds of cockroaches, mainly for food for pets. “We have bred Red Runner Cockroaches, Dubia Cockroaches and mealworms in the past.”

Now they have only Madagascar hissing cockroaches, one of the largest cockroach species that can reach two to three inches long. “We only have hissing cockroaches now just for fun since they are really big flightless roaches that gross people out,” Jamie says.

The pet lizards get live insects because they will only eat food if it is moving, he says. However, the Bearded Dragons sometimes get dried meal worms on their greens – “like you put croutons on a salad.”

Live food is never fed to the snakes or other carnivores. They do not feed any live rodents, he says, to keep the snakes from having the instinct to strike and be aggressive. Instead, they purchase frozen rodents, Jamie says, remembering how the UPS man commented “ya’ll must eat really good,” about delivering packages of what he assumed were frozen steaks or other expensive people food. Then they explained that the boxes were actually frozen rodents.

Through their days as pet owners, then breeders and now with an animal adventure business, their veterinarian has been Dr. Carl Grimmett of Grayson Valley Pet Clinic. Knowledgeable about exotic pet care, which is a shared interest, Dr. Grimmett usually makes house calls for the Hacker family pets.

 

The family business

Since 6th Day Creatures came to life, it’s been a family project, with Jamie up front as the animal adventure master of ceremonies and either Leigh, Lauren or Brady assisting.

“I love animals and kids,” says Jamie. His ease with both is plain to see as Jamie and Brady brought 6th Day Creature’s Animal Adventures to a Clearbranch United Methodist Church’s Wednesday night children’s service.

Like an exotic pet pied piper, children follow as Jamie walks around before the show, with Dewey the Bearded Dragon, an Australian lizard, clinging to his back or head or shoulder. “Put him on my head,” one child says. “Put him on my sister’s head,” another offers.

As Jamie introduces Dewey and then brings out Zelda, a colorful corn snake, he explains the 6th Day rules. If you don’t want to pet, see up close or interact with whatever creature Jamie offers, “just put your palm up, no thank you.” Even though you might make friends with 6th Day creatures, he tells the children, never touch a wild animal – like these or others – when you are outside in their territory. He also explains that audience members should consider it an “anointing” if a pet takes the opportunity to ‘relieve himself’ and reminds the kids that most of the exotic pets are not housetrained, so anything could happen.

After safety – 6th Day has never had an escape or incident with the exotic pets interacting with people – the main message this day is that God created us and all the creatures for a reason and that He loves us and all creatures of his creation.

“God has a reason for everything He does,” Jamie says, using the nonvenomous corn snake as an example. “The craziest thing is, without snakes, we wouldn’t survive,” he explains. Snakes eat rats and mice and keep the vermin’s population down and protect us from diseases they carry.

When Lucy the hedgehog makes an appearance, children see how God equipped hedgehogs to protect themselves – with their quill-covered skin and the ability to fold up into a ball.

When the so-ugly-it’s-cute hairless guinea pig is introduced, Jamie explains that the hybrid is called a skinny pig and reminds him of how God made us all different. “Some of us are tall, some small, some prettier than others,” he says. Telling a story about children teasing a boy in a wheelchair, Jamie encourages the young audience to appreciate the differences in all of us and never make fun of someone who is different. Instead, he urged, “use the way God made you special to do good and spread love.”

When Taco, the Chaco Golden Knee Tarantula, was introduced, the giant spider prompted squeals from the children, who could look but not touch. Ditto for the dwarf Caiman, an alligator relative from Central and South America whose jaws are taped shut for all outings. With 80 razor-sharp teeth, Caimans are generally more aggressive than their north American cousins who grow much bigger. Jamie points out its two sets of eyelids, so the amphibious carnivore appears to be asleep while he is actually watching for prey.

Up next is the African Spur Thigh Tortoise, slow and steady with temperature control built into its spurred feet. As a finale, 6th Day features its largest Burmese Python, named Sonnie, a male who is almost 11 feet long.

Big, little, scary or sweet, Jamie explains, God’s creatures are gifts and responsibilities and serve as testimony that God loves us all.

 

A growing family

Back at home, Jamie sits cuddling Pikachu, a Kinkajou that looks like a ferret-monkey mix. Pikachu is named for a Pokemon character. “We call him Pika because saying Pikachu the Kinkajou is a mouthful.”

Pika travels with 6th Day Creatures often. “He likes to snuggle and go hide in our shirts. A shy nocturnal animal like its cousin, the raccoon, the Kinkajou curls up inside his shirt as Jamie recites a list of animals that now live with the family in St. Clair County.

In addition to the family’s six dogs, the “regular” pets, the Hackers, and 6th Day currently have about 60 pets, including 25 snakes, all non-venomous, mostly colorful corn snakes and three Burmese Pythons, who often steal the show.

6th Day Creatures is a licensed and insured educational company. The business has an exotic animal exhibitor license with the USDA, which conducts annual inspections of the pets’ quarters in the Hacker’s home and yard in Springville.

Fees for the shows go to help feed and take care of the pets. The cost of a party or show varies according to how many miles the eight to 10 creatures need to be transported from the Hacker’s home in the 35146 zip code. The starting amount is $225, for up to 25 miles of travel, for an animal adventure of about an hour.

To count them down, 6th Day Creatures include the animals that starred in the show at Clearbranch plus: two pot belly pigs, two ferrets, several guinea pigs, two skinny pigs, more than 20 additional snakes, two more tortoises and several rabbits, including Rebunzal, the long-eared, 30-pound rabbit with 16-inch ears. They also have families of chinchilla which do not travel to shows because they cannot tolerate being hot or wet.

Seven years into 6th Day Creatures, with a daughter in college and son in high school, Jamie says they are working through a transition period with his key animal adventure helpers not available nearly as often as before. Feeding and caring for scores of unconventional pets is time consuming, especially after days of he and Leigh working 12-hour shifts as nurses.

But, the shows, the children and the chance to share his passion for animals while sharing beliefs in God’s love and wisdom prove to be worth the work.

Learn more about 6th Day Creatures – including how to book an animal adventure show – at www.6thdaycreatures.com.

Chandler Mountain

A pinnacle of St. Clair History

Story by Joe Whitten
Submitted photos

Rising to an elevation of approximately 1,315 feet in the northern part of St. Clair County, Chandler Mountain extends from the southwest to the northeast for about 10 miles.

Its average width is about two and a half miles with an area of about 25 square miles. The terrain is rugged with numerous outcroppings of rock.

According to Place Names in Alabama (The University of Alabama Press, 1999), by Virginia Foscue, the mountain got its name from Joel Chandler, “who brought his family to this area soon after the Creek Indians were removed in 1814.” He settled on Little Canoe Creek. The mountain behind his place provided good hunting, and hunters, who used a trail near his property to climb to the hunting ground, began calling the mountain Chandler’s Mountain. In time, the apostrophe “s” was dropped, and Chandler Mountain has been the name since.

Despite the rugged terrain, settlers arrived. The first, Cicero Johnson from northwest Georgia, entered land on Chandler Mountain in 1855. Historian Vivian Buffington Qualls records that others soon came with their families from Georgia and the Carolinas to join Johnson: Franklin Smith, Jake Lutes, John Bearden, W.V. McCay, John Hollingsworth, Boze Wood, Jake and Bob Robinson, John Hollingsworth and Levi Hutchens. Hezekiah McWaters came from Troy, Alabama. So, the area began to be settled and cultivated.

Darrell Hyatt tells a family story of his Robinson great grandfather, George, who as a boy learned to play the fiddle. During the Civil War, when Confederate troops had camped between today’s US 231 and the Beason House, George would entertain them by playing the fiddle. Years later, George married Susie, who played the banjo. Darrell shared a treasured photo of the couple—Susie holding her banjo; George, his fiddle.

An interesting feature of this Chandler Mountain lies in the water level. Water for family and livestock came from dug wells or creeks on the mountain and in the valley. According to written sources, mountain well-diggers struck water within 25 or 30 feet, whereas in the valley, wells sometimes went as much as 75 feet down before finding water. 

Lee Gilliland and Larry DeWeese, who grew up on the mountain, said that early on, wells were hand-dug and lined with rock, brick or wood. They also spoke of “punched wells.” A bit about 4 inches in diameter and attached to a long heavy tube was mounted on a truck. A motor pulled the tube high and then let it drop, pounding it into the earth. This process took up to two weeks before it reached the water source. The steady pounding could be heard for quite a distance.

Numerous springs bubble from the ground, but the water doesn’t flow far before sinking back into the earth. In 1949, D.O. Langston wrote his master’s degree thesis at Auburn University about Chandler Mountain. He stated that “Gulf Creek is the only stream that flows any distance, and its water disappears in dry seasons.”

Two roads give access to the mountain: Steele Gap on the east and Hyatt Gap on the west. Hyatt Gap is named for John M. Hyatt, who migrated from Heard County, Georgia, around 1875.

For his master’s thesis, Langston interviewed Hillard Hyatt, who gave an account of John Hyatt’s coming to Chandler. Hillard told that John, living in Georgia, fell in love with a young woman. Her parents objected to the courtship, so John came to his cousin, Hezakiah McWaters, on the mountain. After working for McWaters “for a year or so,” John bought “80 acres near the southwest end of the mountain.” Then, “…he went back home to Heard County, married his childhood sweetheart, and they came back home, bringing all they possessed on one small pony. They arrived with 20 cents in money.”  John’s 80 acres included what is today’s Horse Pens 40, an international tourist and recreational attraction because of its centuries-old rock formations. Its history includes an ancient Native American burial ground, a hideaway during the Civil War and for outlaw Rube Burrow. It was nationally known for bluegrass festivals with rising stars of the day like Lester Flatt, Bill Monroe, Charlie Daniels, Ricky Skaggs and Emmylou Harris. Today, it is home to world class bouldering, hosting the triple crown climbing championship.

Darrell Hyatt recounted that family lore named John Hyatt as the last person to be granted a homestead in Alabama and that John and wife arrived here with all they owned in a pillow case. Wikipedia says the park derived its name from the original deed when allocating the acreage: “the home 40, the farming 40, and the horse pens 40.”

 

Organization of schools and churches

According to Mrs. Qualls, the first school on Chandler was called Mt. Lebanon. The building was across the road from today’s Mt. Lebanon First Congregational Methodist Church. A note written in old minutes of the church states, “A building was near the site of Mt. Lebanon Church in the late 1880s and was used for school meetings.”

The Mt. Lebanon School was on the east end of Chandler. On the west end, around 1895, the McCay School was organized. Mrs. Qualls records that John Hyatt had recently built a new house and donated the logs from his old home for the school building on the McCay property. Langston states, “After this house was built, the school then alternated between the church located on the east end of the mountain and the school on the west end. The church being on the east end and the school on the west made it necessary to alternate between the two to keep peace and harmony. …” Then, in 1902, the school relocated to a new building on the Hollingsworth property.

The two schools eventually consolidated, and in time the school became the Chandler Mountain Junior High School, which flourished for many years. The students consistently made high scores on the yearly standardized tests. The county school system closed the school and today buses students to Steele and Ashville.

The date that Mt. Lebanon Church started worshiping together is not known, but they likely met in the Mt. Lebanon school building. It is known that the Mt. Lebanon First Congregational Methodist Church officially organized in July 1905 and that William Robinson, a Congregational minister, would come from Georgia to the mountain to visit his Robinson relatives. While on these visits, he conducted revival meetings, and one of these revival meetings culminated in the establishing of Mt. Lebanon Church. William Robinson served as the first pastor from 1905 to 1911.

The church purchased land on which to construct a building from Bent Engle. They paid $2 an acre for two acres. A penciled note in some old minutes record that Jeff Smith donated land for the cemetery.

From 1933 to 1936 the church had a woman pastor—Annie Struckmeyer Moats, an ordained minister in the Congregational Church. Annie’s husband was Alley Mathis Moats. Annie’s granddaughter, Barbara Robinson, is a current member of the church.

Mt. Lebanon celebrated its centennial in 2005, and as it has done for over a century, remains a vibrant contribution to Chandler Mountain.

Chandler Mountain Baptist Church through the Years—1910-2010, compiled by Ellis Lee Gilliland and Mary Gilliland, recounts that on Oct. 22, 1910, members of the Missionary Baptist Church met at Cross Roads, or as some called it, Pleasant Valley, in Greasy Cove District near Gallant, Alabama, and organized a missionary Baptist church. The organizing presbytery consisted of John Heptenstall, Colman Buckner, Mon Umphres, J.D. Vicars, J.B. Rodgers and H.H. Turley.

Minutes dated Nov. 6, 1910, give that name as Cross Roads Baptist Church, which indicates that was its first name. These minutes show the church elected John Heptenstall as minister and M.C. Rogers, son of Deacon J.B. Rogers, as church clerk.

Years passed, new buildings replaced outgrown ones, and in March 2001, the church named a committee to proceed with plans for building a new sanctuary with a basement fellowship hall and to obtain a loan for a stated amount. The committee completed its job, and worship services moved from the old 1948 building into the new. The first service in the new building occurred on Sept. 9, 2001. The church paid off the loan in 2011. They used the 1948 building as a youth facility.

Then in 2017, structural weakness in the trusses caused unsafe conditions in the new sanctuary, and the congregation had to meet in the old building again. Over the years, church members have been faithful and resilient in difficult times, and so has it been in this set-back. The repairs haven’t been completed yet, but the church is making progress and looking forward to being back into the 2001 sanctuary.

Chandler Mountain Baptist Church celebrated its centennial in 2010 and continues its 108-year legacy of a faithful church body that is a source of spiritual strength to the community.

 

Lumber and Sawmills

The Ashville Museum and Archives has photocopies of articles Kenneth Gilliland wrote of his family and the mountain. One tells of the logging industry of the 1920s. There were sections of timber that had never been cut over and contained “a large supply of virgin timber, mainly pine trees. The pines were tall and straight. We called them ‘Old Field’ pines. Many of the trees would yield 12” x 12” timbers, eighteen to twenty-four feet long.”

Kenneth’s and Lee’s daddy, Sylvester Gilliland, built a portable sawmill that he could move into a tract of timber and have it set up in a day or two. Kenneth wrote, “A gasoline automobile engine was used to power the mill. Daddy used an engine out of a 1927 Buick for many years. He equipped it with a gravity-fed carburetor system from a Model A Ford. He would saw 8 to 12 thousand board feet of lumber a day if all went well. … The trees were all cut down and cut into logs of the correct length by two-man crosscut saw” and the “… logs were snaked in by mules.”

In those days, men found work wherever they could — usually for $1 a day. Gilliland paid his workers $2.50 a day because “they were worth it.”

In an interview, Lee Gilliland commented that his dad could do anything he set his mind to. His brother, Kenneth, recorded one such endeavor — electrifying their home seven years before Alabama Power climbed the mountain with their electricity in 1939-40. He wrote: “…electricity came to the S.B. ‘Vester’ and Dora Gilliland family about 1932. Daddy installed two 32-volt D.C. Delco Light Plants. They were set on concrete slabs in the corner of the garage. These were a one-cylinder gasoline engine pulling a direct coupled D.C. generator. These engines would run on kerosene also. They would charge a bank of lead/acid batteries. Wire was run from the bank of batteries into the house. Mom’s first appliance was a 32 V.D.C. iron bought from Teague’s Hardware in Ashville.”

In a 1977 interview with Dale Short of The Birmingham News, Sylvester Gilliland said, “The first 5 dollars I ever got hold of after I was grown, I sat down with the Sears-Roebuck catalog and ordered me a book about automotive mechanics. Most folks around thought I was a little touched, because not only did we not have any sign of a car, but even if we had, we couldn’t have got it on or off the mountain, roads being like they were.”

Observing that Gilliland devoured the automotive book, then ordered a book about steam power, then one about hydraulics, and then one about radios, Short commented, “Now he can look back over half a century of keeping sawmills whirring, gins ginning, mowers cutting, and in later years, radios and televisions playing.”

It would be correct to say that Sylvester Gilliland was the right man at the right time for Chandler Mountain.

 

Peach paradise?

Many do not know that mountain farmers grew peaches and sold them commercially. A Mr. Sloat and a Mr. Bush came from Michigan and introduced peach orchards to Chandler Mountain. Just when they came and what their first names were seem unrecorded, but it can be surmised they arrived toward the end of the 19th century. Sloat and Bush convinced the farmers, and they planted several thousand trees.

Vivian Qualls writes that around 1907 W.L. Yeilding from Birmingham bought Sloat’s orchard. She quotes Yeilding’s son, Ency, “The farm included about 200 acres of land, one-half of which was in peach trees. … The original trees … were about 7,500. About three years later, he began to plant another orchard of between 3,000 and 3,500 trees.”

Mr. Langston wrote that the men built a stone packing shed near the railroad depot in Steele, and “the trees bore their first crop about 1900. The fruit was of a desirable kind and of very high quality. The packing house was ready. The crop, properly graded and packed, sold for a good price. The farmers were well pleased with their new adventure.”

Several years of good peaches selling for good prices followed. Then the bottom fell out of the market. Langston records that one farmer hauled 304 bushes of high quality peaches to Steele and returned home with $12.08. His crop brought about four cents a bushel.

Mrs. Qualls relates that the Yeildings built a canning plant so the peaches could be preserved and sold when prices went up again. For a few years the peaches were canned. However, Langston notes that when the average life of the first trees ran out, none of the farmers were willing to replant, and the peach industry dwindled out.

 

Tomatoes become king of mountain

Both Qualls and Langston record that Otis Hyatt, son of John Hyatt, raised the first crop of tomatoes marketed from Chandler Mountain. Over the years, Otis had learned farming from his father, John Hyatt.

John became a successful grower of garden produce. At some point, he raised enough to make it profitable to take the produce down the mountain to sell. Needing a more convenient road than Steele Gap, Mr. Hyatt built the road known today as Hyatt Gap.

Mr. Langston records that John built the road “single handed down the mountain to Greasy Cove.” Darrell Hyatt recently added that his great grandfather used a “team of oxen and a slip scrape” to build Hyatt Gap Road. The gap was paved in the 1970s.

In a 1940s interview with Mr. Langston, Otis gave 1926 as the first tomato year. He raised the crop, harvested it, packed the tomatoes in baskets and peddled them. He received “on the average one dollar per basket.”

The next year, his brothers planted tomatoes and sold them the same way. The brothers established routes and delivered tomatoes three times a week. Through experimenting with planting times, they found they could harvest from July to October, for first-frost came later on the mountain than in the valley.

Langston records that the Hyatts’ “… neighbors soon began to follow the same practice, and by 1932, the local markets could not take care of the crop produced.” Thus, began the crop that has made Chandler Mountain famous.

Production increased, and by 1940, McDonald Produce Company of Terry, Miss., was sending trucks to the mountain to be loaded with tomatoes for selling in Mississippi. With a longer growing season on the mountain, Mississippi and other states realized they could have fresh tomatoes into late autumn for their markets. In 1948, The Southern Aegis reported that the farmers shipped tomatoes to buyers “from New York to Miami.”

The farmers banded together and formed the Chandler Mountain Tomato Growers Association in 1943. As recorded by Langston, the following men were the first directors: Farmer Rogers, Cecil Smith, Hershal Smith, J.D. Osborne and Clarence Smith. The association incorporated in 1945. There were two packing houses for processing the crops, and that year, the association graded approximately 30,000 bushels of tomatoes.

Production continued to increase, and in 1946, Ross Roberson and J.D. Osborne built packing sheds near Whitney on the Birmingham to Chattanooga highway—U.S. 11. In 1947, the association processed 60,000 bushels of tomatoes, some coming now from Blount County farms.

As the 1948 season progressed, farmers saw excellent harvests and sales. October came with prices reaching $3.50 a bushel. Then disaster struck. As reported in the Oct. 22, 1948, issue of The Southern Aegis, an “unseasonable ‘snap-freeze’ that swept over most of Alabama Sunday night (October 17)” ruined an estimated 40,000 bushels of tomatoes. The Aegis put the financial loss at between $100,000 and $150,000.

Most farmers are invincible, and gradually tomato farmers recovered, and production still flourishes today.

So, the next time you slather mayonnaise on two pieces of white bread and cut thick slices of Chandler Mountain goodness for your sandwich, remember Otis Hyatt, who started it all.

And as you take your first juicy bite, whisper thanksgiving to the Lord for this summer satisfaction!

Ryder Carpenetti

Moody’s rising rodeo star

Story by Paul South
Submitted photos

Truth be told, the closest most of us have come to mounting a bucking bull was as a kid on the 25-cent-powered horses at the local five and dime, watching John Travolta in “Urban Cowboy” in college,  or worst-case, when  liquid courage in a shot glass convinced usually sensible adults that they could tame the mechanical bull at the neighborhood cowboy bar.

But the miniature bulls that Moody’s Ryder Carpenetti takes on in rodeos from North Carolina to Las Vegas are the real deal – 1,200 pounds of thick muscle and foul mood that are as unpredictable as it gets. These animals can with a buck, or spin or dip send their riders into the air like a rag doll, leaving them with a face full of mud, bumps and bruises – or worse.

But Carpenetti has captured three world titles riding miniature bucking horses and half-ton bulls.

He’s 4-foot-6, weighs 71 pounds and still has some of his baby teeth. And he’s only turned 12 years old in September.

As John Wayne might put it: Pilgrim, this is one tough little hombre.

It all started with a bulletin board. Ryder’s Dad, Frankie Carpenetti, remembers.

“He was 3 years old. I saw a flier at a Tractor Supply down in Sterrett, and they had ‘mutton bustin,’ you know, where they ride the sheep. I said, ‘I’ll take him down there and let him ride in that. Maybe he’ll ride in that, and then he’ll be done with it.”

Ryder won. And he wasn’t done. Turns out, the sport had lassoed the toddler. From there it was riding his first calf at 5, then steers to junior bulls to mini-bulls. In 2013, he won his first world title in mutton busting. In 2015, he captured world titles in bucking horses and mini bulls.

Watch Ryder Carpenetti on YouTube and you see a kid as cool as the backside of a pillow. He has a quick grin that gleams from beneath the long shadow cast by his big, black cowboy hat. While waiting for his next ride, he waits quietly. His demeanor seems more school play backstage than bull rider.

Once his protective gear is on – a helmet and vest mandated by the MBR (Mini Bull Riders Association) – he’s unflappable.

“He really doesn’t have any fear,” Frankie Carpenetti says.

“We have dirt bikes at the house, and he does jumps and all that. When he gets on the back of the bucking chutes, a lot of the kids are nervous. You can tell. We always have people say, ‘How’s he so calm?’ He just sits on the back of the bucking chutes and waits his turn. Nothing bothers him. He’ll find my wife in the crowd, and he’ll wave to her. The other kids, they’re back there shaking and stuff.”

Carpenetti added, “There’s times when I’m a little more nervous than he is. We go to a lot of big deals. The PBRs (Professional Bull Riders), the Built Ford Toughs (rodeos), you know. I guess I get a lot more nervous than he does sometimes. I guess my nervousness would be him getting hurt. He’s pulled the tendons out in his elbow a couple of times, aside from the normal bumps and bruises.

“But nothing bothers him. He’s in his own world right there. He’s getting ready to ride,” Frankie Carpenetti said. “He’s in his own zone. He just gets in there and rides”

Like any mother, April Carpenetti had the jitters, too. But now, her worries aren’t as great as when he plays youth football in Moody, as a running back and defensive back. On a recent Saturday, Ryder played a half day of football, then was on the road for a rodeo in Bessemer City, N.C.

“Any mom would be terrified,” she says. “But it’s just like anything. The more they do it, the more I feel comfortable. He had to move up in (weight class) in football. Right now, I worry more about him playing against bigger kids in football than I do about him rodeoing. I guess it’s just something he’s been doing so long that I’m comfortable with him doing it.”

At only 12, Carpenetti has drawn comparisons to the late Lane Frost. Frost, who won the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) Bull Riding World Championship in 1987 when he was just 24, was killed in the arena in 1989. To this day, long after his death, Frost casts an almost mythic shadow over the sport.

Gary Leffew, a member of the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and the 1970 National Finals Rodeo champion, is Carpenetti’s coach. He believes the comparison to Frost is on target.

“He’ll go wherever he wants to go,” Leffew said. “He’ll either be in the PBR or the PRCA. He’ll be in there somewhere where he’s a star. He’s like a young Lane Frost. He’s charismatic. People are going to know his name, wherever he decides to go.”

Leffew’s career offers a backstory to Ryder Carpenetti’s championship ride. Leffew is called “the rodeo guru” of positive thinking. Leffew finished 10th in the world in 1966, then hit a slump. As a new husband, soon with a baby on the way, Leffew worried more about making a paycheck than setting goals and visualizing how life could be for him and his family if he won. Worry beat down on him like a July Texas sun.

Then he read Maxwell Maltz’s 1960 bestseller – “Psycho-Cybernetics.” His thinking – and his career – took a turn

“Once I read that book, I just sat up in bed and laughed,” Leffew says. “I was 22 years old, and it was the first time anyone had explained to me how the mind works and that it can work for you or against you. (The mind) doesn’t care, it’s a piece of machinery. Whatever you program in, it will take and give it back to you. I realized I was a victim of my own thinking.”

Leffew also studied the style and technique of George Paul, who Leffew calls “the greatest bull rider I ever saw.” Paul, who tragically died in a plane crash in 1970, rode 79 consecutive bulls without being thrown. Paul was considered “the strongest man ever to ride bulls in professional rodeo.”

Studying Paul and diving into the workings of the subconscious mind, transformed Leffew’s career.

“That next year, I was third in the world. I rode the Bull of the Year his last ride. I came out in 1970 and won the world title and the National Finals Rodeo. Once I got into positive thinking, it took me three years to reach my goal of the world championship,” Leffew said. “During that period, I was no lower than third.”

And those who were skeptical of his positive thinking approach started to come around.

“(Early on), there was a lot of laughing. The first rodeo I went to at Denver in 1968, I was one point from the all-time record – 89 points – on a bull that had never been rode. I rode him like Patton for a dance. I was runner up for the championship. I went three months without getting thrown off. They were like, ‘This kid’s on to something’ They’d come around and ask, ‘What page was that on?’”

Now, Carpenetti is part of a stable of star pupils who have embraced Leffew’s power-of-positive-thinking approach. Leffew has mentored 19 world champions.

“What we teach is hyper body, quiet mind. Your heart will be pounding, your adrenaline will be running, which is good, but you want a quiet mind. A quiet mind operates at the speed of light. It processes a billion pieces of information per second. A hyper mind works a second at a time. You’d think a hyper mind works faster. It just screws things up. There’s no continuity, no timing, no flow. So, you have to get in a quiet mind state. You just focus much better.”

Carpenetti has that laser focus. Like other St. Clair County athletes, like Springville’s Casey Mize, the first pick in last summer’s major league baseball draft, and Odenville’s Dee Ford of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, Ryder has a dream.

“He wants to do bigger things,” April Carpenetti says. “We don’t make him go to any rodeos. We’ll be in the car on Friday afternoon after school, drive 12 hours to Dallas for a Saturday rodeo and drive back on Sunday to keep his points up.”

Therein is another part of the story. No competitor in any sport reaches a high level without a support system. Last year, the Carpenettis rolled up 56,000 miles traveling the rodeo circuit. And Ryder’s sister, Harley, a student at Moody Junior High, is a competitive cheerleader on a Birmingham-based squad. It’s not unusual for Ryder and his Dad to be traveling in one direction, April and Harley, 13, off in another.

A quick note: Before taking her talent in another direction, Harley Carpenetti excelled as a barrel racer, another competitive rodeo sport.

“We’re all over the place,” Frankie Carpenetti says.

Both Leffew and Frankie Carpenetti praised the young rider’s work ethic.

“He’s got persistence. He’s got goals set. He’s got a great support system. He’s got everything he needs to be a superstar. He’s a very focused young man and he’s a talented young rider. But he’s a gentleman. That’s one of the things we try to teach our kids. You can’t be too polite,” Leffew says. “You want to think about other people. You don’t want them to just say he’s a good rider, but that he’s a good young man, a role model for everybody who comes behind you. People don’t just judge you on how good you ride, but what kind of human being you are. Integrity.”

Says Frankie Carpenetti: “He’s just a humble kid. He doesn’t boast about anything he wins. You know he can go out there and win the world championship. He’s not out there boasting. He’s just as happy for the other kid who beats him one day. He’s just as happy for the kid who won the rodeo as he would be for himself. His sportsmanship is what makes me the proudest,” he says. “A kid can be bucked off and get mad and throw their helmet or something, and he’ll go back to the back and try to figure out what he did wrong. Then a few minutes later, he’s back to himself, out playing or whatever. That’s what makes me proud. And he’s got a real good work ethic. He’s up in the morning wanting to go ride the bulls.”

That integrity, that gentlemanly spirit, has captured the attention of corporate sponsors. The Lane Frost brand, owned by the late champion’s family, backs Ryder, as does Rodeo King hats, 100X helmets, Capri Campers, Flying P Farms and of course, Carpenetti’s Pizza, owned by Ryder’s grandfather, Frank Sr., and the family.

And Ryder and his family have also won the respect of Cirildo “Junior” Leal and his wife Lilly, who along with two-time Professional Bull Riding (PBR) champion Chris Shivers, own the Mini Bull Riders.

Born in 2010, the MBR began with 120 kids in Ogden, Utah, and has grown to an international sport, attracting competitors from Brazil, Canada, Australia and the United States. Kids ages 8 to 14 compete in the events, which emphasize safety, respect, sportsmanship and building confidence. Venues have included AT&T Stadium in Dallas, the Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas and elsewhere. In 2015, Professional Bull Riders became a presenting sponsor of the Miniature Bull Riders Association.

Junior Leal sports a bushy handlebar moustache and bears a striking resemblance to country singer Freddy Fender. He’s quick with a laugh. As the father of six daughters, he jokes “I’ve already got my ticket to heaven. I raised six girls.” And, it seems he and his wife Lilly have hundreds of sons – the bull riders like Ryder, who the website proclaims, are “the toughest little cowboys on the planet.”

Leffew calls MBR and its competitors “the future of the game.”

Cirildo Leal, whose day job is raising mini bulls and daily delivering feed for 200,000 head of cattle to ranchers from his home in Lockney, Texas, sees a world title or a National Finals Rodeo crown in Ryder’s future. For the Leals, Cirildo, Lilly and daughter Alysa – a family of faith – the MBR is a labor of love.

“He’ll be a PBR world champion or an NFR world champion … because he’s just got a lot of potential, and his parents really support him and take him, and the kid doesn’t give up. Sometimes he might get trampled on, but he just gets up, shakes it off and goes on. And he’s ready to ride again.”

Lilly Leal agrees. “Ryder is a super good kid. He’s always been super good. What you see with him is what you get. Ryder gets on a bull, and he’s businesslike, ‘Come on, I gotta do what I gotta do.’ ”

She adds, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ryder cry. Like I said, he’s tough, and he’s got super good parents and grandparents, all of his family.”

Ryder also has fans close to home, like Pell City steel executive John Garrison, a longtime fan of rodeo. He believes the sport is part of the “great Western experience” that helped make America great.

For Garrison, seeing young people like Ryder Carpenetti excel is an encouragement. Garrison studies different generations. Kids like Ryder give Garrison – a Baby Boomer – hope for the future. “Any time I see a young person that’s doing something special, I have a tendency to take particular notice of that young person because they’re doing something outside the norm. I think Ryder Carpenetti and Harley, his sister, are doing positive things. Ryder is making a mark in the rodeo world.”

Predictions of future greatness for Ryder are “spot on,” Garrison says.

“A young person who starts in that kind of sport, it’s remarkable that he comes from Alabama … a state not known for rodeo greats. That a young kid from Alabama can go out there and compete is just over-the-top amazing.”

He adds: “It’s a dangerous sport, and you get banged up now and then. He’s no doubt a tough kid and a hard competitor. As long as he stays healthy, I think he’s unstoppable.”

Talk to Ryder, and you hear the competitive fire of a cowboy who successfully rode all four bulls on the way to the 2015 world title at the Chris Shivers Bull Riding. But you also hear the heart of an 11-year-old kid, who likes to play Fortnite, ride dirt bikes, to play with the animals at the family home and who giggles at the names of some of the bulls he’s ridden, like “Butthead.”

 The reason he rides?

“It’s fun,” Ryder says. “I have a lot of friends that ride. When you get a good score, you win.”

And as the adults in this story have said, he is fearless.

“It’s fun to me. When I’m doing something fun, I don’t get nervous or anything.”

It’s important to note, too, that Ryder is an A-student. His lowest grade at the end of the last school year was a 96.5.

And as most kids will, he makes the complex – like riding a half-ton bull – a simple thing.

“You gotta stay on the front end,” he says. “Don’t lose your feet and keep your hand shut. I ride with my left hand shut and my right hand up. You can’t tell what a bull’s going to do. But when they open the gate, you have to stay on for a full eight seconds.”

When asked, he’ll talk about his world titles and the 50 bright belt buckles he’s won in competitive rodeo. And he’ll say he wants to win a PBR world title one day He says his world titles “mean a lot.”

 But while some talk about his boundless future. Ryder Carpenetti hangs his big, black hat on humility, like most kids his age would do.

“I don’t really care if I win. I’m happy if I ride for the full eight seconds.”

Somewhere, Lane Frost, the rodeo legend, is smiling. l