A Unified Vision

Pell City schools setting example with workforce development

Story by Graham Hadley
Photos courtesy of Pell City School System

When it comes to preparing high school students for entry into the workforce, the Pell City School System is doing everything it can to stack the odds in its students’ favor.

Part of that process is the system’s continuing partnership with the St. Clair Economic Development Council, Jefferson State Community College and local businesses in a regional workforce development initiative, but a large part of it is the result of the system taking internal measures to embrace a broader view of the role of education in students’ lives.

“The key to it is having a team of people who can get information to the students because they hear about college and they hear about jobs, but they do not have a working knowledge of the steps they need to take to get a good job or a career,” said Pell City Schools Curriculum Coordinator Kim Williams.

“The second part of it is the training opportunities that go along with those jobs. Just having a team that can provide the knowledge to those students is essential.”

The efforts have paid off, not just for students and the school system, but for the community, especially for businesses and industries hungry for a well-trained workforce.

Danielle Pope, one of the Pell City High School teachers focusing on workforce training, said the success of the program did not happen overnight — it was a steady progression over the past few years.

“We went from what was originally called co-op classes to paid internships, and the process continues to progress,” she said. “The community has really gotten behind what we are trying to do. We have about 60 community partners between apprenticeships and internships.

“And we keep getting better quality internships that are more career-track based. It lets the students look at more long-term options.”

Many schools have some form of career prep, with a later focus on admission to a four-year college.

“Most schools do career prep in the eighth- and ninth-grade — but it is not very relevant to students at that age. Then for juniors, the focus is on college, looking at things like the ACT test and how to get their scores up,” Pope said.

And both Pope and Williams said college prep is still a very important part of the curriculum at Pell City, but they also are making career prep a priority to provide options for all students post graduation.

“We have AP and online classes – we have a strong core academic offering for that. The classes we have do a good job preparing students for four-year college. And we have a plethora of students following that path,” Williams said.

“But our data points to 40 to 45 percent of our students will finish their first year of college – that’s on track with data for the rest of the state. That leaves 55 percent of students who need a viable pathway to a career. They need to find a good career, and that happens through two-year colleges, career centers or workforce development.”

According to the other partners in the training programs, Pell City’s efforts have been an unqualified success, with students placed in every branch of the regional workforce, from medical offices to major construction and industrial companies.

Williams said their program worked because of the level of commitment from everyone involved as the system implemented and continues to implement more and more job-training options into the curriculum.

“Success comes from the top. Superintendent Dr. Michael Barber has been completely supportive in these programs. … Dr. Barber and the school board have been very supportive in letting us explore ways students not going into formal post-secondary academic settings can get jobs,” she said.

“There was a big push in Alabama for workforce development, with big bond issues from the state focusing on that. … Then, as far as the Pell City community goes, we have had business leaders all saying we need a skilled workforce, skilled training programs in our area to meet workforce demands.”

And those leaders have been more than willing to help put Pell City students to work.

“Then we have the EDC recognizing that need and working with David Felton, program coordinator and advisor at Jefferson State’s Manufacturing Center,” someone Williams and EDC Assistant Director Jason Roberts credit as being a key player in coordinating the community college’s role with all the other participants.

“We have all these entities in the community recognizing this need, and the school board and superintendent recognizing the need. If you don’t have key leadership positions buying in behind the program, it won’t be a success,” she said.

The other side of that are the hands-on educators and staff in the system like Williams and Pope who make the classes and programs work and continue to grow. 

“We have a career coach this year, Shelley Kaler. Our counselors have a lot on them administratively – testing, college applications and all the other essential ways they help our students every day. So, Shelley is devoted to helping students figure out what they want to do — especially students who do not know what they want to do,” Pope said.

“She is singularly focused. I think having someone on board who can help students in that one way is very important,” Williams agreed.

Pope added that Kaler’s position is particularly helpful for students who may not be on a four-year college path.

“She has taken a lot of those kids and said, ‘Let’s get you in a place that has benefits and good pay, where they can start building a career.’ Those are often places that also have tuition assistance for students who may want to explore post-secondary education options while they work,” Pope said.

In addition to that guidance and classes that can help students graduate with certification in everything from welding to medical fields, the school system also goes the extra mile to put the students together with the people who will eventually be hiring and training them.

Pope has spent years attending meetings and conferences, making the connections with business leaders, getting their feedback on what they expect from graduates looking for work and also convincing those leaders to take a more hands-on role in the education process.

“This year we are trying to figure out a way for students to get in contact with people in different industries. We did do a traditional job fair for seniors, but we also had career discussions in the medical, construction, industrial, city government and public safety fields with those leaders, including the city manager, police and fire chiefs,” Pope said.

“Partners would come in and have a panel, tell how they got where they are. Students could ask questions — and our students did a really good job asking questions, and they could stay after and talk to the panel participants.”

The students also got the opportunity to do mock interviews with the employers who might be doing the real interview one day. That was so successful that the school actually had one student hired from a mock interview.

Pope said the response from the students has been positive. But, just as important, the partners have also been impressed with the students and the efforts the school is making.

“The feedback from the representatives who came was positive. They kept saying, ‘I did not have anything like this when I was in high school,’” and they wished they did, she said.

“Between 20 to 30 business reps took part this year, with juniors and seniors taking part from the school. We got a lot of good feedback from people in the community — people who want to do this.”

The school system has been focusing in the highest demand areas: industry and manufacturing, construction and medicine. But they are continually adding classes, with pharmacy tech, information technology and other areas becoming more in demand.

And because of partnerships with Jeff State and local businesses and a program initiated by the state that allows people like firefighters or accountants to become educators certified to teach their specific areas of expertise, many of the classes being taught can lead to some level of skills certification at graduation.

“We had six students pass their pharmacy tech certification at the end of the year this year,” Williams said.

“It has been a team effort,” Williams said. “Jeff State has the resources to supply the training. Businesses have the need. The EDC looks after the overall economic health of the community. The superintendent and the board support our programs,” she said.

“Everyone is on the same page, sharing the same vision.”

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.”

Bowlin Bluff House

On A Clear Day You Can See Forever

Story Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

When Todd and Liz Wheeles went house-hunting, they looked for something off the beaten path. They found it in a small hunting cabin on 115 acres atop Bowlin Bluff, a place so remote even the mail carrier and the garbage man have trouble getting to it.

“We have a post office box, and we carry the garbage out as we leave,” Liz says. “We often have to keep friends on the phone and guide them in or meet them at the bottom of the hill and drive them up.”

The only way in or out is via a dirt road that’s best traveled by truck or an all-terrain vehicle. The drive is worth the effort, though. The view at the top is breathtaking.

The house sits 30 feet from a granite bluff that’s about 1,070 feet in elevation. From their deck, the Wheeleses can see Bald Rock Mountain eight miles away. As for the sunsets, “breathtaking” doesn’t come close to describing them.

“The sunsets up here are spectacular,” says Todd. “But we enjoy the deck any time of the day, whether it’s coffee in the morning, wine in the afternoon, or whiskey by the night fire.”

By knocking out a side wall and adding a 30-by-20-foot den, gutting the kitchen and both downstairs bathrooms, then extending the back porch to wrap around the new room, they turned a cabin with a view into a cozy home with ample space for a family of six.

The original cabin had a small living room and eat-in kitchen when the Wheeleses bought it a year ago. Floors throughout the house were covered in mismatched linoleum, there was a small chimney and window on the side wall, and a small deck off the kitchen. “There were deer heads hanging everywhere,” Liz says. They replaced all the flooring with natural hickory, added wainscoting upstairs and painted every room in the house.

 Integrity Cabinets of Ashland built new kitchen cabinets and all the bathroom vanities out of solid hickory. The couple chose Integrity because Todd is from Ashland and went to school with its owner, David Williams. The countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms are made of granite. Removing the side wall opened up the kitchen to the new den and created a large dining area between them. Edison lights hang over a 10-foot long dining table and matching benches made of salvaged pine by The Vintage Station of Bessemer. The table’s length allows plenty of seating for Todd, Liz and their four children. “Thanksgiving, there were 11 of us here, and we didn’t take up half the table,” Liz says.

Todd wanted a larger shower in the master bathroom, so they closed up a tiny laundry closet in the kitchen that adjoined the master suite to get some extra space. They used re-claimed tin tiles for the bathroom ceiling.

The side wall they removed had one small chimney, but the house now has two. They stand back-to-back, in the den and on the deck behind it. Both are constructed of hand-laid, stacked stone. They share the same foundation, but the one in the Great Room is a wood-burning fireplace lined with firebrick, while the outside fireplace is a firebox with a stove-pipe chimney.

Although Liz got help with furniture selections and decorating from Cindi B. Jones of Savvy Shoestring Interiors, the two leather sofas in the den were Todd’s idea. The two mission-style arm chairs at the front window came from Liz’s father’s house in New Orleans, and an antique dining chair that belonged to her great-grandmother is placed next to the fireplace.

The fox skin hanging over the chair was Todd’s whimsical purchase from a shop near Gulf Shores. Jones helped Liz find the wing chair placed at another window, some lamps, side tables and art work. The den has a tongue-in-groove pine ceiling with cedar beams.

The stairs to the second floor were rebuilt using hickory treads and pine kick plates.

Upstairs, the Wheeleses added pine tongue-in-groove wainscoting, stained the same color as the woodwork throughout the house. All of the beds there, as well as the king-size bed in the master bedroom downstairs, were made out of reclaimed wood by The Vintage Station of Bessemer and have solid wood frames.

One child’s bed has a horizontal headboard made with random-length wood planks, some stained to match the woodwork, others painted white. In another child’s room, the headboard is made with a wood frame and tin inserts from an old church ceiling and is painted white. A third headboard is a reclaimed door turned horizontally. The upstairs bathroom ceiling is made from more reclaimed tin tiles, and its shower curtain has a deer motif. “We wanted the look of a log house without having to build one – a house with a woodsy feeling inside,” says Liz.

Sentimental family heirlooms add to the charm of the upstairs, too. Liz used a table that belonged to her dad in one child’s bedroom, and another of her great-grandmother’s dining chairs in another. A metronome that used to sit atop her grandmother’s piano rests silently on a window sill. Despite the fact that the sun comes up at the front of the house, it bathes the back of the house in a soft glow that penetrates the upstairs window panes. “The kids love it,” Liz says.

Because of the children, Todd and Liz did not want the upstairs shut off from the downstairs. So, their contractor, Rick Layfield of Rick Layfield Construction in Ashville, solved that problem by leaving the end of the hallway open to the Great Room. Layfield framed heavy-gauged wire with pine so the kids can see into the room below, without falling over or through the railing. He repeated that same type of structure as an extension of the stair rail at its bottom end, and again around the deck.

“We wanted the house to blend with its surroundings, so we painted the outside a mossy green,” says Todd. Layfield matched the cement-board siding outside and the metal roofing that was on the original house to extend around and over the room addition. He also built a small step porch in front and another, gated set of steps off the front of the deck.

Plastic chairs adorn the deck until the Wheeleses can decide what they want permanently. Meanwhile, they have to stack the chairs and place them against the house when not in use because the wind is so strong on the bluff that it will carry loose, lightweight furniture down the mountain.

“We are on a ridge, almost like a peninsula,” Todd says. “I’m a map guy, and in my topographical map book, the mountain we’re on is called Backbone Mountain.” Todd used that same map to chart the winding paths of the two trails he had bulldozed through the property, which come in handy when he and his son and their friends want to hunt.

Unfortunately, the trails don’t connect. “It’s so steep and rocky, we’d have to cut through someone else’s property to connect them,” he says.

Dayspring Dairy

Sheep-shearing, cheese tasting at Alabama’s only sheep dairy

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Susan Wall

It was like a cross between a fiber-arts convention and a school field trip. Some came for the free fleece, some to see the sheep, others to taste the cheese.

Sheep-shearing is an annual January event at Dayspring Dairy in Gallant, but this year was the first time it was open to the general public. “It gives us exposure and drives traffic to our products,” said Ana Kelly, who, along with husband Greg, opened Alabama’s only sheep dairy in 2013.

Their products are the cheeses, dips and caramel spreads that they sell at farmers’ markets in Birmingham (Pepper Place), Atlanta (Piedmont Park) and Huntsville (Madison City), and at their small farm store by appointment — or when someone drops by and tracks them down in the milking barn. Many people at this year’s event were regular customers from Birmingham who wanted the back story to the Dayspring products they buy. “Millennials want to know who makes their food and how the animals are treated,” Ana says. “About 150 people showed up. It was a great success.”

The Facebook “open house” invitation said 9 a.m. – 2 p.m., and by 9:30 cars and trucks were lined up on both sides of Dogwood Road to its intersection with Gallant Road. Both the barn and the small farm store quickly filled up with gawkers and tasters. Folks were wandering around the farm, some going into the pasture where the sheep, who were too young to be shorn, alternated between cuddling up to their visitors and cavorting like grade-school children at recess.

Folks had cameras around their necks and children in tow. The sounds of sheep bleating and chickens clucking mixed with the squeals of delighted children, while a shaggy white great Pyrenees strained on his chain in an effort to get some of the attention. Pecorino, Pec for short, has to be restrained around visitors until he learns some manners, such as not jumping up on people. Two other great Pyrenees, Brie and Camembert, were friendly but not as rambunctious.

Visitors came from Birmingham, Leeds, Pell City, Jasper, Calera, Madison, Goodwater, Atlanta and who knows where else, many of them spinners, weavers, knitters and crocheters who volunteered to help so they could get a share of the wool. They had to make their way past the farm store via a dirt path, carefully stepping over the cattle grate left behind by the former farm owners.

In the barn, the unsheared sheep waited their turn in a holding pen, temporarily crammed together so tightly they looked like a sea of fleece with bobble-heads. From there, Alex Bowen, a 17-year-old home-schooled kid who works part-time at the dairy, pushed them into a line between a wire fence and the back barn wall, then into a tip chute. The latter is a wooden platform with a side that drops so the shearer can grab them. The ewes strained against the fence, confused by all the commotion.

Daddies hoisted their toddlers onto their shoulders for a better view of the shearing process that took place in a large stall. Nibbleton Fuzzy was one of the “victims,” and master shearer Stuart Mathews wrestled her to the ground on her back, using his legs to hold her in place. Once shorn, a brown spot was revealed on her back. Close examination convinced Greg Kelly it was lice. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. He tossed out Nibbleton’s fleece, and that of several other sheep that turned up with lice. One of the volunteers said that sheep lice won’t affect humans, and will die when the wool is cleaned in hot water, but no one really wanted to deal with it.

What’s in a name?

“I name them when I have a reason to,” Greg said, when asked whether he named each of the sheep. “Valentine was sickly when she was born, and we raised her at the house and she turned around on Valentine’s Day, so we named her Valentine.”

Eager volunteers hung on the door of the shearing stall, ready to grab their share of fleece. They laid it on a piece of wide-web pasture fencing stretched between two metal saw horses, where they picked out debris. A large pile accumulated beneath the makeshift “screen” as dirty pieces dropped through the holes. The good stuff was packed into garbage bags to be taken home, washed, carded and spun or woven.

“It’s not the best wool,” Greg said. “These are dairy sheep, they aren’t raised for their wool.” So, why shear them in the first place and why in the dead of winter instead of spring? “I should get a sign made,” he said, with a roll of his eyes that told you he’s answered that question umpteen times already. “Almost all of these are pregnant, and it makes for an easier birth,” he explained. “By shearing them in January, it allows them to re-grow their wool before the biting insects appear in the spring. The winters here are very mild, but this is also done this time of year in the North. We leave about 1 inch of wool, which is enough to keep them warm.”

After shearing, Greg and Jimmy Mays, who helps out on shearing and lambing (birth) days, dragged each ewe into a hammock against the wall, where they trimmed their hooves and vaccinated them. Everett Kelly, 14, son of Ana and Greg, prepared the syringes. The immunization is passed on to lambs in colostrum.

The spotless milking parlor is in the barn, where milk is pumped from the ewes and flows through stainless-steel pipes into the cheese-making room. That’s where Ana shines, and where daughter Sofia, 10, often helps by putting labels on the packages.

There was no milking or cheese-making going on during shearing time, but there was plenty of tasting and buying. Lilly Poehler, the Kellys’ goddaughter, helped out in the farm store, frying and browning tiny squares of the farm’s Halloumi, a Mediterranean-style cheese. Folks were leaving with sacks full of cheeses, dips, jellies and a caramel sauce that’s a lot like the milky-rich Dulce de Leche so popular in South America. Cheese with names such as Ewetopia, Shepherd’s Tomme and Angry Ram (a hot pimiento cheese) also jostled in their sacks, along with packs of Halloumi the Kellys gave away because their sell-by date was so close.

In another life

Prior to buying their 33-acre farm in 2011, the Kellys knew no more about sheep or cheese-making than their visitors. The family lived in Birmingham, where Greg held a high-pressure IT job. Ana, a trained chef, had worked in the test kitchens at Southern Progress, then became a freelance food stylist after Everett was born. A few years later, they adopted Sofia from Colombia. They grew tired of suburban and corporate life and wanted something different. After visiting a goat farm in North Alabama to sample the cheese, the idea of becoming cheese-makers was born.

“We had a feeling we just wanted to start some type of cottage industry,” Ana said. “We had taken a little trip and stopped at a cheese-making plant in Elkmont. We discovered that they didn’t raise goats there, but bought the milk to make their cheese. We figured we could do it better by raising our own animals.”

There was already lots of good goat cheese being made here in Alabama, according to Ana, and cows were too big a leap. “Sheep are docile creatures,” Greg said. “They don’t smell, either. Sheep produce less milk than goats or cows, but its milder and richer.”

Greg trained at the Sheep Dairy School in Wisconsin, while Ana studied with cheese makers in Kentucky and Vermont. “He focused on the animals, and I focused on the cheese,” she said. Greg also went to shearing school in South Dakota. Why so far away? “Do you know of any shearing schools in the South?” he quipped.

Dayspring’s milk production resulted in 8,000 pounds of cheese last year, and the Kellys are shooting for 10,000 pounds in 2017. Their flock is a cross between East Friesian, the dominant dairy-sheep in the United States, and Gulf Coast Native, a breed that has adapted and thrived in Florida since the Spaniards brought their ancestors here in the 15th century. Lambs breed between the age of one-and-a-half and two years, and have a five-month gestation period. All the babies are born within a very busy, one-month window from mid-February to mid-March. “We had about 150 lambs born last year, and will probably have 200 this year,” Ana said.

Most of the boys will be sold, and eventually, the girls that don’t produce much milk will go, too. “We keep a milking flock of 100-125, but we may end up with 80-100 this year,” Ana said. “We have three to four rams, and each can cover 25 ewes, which only come in season one time a year.”

Their sheep graze all seasons on pasture untouched by pesticides or commercial fertilizer. The sheep are never given hormones, and the Kelly’s believe this combination makes healthier cheese.

“We milk our ewes from February through September, which provides subtle flavor changes throughout the milking season depending on the grasses growing in our pastures,” Ana says. “The rolling pastures of our land, along with our mild climate, give our cheeses a sense of place.”