Workforce Development

Learning the job on the job

Story and Photos by Graham Hadley
Photos courtesy of Garrison Steel

When he was growing up, John Garrison’s greatest challenge was to work his way up from high school student to one day owning an industry-leading metal fabrication and erection company.

Today, that company, Garrison Steel, employs more than 200 people in Pell City.

Now he has a new challenge – finding skilled workers from a dwindling workforce to fill the jobs at his company, which has been responsible for the construction of buildings across the Southeastern United States.

So Garrison has come up with a plan to help his company and the workforce grow by building a training classroom at his facility.

The problem

For decades, people working in skilled trades, everything from metal fabrication to construction, plumbing to welding, were usually trained, almost apprentice style, by the previous generation.

But as the focus in secondary education turned more and more to two- and four-year college prep, fewer and fewer people were training in these essential skill areas, Garrison said.

That focus, combined with a general social impression that factory and construction jobs were dangerous and somehow less desirable than professional employment, has resulted in a serious drought of skilled workers at a time when the economy is expanding, particularly in this region, and exactly those trade skills are needed the most.

Existing skilled employees are gradually aging out of the workforce and, for the past couple of decades, few people have been stepping up to fill those positions — despite drastically improved work conditions and good pay, Garrison said.

“I am one of the last. My generation is the last of the people trained by skilled union laborers in our jobs,” he said.

Over the last few years, backed by the National Center for Construction Education and Research formed at the University of Florida, St. Clair business leaders like the Economic Development Council and education officials from Jefferson State Community College and the Pell City School System have made great strides in workforce development, offering high school and college students training in exactly those skills that are needed most.

And they did not do the work alone. Businesses across the board, from manufacturing and construction like Ford Meter Box, Goodgame Construction and WKW Automotive to medical offices and other companies have stepped into the partnership to provide the training and jobs for the students.

Taking the program in-house

From the beginning, Garrison and other industry leaders recognized they needed partnerships with local educators, both at the secondary and post-secondary levels — and they found exactly what they were looking for in Jeff State and the Pell City School System, he said.

Forming that partnership has been a struggle to get similar programs off the ground all over the country, but not in St. Clair, Garrison said.

While that partnership laid the foundation for initial job training — teaching students how to weld, construction techniques, OSHA safety standards and the like — the basic tools they would need to get their foot in the door after high school, Garrison wanted to take the process a step further.

“So in June of 2016, I asked Jefferson State to meet with seven area high schools to discuss a pilot program to take up to 25 high school students in dual enrollment and begin teaching out of the NCCER Ironworking curriculum. They all agreed and in January began the first ironworker program four hours per day, five days a week for 16 weeks,” he stated in a press release.

“Money for books and a classroom at Jefferson State Pell City for the first eight weeks was funded with Federal Perkins Grants, and the second eight weeks were at a newly built training center at Garrison Steel, where students learned theory and hands-on with welding, cranes, rigging, fabrication, oxygen and acetylene cutting, and much more.”

The first class finished up at the new facility at Garrison Steel as school wound down for the 2016-2017 year, and Garrison sees it as nothing but a great success and a huge step forward for the workforce development initiative he and the other business, education and industry leaders have been working toward.

“Our classroom is set up to do half theory and half practical. We integrate practical in nearly every day’s classroom experience, which breaks the monotony and adds to the connectivity in what they are reading.”

He said that appeals to students who are interested in learning the theory behind the work they are doing with their hands, but also is an ideal environment for those students who may not like a traditional classroom environment.

“Many kids don’t like book-work because they cannot see the connection between theory and practical. So, as a teacher this year, my goal was so that when they read, and there was a lot of reading, that we stopped often enough to see real-world applications and for them to connect.”

The only thing Garrison said they were not able to do this year, and that they will have next year, is a steel tower where students can practice and learn with safety and other rigging equipment in a real-world environment.

“The students will be training off the ground with safety equipment.”

What’s next

This is only the first step, for Garrison’s teaching center and for the students.

Now that they have cemented a relationship with local schools, he wants to reach out to people already in the workforce who have the skills training but not the theory behind what they are doing.

“This year our program captured those students who are available because they are in school. We have figured out how to utilize those students and train them. The next challenge for the fall classes is to figure out how to integrate what we call incumbent workers, those who are out there, already with jobs, sometimes at distant job-site locations, that have only the practical side of learning and virtually no theory to their learning.”

And those students won’t necessarily have to come to Garrison Steel or Jefferson State. Garrison has plans to use the Internet and distance learning to help train workers at their job sites.

The students have received their entry-level training this year, but there are many more classes and options available to them down the road.

“The theory is this — these guys who are going to graduate high school want to get out and get a job in the workplace, but that is just a start. In describing it, I try to play a movie in their head: ‘You get really good at what you know how to do skill-wise. Then you become capable of managing those skills of others, learning another new role in the company.’

“As the company grows, we need new managers. As time goes by, older guys like me age out, and we fill those positions from the bottom up. That is the theory, the process we tell these guys,” Garrison said. “We want them to be able to work all the way up to owning their own company one day.”

And as you learn one skill, more open up to you — in the workplace and in college.

“Just because you start out a welder does not mean you have to be a welder for the rest of your life,” he said.

“I have explained to my students that you know more technical aspects of our business than many of the people who have been working in the field for six years or more. They have a practical advantage over you, but you are learning the more challenging part, which is theory, and you will get the practical experience once you are hired.

“Now you have a distinct advantage over the incumbent workforce and have a pathway to higher positions later in your career.”

Payoff for students
and business

The move is not entirely altruistic. Garrison readily admits that having a skilled workforce at his disposal can save money and cut down drastically on job time. It also creates an overall safer work-site environment.

“The cost of labor is driving up the cost of construction. The cost of labor does not necessarily mean higher wages,” he said. The longer it takes to complete a job, the more expensive the project is.

“What a skilled workforce can do in three months might take an unskilled workforce four months to do. The problem is not a lack of workers; it is a lack of skilled workers.

Students who have enrolled in the program and are working for Garrison are similarly reaping the rewards of their efforts.

David Graves, who has previously talked about his experience at Garrison Steel soon after his graduation, has taken part in some of the classes and continues months later to move down the career path he has embraced.

“When he added the welding school, I took that. I was in processing before, now I am in welding, and that is going in the direction I want to be in,” he said.

“I want to learn more about fabrication, and welding is a step in that direction. …”

And it is the combination of classroom instruction and hands-on that is making all the difference.

“It really helps going through the class, giving you an understanding, but it won’t teach you to weld by itself. You learn that on the floor, learn from trial and error, grinding out your mistakes.”

Down the road, Graves hopes to move up to a supervisor or quality control position.

“There are classes for that at college. That opens doors like project manager.”

Matt McCrory is another employee who has benefitted from the multifaceted training program.

He has been at Garrison for two years now and has worked his way to an office position, lotting, where they break down the different design drawings into their components, which makes fabrication easier and more organized.

He originally took the welding course at Jefferson State and has continued his training at Garrison.

“That class helped me read the drawings. That is the biggest thing: Since I mostly read drawings, how things are applied, how they are used, how they are built,” McCrory said. “If I don’t know how to read the drawings, I can’t do my job.”

He plans on continuing to work at Garrison, but also sees more college in his future at Jefferson State, focusing on business administration.

“The lessons I have learned here will help in college,” he said, adding that he definitely has a better idea of what he wants his career path to be now that he has been in the workforce. Something he said was very much lacking when he was a senior in high school.

One graduate of the class, Alex Bowman of Pell City, is still in school but is already on the job.

Bowman is a 17-year-old who just finished his junior year and is working at Garrison Steel.

And he already can see his path ahead.

“I am looking at doing this for a career, definitely something as an ironworker with Garrison Steel,” he said, pointing to the owner as an example. “Seeing Mr. Garrison’s investment in us makes me want to work harder, to one day get to the level he is at. It’s very inspiring.”

Studying in the class and working at Garrison has been ideal for Bowman, who readily admits he is not a fan of traditional classroom environments.

“I am not very good in a classroom. You can learn the idea of what you want from a book, but hands-on, you actually learn how to do it,” he said.

And because he now has some certification under his belt, he has options.

“NCCER was a huge step up for us when it came to the ironworker program. It means, when you graduate, you have jobs waiting for you. Having your core training shows a lot of employers you have the ability and intentions to step up and get ahead in the game.”

Return on Investment

“I know for a fact that a one-dollar investment in training returns three in productivity. … It’s not altruism; it’s survival,” Garrison said.

He is quick to point out that he is not the only one investing in the program — support he could not have made the new classroom work without.

“Red-D-Arc Welders are a major contributor to our program with welding equipment donated. The additional supporters of our program are NUCOR Steel, Cobb Wire Rope and Sling, NEX AIR, and Lincoln Electric and Service Construction Supply (SCS),” he said.

Between that kind of support and the growing partnership with education, business and organizations like the EDC, Garrison sees a bright future for workforce development in St. Clair County.

Harry Charles McCoy

From the Heart

Story by Jackie Romine Walburn
Photos by Graham Hadley
Contributed Photos

Friends and co-workers describe Harry Charles McCoy as a hardworking, dedicated, humble, compassionate “gentle giant” with unfailing integrity, a man who started work at age 12 and whose determination and caring spirit helped him become an enterprising business man and highly-respected father, grandfather and community member.

The 68-year-old is probably best known in his hometown of Pell City for his infectious smile, a lifetime of helping others and being the longest-serving employee of Kilgroe Funeral, with more than 55 years on the job and counting.

Harry Charles was 9 when his father, Blois McCoy, died at the age of 37, leaving his mother, Josephine McCoy, with eight children to raise. Vowing to aid his mother, Harry Charles stepped up to help for the first of countless times, going to work doing odd jobs around town and at the Lee Motel, where his mother was employed.A 12-year-old Harry Charles was cutting grass at the motel when a friend of the Kilgroe family asked him if he’d like another job. “I said, ‘Yes ma’am.’ That was 1962, and I’ve been here ever since,” says Harry Charles.

Jane Rich Kilgroe vividly remembers meeting young Harry Charles when she came to visit her then-boyfriend Sonny Kilgroe at the family business, Kilgroe Funeral Home, run by her future father-in-law, Joe Kilgroe. “I couldn’t get over him being just 12 and working seven days a week,” Mrs. Kilgroe says of Harry Charles. She says he grew to be like a brother to her late husband Sonny, a caring companion to Sonny’s mother, Mrs. Josephine Kilgroe, and a bonified member of the Kilgroe family. “I don’t know how I would have made it through after Sonny died, without Harry Charles,” says Jane Kilgroe.

Even after Sonny’s failing health prompted the Kilgroe family to sell the funeral home business in 1991 – with a clause in the contract that Harry Charles McCoy would have a job as long as he wanted one – Harry Charles remains an important part of the Kilgroe family.

Through junior high and high school, Harry worked every day, even while playing football at St. Clair County High School. “And he gave all his pay to his mother for the family,” Jane recalls.

Harry Charles cut the grass at the Second Avenue funeral home and washed cars. Soon he learned how to put up the tents at gravesides and take them down. Some days he came late to the funeral home, walking the 2 miles from home or riding his bicycle, once he got one, at almost dark after football practice.

“Folks asked me about it, if it bothered me working at a funeral home or being here at night,” Harry Charles recalls. “It never has bothered me. I’d lost family myself, and that’s one reason why I think it’s important to do all you can, to do the best for the families, to let them know you care. It’s the final thing you can do for a family.”

About the time that 12-year-old Harry Charles started working at the funeral home, so did Barnett Lawley, who had also lost his father at a too-young age. “We were in the same shape, trying to work to help earn money,” say Lawley, who was a few years older. A quick, lifelong friendship resulted. “We were close good friends. We went hunting together, went to each other’s football games. Everything was segregated then, but we didn’t know or care.”

Lawley remembers when he, Harry Charles and Sonny Kilgroe would take the flower van – on a free day when there was not a funeral – and camp out together at Huckleberry Pond.

 Now, 50-plus years later, Lawley, a businessman who served eight years as Alabama’s Commissioner of Conservation and Natural Resources in Gov. Bob Riley’s administration, says his respect for his childhood friend has just grown. “I can’t put into words how much I admire him.”

Lawley calls Harry Charles an example “of what we all should be. He’s always hustling, working hard for his family and friends. He thinks about others first and is absolutely a leader in this community.

“Harry Charles is the kind of friend you know will always be there for you.”

Stories about Harry Charles’ determination, hard work and caring spirit come quick to those know him. There is the time when Harry turned 16 and Joe Kilgroe said, “Harry, you need to get your driver’s license,” and Harry Charles took off and ran to the courthouse and ended up taking his driver’s test in the state trooper car of the late Trooper George Gant, who insisted on paying the license fee.

Once he was 16 and had the license, Harry learned to do more and more jobs for the funeral home. “Mr. Joe told me that if I’d graduate high school, I’d always have a job, and I have,” Harry says with a grin. “They’ve been like family to me many years.”

He grew up side by side with Sonny Kilgroe, who was a few years older and taught Harry how to do most every job at the funeral home. “We were always working together. He helped me, and I learned a lot. Mr. Sonny was like my brother,” Harry says. Sonny died in 2015. “I’ll never stop missing him.”

It was 1986 when Harry Charles began opening and closing graves for the funeral home, first by hand, which was standard then. Former co-worker Terry Wilson, who now works at Ridout’s Valley Chapel at Homewood, recalls Harry Charles working a full day at Kilgroe, then going to hand dig a grave for a funeral the next day. “I’d go check on him, and it’d be dark, and he’d have the truck lights shining on him, still digging by hand, late into the evening.”

With time, Harry devised a way to use a trailer pulled behind his truck to smooth out the dirt before the service “because it bothered him for the families to see a pile of dirt,” Wilson says. Next, Harry Charles began using a ditch witch, then power equipment and today has a fleet of equipment – including three dump trucks and a tractor – and his own business opening and closing graves in St. Clair and other counties.

He’s built his own business, all the while serving others and having a love for what he does, for his community and for the families he serves, Wilson says. “He has the best attitude and work ethic. In my lifetime, I’ve never known anyone I respect more than Harry Charles McCoy.”

Another story revolves around one of those trucks, a low-mileage truck Harry found at a local dealership traded in by actor Jim Nabors, who needed a bigger truck for work on his sister’s nearby farm. “Harry always called that truck Gomer Pyle,” says Jane. “He still has Gomer Pyle.”

At the center of many Harry Charles stories are his concern and service to families being served by Kilgroe Funeral Home.

“When my stepfather died,” recalls Teresa Carden, “Harry Charles pulled my car around back and washed it while I was inside at the service, so my car would be polished in the procession. How awesome and thoughtful was that?” Carden adds, “He is sincere and hardworking to the core.”

Jane Kilgroe recalls that when she and Sonny were about to get married, Sonny was so nervous that Harry Charles packed Sonny’s suitcase for the honeymoon. “That’s how close they were,” Jane says.

Soon Harry Charles came to Mr. Joe and said he’d found himself a girlfriend, Jane says. Harry and Linda Sanders were married at the courthouse and soon began their family. Today, he and Linda, who is retired from working with the Kilgroe family at home and at Josephine’s antique shop, have 48 years of marriage and seven grown children.

They are Harry Lamar McCoy, who served 32 years in the military, is still in the reserves and works at ACIPCO in Birmingham; Sabrina McCoy Wilson, a school teacher in Michigan; Charles McCoy, who works at Norfolk-Southern Railroad, and Malinda Fomby, who works at DHR in Pell City. Also raised in the McCoy household and counted among their children are nephew Nicholas Dante McCoy, who works at Norfolk-Southern, and grandsons Javoan McCoy and Montez McCoy, who both work at ACIPCO, and granddaughter Shayla. He and Linda now also dote on a great-grandson and a great-granddaughter. The family attends Rocky Zion Missionary Baptist Church.

All in the family

Friends brag, too, about Harry and Linda’s family. “They taught their children a strong work ethic, good manners and to be respectful,” says Buddy Spradley, Jane’s nephew who taught McCoy children during his 20 years teaching elementary art at Iola Roberts Elementary School in Pell City. He adds, “And, Harry, he’s as strong as an ox, but his heart is even bigger.”

Working for Sonny’s Czechoslovakian mother, Josephine Bukacek Kilgroe, at her antique shop by the funeral home and the family home, Harry Charles needed that strength.

“We’d get truckloads of antiques at once,” he says. Lots of heavy lifting, setting them up, cleaning and polishing the furniture, “only with Johnson’s Paste Wax,” Jane adds.

Miss Josephine was a joy, Harry says. “I knew how she was and we got along very well.” Another Harry story friends tell was about the night Pell City’s power was out all over town and Harry Charles didn’t get an answer when he called to check on Josephine. He rushed to her house, and having a key she gave him, went in and found Mrs. Kilgroe on the floor with a broken shoulder, unable to move. “It scared him to death,” Jane recalls. “Josephine kept insisting she had to be moved. He called the ambulance and picked her up and laid her on the couch, this couch right here,” she says.

After the fall and surgery, Josephine, who was 86, had to go to a nursing home for rehabilitation, with 24-hour RN care.

Linda McCoy was there with her often, too. “She wasn’t happy at first until she figured out she saw more people in a day there than a week at home. Harry went to see her every morning – he had helped her with breakfast every day at home – and fixed her coffee like she liked it and began the habit of taking Josephine’s clothes to the dry cleaners because she liked nice clothes, and he continued to do that until her death in 2006 at age 94. Then the family and Harry and Linda did the work to close down Josephine’s antique shop.

Another Harry story Jane likes to tell is about how Harry built his family’s seven-bedroom home in Pell City from a one-room house owned by his grandmother and deeded to him along with 8 acres of land. Harry added on with every child, and today the home is filled with antiques from purchases or gifts from the antique shop and from broken or reject pieces that Harry repaired or refurbished or one of his friends did. There are cows and horses on the 8 acres now, too.

Today, Harry Charles begins his days checking on Jane Kilgroe. They are best friends, too, she says. They have breakfast and talk about their days, about old times, about Sonny, and Josephine and Joe, about Linda and their children, grandchildren and greats.

Jane Kilgroe, Barnett Lawley and many others in Pell City have longs lists of things Harry Charles did for them and the ways they admire him. For Harry Charles’ part, he says he enjoys “helping people and doing what I can for others.”

He says he believes “it’s an honor and great privilege to do for other people. My mother was that way, too,” he says. “She used to say if you can’t help, don’t hinder. I try to do my best for people. Helping is from the heart.”

Opry Lives on in Gallant

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Susan Wall

Late in the evening, about sundown,
High on a hill up above the town,
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, Lordy, how it would ring,
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing.

Bill Monroe’s Uncle Pen would have felt right at home at Old Valley House in Gallant. That’s where local bluegrass musicians gather for a monthly jam session every first Friday. With their guitars, mandolins, banjos and the occasional Dobro and fiddle, a stage-full of homegrown performers makes the rafters ring and the audience sing to old-timey tunes. Some of those tunes are mournful, some are spirited, but all are certified crowd pleasers.

Adron and Joyce Willingham and their son, Mark, turned Adron’s 200-year-old, four-room family home in Gallant into a tiny version of the Grand Ole Opry. They knocked out a wall between two of the rooms, built a small stage, brought in durable, hard-plastic chairs and a sound system. The people started coming. The music officially begins at 6 p.m., but the musicians start straggling in about 5:30 to tune up. The room seats 40-45 people. It’s free, and anyone is welcome to come and play, sing or just listen.

“Last month, there wasn’t even standing room,” Joyce Willingham says at the April event.

Although the venue is never referred to as a version of the Opry, the front of the main room bears an uncanny resemblance to its Nashville godmother. Three steps lead up to the small stage. In front of those steps, there’s a table with two- and five-pound bags of Martha White Flour, one of the longest-running sponsors of Grand Ole Opry segments. There’s even a fake microphone patterned after the real one in front of the Opry stage, only the Gallant version has the letters WAM printed vertically on each side. Any traditional country music fan worth his Ernest Tubb albums knows the Opry is broadcast by radio station WSM. Joyce explains. «That’s for Willingham, Mark and Adron,” she says. «They left me out.”

Her husband says this is the oldest house in the Greasy Cove valley. It’s where he spent some of his pre-teen years, until his family moved away. In 1964, he returned and bought the property. He built a house behind the old one. In 1989, he started the Friday night jam sessions. “We had one every Friday night for 10 years or more, then we stopped for a while,” Adron says. “We started back with every first Friday about 10 years ago.”

Old family (Willingham) photos and pictures of previous jam sessions line the walls of the main room, along with LP album covers and stringed instruments such as mandolins, guitars and dulcimers. A strand of Christmas garland laced with red and white bulbs drapes the weight-bearing ceiling beam between the stage and seating area. Overalls hang on what used to be an entrance door, while framed, original posters of shows by Hank Williams and Flatt and Scruggs hang on the wall behind the stage. Overhead, two ceiling fans are ready to stir the upcoming summer air, while 45 RPM records dangle from the ceiling.

 Regulars greet each other like the old friends and relatives they are. Light chatter goes on throughout the session, but it doesn’t seem to bother the musicians or other audience members. Most nights, five to seven musicians show up and sit in chairs in a semi-circle on the stage. Tonight, there are nine. Larry Battles plays mandolin. He has come to these jam sessions since they started. James Keener and Phillip Mulkey play several stringed instruments, while Mark Willingham plays guitar and banjo. Jerry Womble plays 12-string and six-string guitar. Most of the musicians are members of gospel and/or bluegrass bands. Mark and Phillip, for example, are part of The Backwoods Boys, a group that plays at churches and festivals throughout the South.

At the Old Valley House, they play classics such as, Nine Pound Hammer, Shotgun Boogie, Fireball Mail, Where the Soul Never Dies, Sweet Bye and Bye, and I Saw the Light. A few audience members sing along with them on the gospel songs.

Phillip Mulkey does vocals occasionally. He sits stage left, facing one of three microphones. When he sings, others join him, some providing vocal harmony, all doing instrumental backup. Someone yells out, “Do The Preacher and the Bear.” Keenor obliges, but can’t recall all the words. Some folks on the back row of the audience start a discussion about who recorded that one. A newcomer remembers it was Phil Somebody, but when she tries to Google it, she discovers the house is in ‘Cell Hell,’ with no service except in certain areas of its yard. (Turns out Phil Somebody was Phil Harris.)

Jesse Wright sits in for a short while, playing guitar. His wife, Alice, is in the audience with their two sons, Gavin, 3, and Garret, 7 months. The boys are clapping in time to the music. “That’s Daddy,” Gavin says to the stranger seated next to him. The stranger, also a newcomer, turns to his mom and says, “You know what’s missing?”

 “No, what?” Alice responds.

“A fiddle.”

“I play fiddle,” she says. “Just not tonight.”

A man in the audience shouts out, “Get That Wildwood Flower going on that banjo,” and the guys crank up an instrumental version of the old Carter Family favorite. Mark Willingham jumps in with his guitar to play the part Mother Maybelle Carter did on her trademark autoharp. “Hey, Phillip, let’s hear that new instrument you got,” someone else yells.

 “I’ll get it in a minute,” Phillip replies.

 Soon he pulls out a tiny, handmade instrument he found at a garage sale for $2. Neither he nor anyone in the audience knows what it is. It’s about the size of a mandolin, but its body is skinnier. He says it originally had 10 strings that he replaced with mandolin strings. He plays it like a mandolin, too.

At 7 o’clock, hats come off and the retired Rev. Darwin Cardwell blesses the food that people brought. One by one, folks stroll into the kitchen and chow down on pimiento cheese sandwiches, chicken-salad sandwiches, pigs-in-a-blanket, hot dogs, store-bought mini-cupcakes and homemade German chocolate cake. It’s like a church potluck, but with finger foods instead of casseroles. The small kitchen is cramped, with its wood-burning cook stove, cabinets, two tables laden with food and another with coffee and soft drinks. Iron skillets hang from the walls, and a shelf holds old clay crocks and a cookie jar.

After supper, Adron takes to the stage and channels Roy Acuff by singing Dust on the Bible and Wreck on the Highway. Adron’s brother, Rayburn Willingham, follows with The Great Speckled Bird, another Acuff number. Then the group breaks into, “Kaw-Liga,,” one of the last songs recorded by Hank Williams before he died in the back seat of a Cadillac.

Jerry Battles says his late father, Arvie, helped found these jam sessions. He points to a photo of Arvie on a table beneath one of the glass-enclosed guitars on display. “He lived for this Friday night,” Battles says.

More bluegrass, country and gospel songs spill out. The audience softly joins in on Build My Mansion Next Door to Jesus and In The Sweet Bye And Bye.” The repertoire tonight includes Old Rattler, Rocky Top, and Dueling Banjos,” before Vernon Bishop does his instrumental version of I’ll Fly Away on the Dobro.

Adron goes outside, then comes back in with an arm load of logs. During winter and chilly spring cold snaps, he keeps a fire going in the fireplace of the main room. Old-timers recall when homes like this were heated by fireplaces. «You’d stand facing the fire and fry your front, then turn around and fry your back,” one woman commented

“Hey, Joyce, remind me to bring those folks leaving now some bush onions,” Phillip Mulkey yells from the stage as a couple gets up to go.

“I got some, too,” Joyce answers. She explains to the newcomer that bush onions are like green onions, but are grown in the winter.

The April session breaks up at 9:15 p.m., about 45 minutes earlier than usual. Rev. Cardwell prays a dismissal blessing, asking God to see everyone home safely. Several “amens” follow his, and folks start drifting out in twos and fours. Already, they can’t wait for the next first Friday.

Generations of Business

Harbison’s Tire and Auto Service
Sylvia’s Birdbath and Beyond

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Graham Hadley

On the surface, automobile tires and motor oil have absolutely nothing in common with bird baths and concrete statuary. In Argo, however, they are the products of two independent, family-owned shops that share a similar history.

Harbison’s Tire & Auto Service is owned and operated by the Harbison brothers, who brought their dad’s 46-year-old shop to Argo from Roebuck in 2006.

Sylvia’s Birdbath & Beyond is owned and operated by Sylvia Johnson, who sold her grandfather’s concrete statuary at the Mini Market she and husband Jerry ran near Trussville before opening at her current Argo location.

Each business represents three generations of family involvement. Combined, they’ve been serving the people of east Birmingham and St. Clair County for almost 100 years.

The late Jack Harbison, a former airline mechanic, founded Harbison Automotive Service in 1960 in a two-bay Texaco service station in the Birmingham community of East Lake. He pumped gas for his customers and did small automotive repair services. He also washed cars, repaired flat tires and handled local road service duties.

Each of his four sons was introduced into the business during his teenage years, and three still run the place today. Their only sister, Charlotte, joined them in 1997 when she retired from a real estate career.

The business moved two times while in Birmingham, its last location being a six-bay repair shop in Roebuck. The Argo facility, located at 769 Highway 11, is a full-service, eight-bay auto repair shop and retail tire center operated like Jack Harbison taught his family.

“We care about our customers,” says Brandon Harbison, the oldest brother. “We take care of our customers’ cars as if they were our own.”

The Harbisons left Roebuck because their customers were moving toward Trussville and Springville, and business was going down. After the move, many of those customers began drifting back. “Some of them had died, but their kids are coming in now,” Brandon says.

He and his brothers, Frankie and Kim, are proud of the fact that Harbison’s was the fourth independent auto repair shop in the state to get a computerized tire machine, called a Hunter Revolution, that does not touch the wheel while removing or mounting a tire. “We got it two or three years ago,” Brandon says.

Ricky Harbison is the only brother who didn’t stay in the automotive business. A third generation is involved and may take over when his dad and uncles retire.

“My son, Brady, has worked with us for 13 years, since he finished automotive school at Walker State Technical College,” Brandon says. “His wife, Candace, will be taking over administrative duties when Charlotte leaves this Spring. She’s retiring to live near her grandchildren in North Carolina.”

Harbison’s waiting area doesn’t smell of oil and grease, and the seats aren’t torn from old automobiles. “We provide an attractive and comfortable waiting area for customers with television and free WiFi,” says Charlotte. “We always have coffee and doughnuts, too.”

One of the perks of working for Harbison’s is a home-cooked breakfast and lunch each day. When matriarch Juanita Harbison was alive, she cooked them in the shop’s full-size kitchen and break room, wearing a red apron embroidered with her nickname, “Ettamomma.” (The name was the result of a grandson who couldn’t pronounce “Juanita.”) It wasn’t unusual for customers in the waiting room to be invited to these meals. Since Mrs. Harbison died in 2015, Frankie has taken over breakfast duties, and Charlotte prepares the lunches. It’s up-in-the air as to who will take over lunch duties when Charlotte leaves.

“I’ve been trading here since they came to Argo,” says customer Bob Norcross, who sweeps the shop each morning to “earn” his breakfast. “They have a real combination of old school and new school, and they live by the first rule of retail, ‘Treat everybody like you would like to be treated.’ It’s the only place I’d let my wife take her car by herself.”

Harbison’s is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m., but has a key drop-box so customers can leave their cars after hours. Envelopes for the keys provide a place for customers to describe the service needed.

Another family legacy in Argo

Just as the center of Harbison’s business is family, the same holds true for another Argo mainstay – Sylvia’s Birdbath and Beyond. Sylvia Johnson’s sister, Hazel Harper, swears that if you were to cut Sylvia, the owner, she would bleed concrete. It’s because the material has been in her bloodline since her grandparents made concrete yard art in Maryville, Tennessee.

She and her husband, Jerry, ran Egg-A-Day, which became the Mini Market, on U.S. 11 between Trussville and Argo for 28 years. They sold the concrete yard art her parents made in a chicken house behind the convenience store. They shut that store down in 2004, then opened Sylvia’s Birdbath & Beyond at the intersection of the Argo-Margaret Road and Farm Lake Road. The name of her business was the suggestion of a customer.

“I bought my mom and dad’s molds, but I don’t cast anymore,” Sylvia says. “I buy from family members in Tennessee that still cast them and during road trips around the country. Casting is a hard job because of the weight, even though the pieces are cast in sections.” Jerry found some of the old molds in their basement, however, and may start casting ducks, pigeons and other small birds himself.

The giant painted, concrete rooster standing guard near one of her entrances has been Sylvia’s trademark for 40 years. Her aunt and uncle in Tennessee made him and two others. Sylvia sold one and gave the third to Hazel, who has cast a few pieces of concrete herself. “I’ve mixed it, poured it, took it out of molds,” she says.

Sylvia and Hazel painted the rooster, whose likeness appears on Sylvia’s business cards. “People stop and want to buy him, but he’s not for sale,” she says. “I have had two or three people say their mom has a photo of them on that rooster from when they were kids.”

The statuaries are displayed by theme, so the fairies, gargoyles and dragons are in one area, bunnies occupy another area, planters, picnic tables and fountains still another. You’ll also find a dog land, and a section devoted to elephants, tigers and other college team mascots. Her western section has steer skulls, horses and cowboys, while an occupational section features men in military uniforms, coal miners, pilots and police.

Scattered throughout the yard and spilling onto the driveway to her house (she lives next door) are gnomes, benches, crosses, stepping stones, concrete cacti, a small T-Rex, pet stones (for graves), a pink elephant and a 5’5” tall statue of Jesus. There’s also a small replica of Michael Angelo’s “David,” with a battered cloth fig leaf Sylvia added so customers won’t blush at the statue’s nakedness. “Everybody has to peek under that fig leaf, though,” Sylvia says, laughing heartily. Of course, there are several bird baths, and two shops of gifts and decor for inside the home.

Interspersed among the concrete yard art are plants in repurposed sinks and teapots, as well as traditional clay pots. The soft sounds of trickling water emanate from several fountains, and water plants thrive in the gaily-painted galvanized tubs Sylvia formerly used for live bait. “I was known as the ‘bait woman’ at the Mini Market and here, too, until 2015,” Sylvia says. “I stopped selling bait because my hours weren’t good for fishermen, who like to get up early.”

Sylvia’s Birdbath & Beyond is open from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, but people often stop and browse when she’s closed, Sylvia says. “The only time we’re open on Sunday is during our annual Mother’s Day sale.”

Big Head’s Bait Shop

A special store on the shore of Neely Henry

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

The front door of a nondescript building fronting US 411 near Ashville on one side and Canoe Creek on Neely Henry Lake on the other doesn’t prepare you for what you’ll find on the other side. The door swings open, and “Boss, AKA Big Head,” sits patiently waiting for your response.

It may be a gasp at just how big his head is – he’s a mastiff – or if you’re a dog lover, the natural instinct kicks in, and petting is surely on its way. At least, Boss seems to hope so.

Welcome to Big Head’s Bait Shop. Amy Jean Pruett owns it. But make no mistake about it, Big Head is the Boss. He’s everywhere. He swaggers around on four legs, checking out the customers. His face (the shop’s logo) can be spotted in any direction on anything that advertises the business.

But the real story stands behind the counter, Boss just plays a role in it.

In another life, Amy was operations manager for an investment company for 18 years. “I loved my job and the people I worked with. That was the hardest thing about doing this,” she said, motioning around the cozy bait shop full of mementos – signs and fish-themed knick-knacks people have given her.

She had a dream to follow, though, and when the bait shop went up for sale, she couldn’t resist the lure.

“I have been dreaming about this since I was 4 years old,” she said. “I was in an out of bait shops as a young girl with my dad. I loved the bait shop atmosphere … the stories … they were right up my alley.”

To the little girl, the fishermen were “laid back. I loved talking to all those old fellas,” she said.

She caught her first fish on Neely Henry, said her father, Paul Pruett, who helps out around the shop and acts as a fishing guide. And now she’s back where she started, barely over the toddler stage.

Originally, she thought she would open a bait shop on the coast, but “this place in particular tugged at me.” She had promised herself that before she was 40, she would have a bait shop to call her own. “Forty came and went, and I made peace with it,” Amy said.

Then, she was going to work one day and stopped to get gas across the street from the bait shop and noticed the ‘for sale’ sign. “I worked out a month and a half notice at the investment company,” and she headed toward living out her dream.

“I signed the papers on my 44th birthday. I laughed thinking about my 4-year-old self” and the promise she made about age 40. “I thought, she wasn’t too far off.”

That was a year ago. Now, Amy said, “I feel like I’m aging in reverse. I still wake up looking for my business clothes. I can wear a bathing suit now if I want to.”

She spent the early days figuring everything out and getting used to a newfound calm that has overtaken her, the slow pace of just selling bait over the demands of the investment world. Her greatest challenge in her new life was figuring out how to keep the bait alive.

“I felt like the mad scientist.” She rounded up old deep freezers people had thrown out, rigged up a thermostat for each, and the minnows seemed quite content swimming in the chill of winter in their balmy, 70-degree water. Her friend, Scott, helped with the thermostats for the tanks.

That’s not the only bait she sells. Check out the chalk board out front, advertising everything from the usuals – Shiners, Toughies, Night Crawlers, Crickets – to Rooster Livers and Live Shad. Don’t be fooled by her petite look. She casts for and catches the shad herself.

And don’t be surprised that a ‘girl’ in a typically man’s world knows her fishing. She encounters a few male skeptics at first. But it doesn’t take them long to discover “I know what I’m talking about. I tell them what to fish for, where to go, what to use, and they come back over and over again. My nephews think I’m the coolest now. They think it’s the most awesome place in the world.”

Her advice for others living their dream? “Don’t let it consume you. Set hours and stick by them. Get your plan together and stick by it. Listen to your customers’ suggestions, but don’t feel like you have to have everything all at once. Every day is a learning experience—learn.

She’s quick to point out that she hasn’t done it all on her own. She talks about the help and encouragement from her dad who works with her, her friends – Shelby Little and Shane Moland — who help out on weekends – and then, there’s Boss.

“He really saved me,” she said. A friend had texted her the photo of this giant rescue who had been in a crate for six months, and she set out to Bardstown, Kentucky, to claim him. “When I saw his face, I just knew I had to have him.” She was going through a difficult time in her life, and “he motivated me. He got me out of my funk.”

Together, they run quite a booming bait business and seem to savor every minute of it.

What’s the next dream? “By 50, I want to catch an alligator with The Swamp People,” she said, noticing an episode flash across the TV. “I’ll be 45 this month. I guess I better get on the ball, huh?”

 

Big Head Bait Shop
Big Head Bait Shop
114 photos

Living on the Lakes

There’s a saying around these parts: “You never know how many friends you have until you own a lake house.” It’s true. The water seems to have a way of drawing people in, and Realtors on Logan Martin and Neely Henry know why.

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
and Michael Callahan

There’s a saying around these parts: “You never know how many friends you have until you own a lake house.” It’s true. The water seems to have a way of drawing people in, and Realtors on Logan Martin and Neely Henry know why.

With thousands of acres of water forming their back yard, both lakes are hot properties for housing. From cabins to mansions to everything in between, Logan Martin and Neely Henry Realtors say they have just the right spot to fit any lake lover’s budget.

The best amenities, of course, are of the natural kind.

“The crappie fishing is great on Neely Henry,” said Realtor Lyman Lovejoy of Lovejoy Realty. “And it’s a scenic lake. There are some places with high rock cliffs that are more than 100 feet high. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

He noted that Neely Henry is not a flood control lake like Logan Martin, so levels stay the same all year long. “It never floods. You can build right next to the water.”

If he had to rate it, Lovejoy said buyers can find a “pretty good lot” at $65,000 and a “good lot” at $100,000. Lovejoy Realty has just opened a new subdivision on Neely Henry in the Canoe Creek area, Canoe Harbour. Located on the grounds of an old Baptist camp, it has 40 lots for sale – 10 off water and 30 waterfront. They are level lots with deep water, and part is on a peninsula with water views from both sides.

While Neely Henry is not as developed as Logan Martin, it does have its advantages – less crowded, being one of them. “You can be at Publix in Rainbow City in 10 minutes. You can go by boat to restaurants like Top of the River and have dinner.” He also noted that the new Canoe Creek Park opening this summer will be an asset, which will give more public access to the lake, will be state-of-the-art and will bring more major fishing tournaments to Neely Henry.

“Neely Henry’s the best kept secret in Alabama, and that’s the truth,” Lovejoy said.

Logan Martin isn’t as much of a secret, according to Realtor Dana Ellison with LAH. Development has been ongoing over the years.

Ellison has been selling real estate on the lake for nine years and knows the value in the investment there. “I’ve helped buyers, listed homes, helped stage, I’ve done it all. I love working with buyers,” she said. Many of her lake buyers are retirees who have moved out of Jefferson County who want to “live where they play, that’s what they tell me.”

She sees more and more Georgia buyers, who find Logan Martin closer and more easily accessible than lakes in metro Atlanta. “Logan Martin is that happy medium between Georgia the mountains and the beach, and it’s more affordable than Lake Martin, Smith Lake and Lay Lake,” she said. “You get more bang for your buck.”

She noted that interest rates are still relatively stable, and this is a good time for those looking to buy a home on the lake.

The bestselling price range she is seeing is in the $375,000 to $500,000 range, she said.

Ellison encouraged would-be homebuyers to get pre-approved. “It speeds up the process much more quickly. In 45 days, you can close and enjoy the summer.”

Broker and owner of ReMax Hometown Properties in Pell City, Sharon Thomas, agreed. “If financing is needed, get pre-qualified by a lender before starting the search. Do your homework. Decide what part of the lake you want to live on and what amenities are important.” Her advice can apply to both lakes. “Try to use local sources that are experts on lake property. Choose a local Realtor and use them as your resource for all your lake home purchasing needs.”

Thomas has seen her share of markets during her 17 years as a Realtor. “As recovery continues from the recession, not only lake homes but residential homes as well, are steadily increasing in value. We are seeing the market normalize,” she said.

Pricing can go from $170,000 to more than $1 million on Logan Martin. “In the past six months, I have more and more homes in the $400,000 range.”

But, she added, “There are still homes on the lake available in the $250,000 to $350,000 range.”

Lot prices vary according to location and size and whether or not there is year-round water. “I have seen them as high as $350,000+ on Lake Logan Martin.”

If you’re selling a lake house, Thomas offers this advice: “Declutter your home. Pack away things you don’t use. Spruce up flower beds and give it curb appeal. Touch up paint or repaint, whichever is needed. To get top market price for the home, the home has to be move in ready.

“Spruce up the waterfront and make it appealing. Many people see their dream home while riding in a boat!”

Josh Kell, a 12-year veteran Realtor at Kell Realty, knows the value in a lake home. His company is developing a subdivision on Neely Henry called Willow Point as well as maintaining a number of listings. Willow Point is a lakeside neighborhood of garden homes – smaller lots, less to manage. But even though they are smaller, they are approved for boathouses, he said.

Willow Point originally had 30 lots but only a handful remain. A new construction house in Willow Point is listed at $269,900.

What draws would-be lakeowners to Neely Henry? Kell said one of the main benefits is the consistency of the water level. He also noted that the southern end of the lake in St. Clair offers large, open water that particularly benefits recreation.

And, of course, “there’s very good fishing.”