Tag: Features

One PCHS graduating class, lots of talent

Story by Graham Hadley
Photos from Jim Tollison, Chad Richey, Adam Miller

Billions of dollars — money in the ten-digit range — is an astronomical sum, by any standards.

For a group of three close friends from St. Clair County, though, it is all in a day’s work. In fact, they are not only all from St. Clair County, they all graduated from Pell City in the same year — PCHS Class of ‘92.

Jim “Jimbo” Tollison is a vice president and the Talladega Branch manager for Alabama Farm Credit. Chad Richey is a senior vice president with a CFP designation from the Board of Certified Financial Planners and is working as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch and as senior resident director for their office in Birmingham Southeast. And Adam Miller is an underwriting team leader for Regions Bank.

Though all of these men are very successful in the financial world, every single one of them cut their teeth in very different job markets: Chad working for his father’s timber company. Jim worked on his family farm and with his dad working on heavy machinery, then he and Adam ended up working for Rock Wool Manufacturing — a large insulation company in St. Clair.

And though Chad had an interest in finance, none of them really had any idea they would end up in top financial positions, and certainly not as quickly as they did.

All of them were what can conservatively be called “free spirits” in high school, and not everyone was even sure they would go to college.

“When Jimbo and I were young, we would run up and down I-20 as fast as we could go. You might not have thought we would be doing this today,” Chad said.

Chad Richey
“I grew up working for my dad in the excavation business, working heavy equipment since I was 14 years old. That will put a work ethic in you,” Chad said. He had always had an interest in finances, but getting from working in timber to what he likes to think of as a financial and investment educator had its pitfalls.

He got his degree from Birmingham-Southern College and was ready to work for Merrill Lynch.

“I went and took a test and they told me I was not qualified,” he said.

So he went back to work for his father’s company. “I was on a business call and ran into a guy from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, he said come by and see if we have a job for you.”

As part of that process, Chad found himself in New York City in August 2001 — at one point at the top of the World Trade Center.

“I come home, go to work on Tuesday, and see those buildings come down. I cheated death. That is when I decided to get my priorities right and stop acting like Jimbo (Tollison) and I did when we were young. You only have a small time on the planet,” he said.

He knuckled down on his work — and he also settled down. “That is when I called up my, now, wife Janet. We got together and now we have three kids, Jack, 11; Robert, 9; and Guy, 5.

He tapped into his blue-collar work ethic instilled in him growing up — he still does — and things started moving his way.

“It’s a good upbringing. I come into this office and put a blue-collar attitude into it. I come in here and I work. In the beginning, I started out working late — it drove my wife crazy. I would come home around 9 at night. I was doing all these cold calls, it was hard work.

“Then I came over to Merrill Lynch running a small office, a starter job. Then I came here. I used that blue-collar attitude and it has served me well,” he said.

His office serves thousands of households and handles billions of dollars in investments.

“I have a big job at Merrill. I am not only a financial advisor on a team, I am the senior resident director of the office. I supervise every employee in this place. My team gives advice on over $240 million in assets, and my supervisory responsibility is around 3.3 billion in assets.”

The other half of his work, Chad sees himself as something of a financial guide for his clients.

“I was always intrigued by the way money works. I did not know what I wanted to do, but I was also good with people. That is perfect for what I do. I want every family to have a family financial strategy for the future,” he said. “The way I can make a difference in the world is to teach people to go out and save up enough money on their own without the government having to take care of them.

“That’s what keeps me going. You have to have a higher purpose, you can’t just come in here and charge people to make them money.”

Eventually, because of the commute from Birmingham to St. Clair, Chad moved his family to Mountain Brook. “I got tired of having to rush home and change clothes in the car in the civic center parking lot before my kids games. So we moved here,” he said. But St. Clair is never far from his heart.

“I wanted to bring the family closer to my work, and I am only 45 minutes away from Pell City when I want to come back,” he said.

And since he and his St. Clair friends like Jim have remained close, those trips come often.

Jim “Jimbo” Tollison
While Chad had an inkling he wanted to go into finance, Tollison had … none.

“I had not really planned on going to college. (Pell City High School teacher) Deanna Lawley encouraged me to go. She had grown up around Lewis Grizzard. I had always liked him, liked journalism, so I went to Jacksonville State University in journalism,” he said.

And he was just spinning his wheels.

He ended up back working with his Dad again on the family farm and in his business.

“I went on a service call — my Dad worked for a forklift repair company — to Rock Wool Manufacturing with him and they needed some workers. Dad said, ‘Hell, hire him.’ And that was the beginning of me working in insulation for the next few years.

“I would go to school during the year and work over the summer, work seven days a week, sometimes up to my armpits in insulation.”

In fact, at one point, he helped Adam get a job there, and the two of them worked together — the reality of working that job and a serious accident changed Jim’s outlook on life and on what he wanted to do.

“I had an accident, nearly burned my face off. Chad was there. We were burning some stuff and were stupid and used gasoline to start the fire. It blew up in my face. I spent two months in bandages — did not know if I would have a face,” Jim said.

Chad said he was the one who put Jim out that day.

It made Jim take a second look at the path he was on.

“I thought I would have to go to Atlanta to be a journalist. A lot of my professors told me you had to start out in a big city. I just realized it that was not where I wanted to be. I realized I loved the farm, agriculture, and wanted to do something with it. I got the best bad advice from those journalism professors,” he said.

When he went back to school, it was not to JSU, but to Auburn University and he enrolled in agriculture business.

“I ended up at Auburn. I did not want to go straight into business, so I did agriculture economics and business. I took 21 hours a quarter just about every quarter there. I had transferred in as a junior.

“I had an 8 a.m. weed-out class, micro economics, and it was not that tough. I started nailing it — blew the curves. …”

Jim wanted to go back to St. Clair, but his professors told him that was not a realistic place for him to start his career.

“I told them I would rather dig ditches in St. Clair than work anywhere else. I wanted to come back to the farm. I always wanted to come back here,” Jim said.

“The Federal Land Bank, now Alabama Farm Credit, came to Auburn and interviewed me for a job. I liked the idea because it gave me the perfect mix of business and agriculture, which I love,” Jim said.

Like Chad, Jim had inherited a strong work ethic growing up, and he put it to good use in his new job at their branch in Albertville.

“I had gotten a really good work ethic from both of my parents. If you want something, you work for it. My Dad started out this farm with nothing. He bought it from his parents,” Jim said.

He started out in Albertville as an entry-level loan officer and appraiser. “I worked there for four or five years, then took over the Talladega branch in 2001 right before Sept. 11 and the economy stopped. It was the smallest of everything we had in Alabama, but it was mine. I was not branch manager, but I was in charge.”

Under Jim’s direction, even in the worst of economic times, the Talladega office has flourished, bringing in millions and millions of dollars in well-grounded loans.

“We turned it around. It was grass roots. We went out and talked to people. We have been blessed. … We are still one of the smallest, but we have the best in collections and credit quality of anyone. And because we are a coop, we can return some of the profit in a good year to our clients. Last year, that was $6.3 million in 27 counties in North Alabama,” he said.

Jim and his family have remained in St. Clair, building their house on the old family farm he shares with his parents near Ragland.

Adam Miller
You would think Adam would have been a natural pick at an early age for a future in finances given that his father is banker Ray Miller — someone all three give lots of credit to as being a mentor and a huge influence on their ultimate decisions to go that route.

And you would be wrong.

Jim and Chad both refer to Adam as the one they thought would go far in college, the “smart one” and the voice of reason (Adam had just left the day Jim lit his head on fire — “I regret that. I probably would have been like, ‘Guys, that is not such a good idea.’”)

“We would be walking down the road, Chad and I would be picking up rocks and throwing them. Adam would be picking up rocks and looking for fossils,” Jim said.

Adam agrees, “When I was growing up, there was no way I was going to be a banker like dad. From a the time I was a little kid, I wanted to be a meteorologist. That lasted through three years of college.”

Like Jim, he was just spinning his wheels after high school.

And like Jim, he ended up at Rock Wool working long, hot hours.

“After I had wandered around Tuscaloosa for a few years, enrolled more than attended, I ended up at the insulation plant. After working in the insulation plant from 3 to 3, it did not make it so hard to get up for that 9 a.m. class,” Adam said.

He got back in school — and like the other two, had something of an epiphany.

“I took a finance class and it went well and took another one that summer, loved that. It played into the analytical things I liked in science. I did not think I had an aptitude for math — as my high school teachers will attest to. But I had an aptitude for finances,” he said.

He was taking classes at JSU and credits several of the professors there with inspiring him and helping develop a work model he still employs today. One in particular, Professor Brown, would not only grade students’ tests, he would grade his own teaching — if everyone missed something, he would strike the question and reteach that.

“He had high expectations of us and himself. That is what I carry over into our business today. If I ask someone to do something, I have to be willing to do it at least as well,” Adam said.

Today, Adam is a regional underwriting manager for Regions Bank and is based out of Hoover, but before he got there, “I did a bit of everything” from getting his real estate license to working in manufacturing.”

“At Regions I have two underwriting teams serving the Eastern Time Zone for businesses under $20 million in revenue. It could be anything from medical practices to manufacturers. It’s a broad swath of the small-business sector.”

Their loan portfolio is in the $4 billion range. “That is what I am kind of held accountable for,” he said.

Much like his two friends — though their jobs are very different in nature — at the core is a desire to help people and businesses.

“What I do really is evaluate risk and propose solutions. The rewarding part of the job is digging in, getting to understand someone’s business and providing them with the appropriate credit for their needs, to help them manage their risks and grow their business in a healthy manner,” he said.

And like Chad and Jim, it is that strong work ethic learned growing up and forged working tough jobs early on that Adam says helped make him a success.

“It’s the same thing I tell everyone every day: I bring my lunch-pail mentality to work. Be glad for what you have and realize that there is a long line of people who would love to have the same opportunity I have. I come in and I work hard,” he said.

“There is no magic bullet. It’s that attitude of we can do this, whatever it may be. …

“And I was the guy who would be more apt to pick up the rock and examine it. It goes back to my analytical nature, and it goes to how I see business today. I don’t just see the rock, the business; I look at the whole business, look at how it works,” he said.

Working … and playing … together
Though they are all in very different finance jobs and separated by miles, the three friends remain close and see each other as often as they can.

“We are still good friends. We have never lost touch. We don’t get to hunt or fish as much as we would like — mostly because we have eight kids between us. But we are still tight and it make us cherish the time we have together better,” Adam said.

And they have no trouble mixing business and fun — often at the Tollison Farm.

“Next week, we are going to have a dove hunt here at the farm,” Jim said. “We will have Chad’s customers; we will have my customers. We will have food. Why not have a group of customers out here on the farm and make it work for you?”

They also often find it necessary to refer clients to each other. Jim will have a farmer client who needs estate planning services or needs financial advice, so he sends him to Chad.

“Sometimes, in my work, I will see people who need financial advising. Chad can help them do the things they need to do,” Jim said.

Likewise, Chad has referred some of his clients who are interested in branching out into agriculture to Jim.

Of course, it is not just the three of them anymore — like Chad, both Jim and Adam have families, so when the three friends get together, the party is somewhat bigger these days.

“My wife, Emily, and I were married in June of 2005 and have three children: Hudson, 7; Hayes, 4; and Mary Brooks, 2,” Adam said. Jim and Brooke Tollison were married the same year and have two children, Jay and Claire.

But at the core of everything is their friendship.

“We stuck together. Me and Adam and Jimbo are still good friends today. I took Adam to the Alabama game a couple of weeks ago,” Chad said, adding jokingly, “For Jim, of course, that would have been a punishment. He did email me, saying ‘Y’all don’t care about me anymore.’”

Adam said they each bring something uniquely their own to their relationship; they approach life differently, and that has been part of what cements their friendship.

“In all honesty, Jim needs to know how proud I am of him and his accomplishments, what he brings to the table as a friend and confidant. Chad is different, but also great. Chad had to work really hard to get where he is.

“They bring so much balance to the table. I would love to do a personality test on us, but I would bet it would show we all approach problem solving from a different angle,” Adam said, again, pointing out he is the voice of reason.

“I am probably the dead weight with that bunch, but was always glad to be along for the ride.”

Features

Pumpkin Paradise

Another Chandler Mountain natural wonder

Story by Carol Pappas
Photography by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

She jokingly refers to herself with the moniker, “the pumpkin lady.” If someone gets lost atop Chandler Mountain and can’t find her house, just tell the neighbors you’re looking for the pumpkin lady, she said. That’s the easiest way to reach your destination point.

It’s not difficult to get the connection. From the front gate to the house’s wrap-around porch to outside structures, they are filled with pumpkin displays — a collage of colors, sizes and varieties.

Out back and down the hill a bit, you’ll find the origin of them all —13 rows — at least 50 yards long — of more than 40 kinds of pumpkins. Cinderella (pumpkin, that is) hides beneath massive green leaves and vines. So does Fairy Tale. After all, those two started it all for Melinda Smith. But there’s plenty more, and the varying colors, sizes and looks are nothing short of amazing.

This is her 14th year of growing pumpkins, a tradition that started because a friend picked up some unusual heirloom pumpkins in Georgia — Cinderella and Fairy Tale — and gave her the seeds. Cinderella gets her name from the uncanny resemblance to Cinderella’s carriage, a similarity you immediately recognize. “It’s fun to watch them grow,” Smith said.

She could grow some to 50 pounds or more, but she likes to pick them from the field herself, so she opts for smaller versions during her growing season from the end of June to late August. “I save seeds every year,” and she orders more.

Husband Phillip is a third generation commercial tomato grower, and she shares some of the land for his crop to grow hers. She started small but the harvest seems to grow bigger each year.

Take a stroll around her yard, and you’ll find a cornucopia of color. An open air shed displays all kinds of pumpkins — large and small and in between — on shelves fashioned from old wooden tomato crates of her husband’s family business. They have names like Goosebumps Super Freak because of their bumpy exterior or Peanut Pumpkins, whose bumps resemble peanut shells.

An iron chandelier hangs from the center of the shed’s ceiling, each prong supporting a tiny orange pumpkin to give the illusion of lights. Just outside, you’ll find a display of all white pumpkins, a cotton plant acting as perfect complement.

On the other side, a shelf of pumpkins are set beneath the letters f-a-l-l, spelled out in twigs against an orange block background. It all overlooks a pond and tomato fields just beyond.

A storage building nearby isn’t your typical construction either. It looks more like a miniature home, and it, too, is filled with pumpkin displays. Its features, like the semi-rusted, corrugated metal rear wall, a fireplace mantel and the wood it took to build it are items she has saved over the years. “I’m into reusing stuff. I save old wood. I might use it one day.”

When told it’s called ‘repurposing’ these days, she laughs and says, “Of course, my husband has another name for it.”

No matter what you call it, it’s a paradise of pumpkins cleverly displayed and hinting at the discriminating, designing eye of the harvester.

And each year in the fall, she shares it all — her bounty and her talent. She holds a pumpkin patch party where people can come and buy pumpkins, enjoy the outdoors, have a few refreshments and bring the kids to play among the fruits of their parents’ finds. “We have smaller pumpkins for the kids to decorate,” she said. They even have their own table.

The party seems to have grown with the pace of her crop. Her mailing list has topped the 200-mark, and she has had more than 150 attend in years past. This year is her first weekend event, which is planned for Oct. 3-4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and on Oct. 5 from noon to 2.

She is expecting a big crowd to peruse the grounds for just the right color, texture and size for seasonal decorating. And if not decorating, all the pumpkins she grows are edible, she added.

“I tell them to bring a friend,” she said. And they apparently do. Once they find the pumpkin lady, word spreads.

Features

Tough Man Triathlon

Event a huge win for Pell City community

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Michael Callahan

At daybreak, hundreds of athletes lined the beach at Pell City Lakeside Park in mid-August, donned swim caps and readied for the first leg of Team Magic’s Tough Man Triathlon. More than 350 three-sport athletes representing 16 states got unique views of the city — on a swim, on a bike and on foot.

The triathlon involved a 1.2-mile swim in Logan Martin Lake that began at the beach and came out at the sports complex. A 56-mile bike ride took them from the Civic Center to US 231 South to Easonville Road and Highway 55 and back again. Then they ran for 13 miles down Airport Road to Hamilton Road and returned to the starting point.

It was more than a race and a grueling competition. It was an economic shot in the arm that has promoters excited about their prospects for next year, according to Race Chairman Ofes Forman. “It was awesome,” he said.

Planners speculated that every hotel room would be filled in Pell City, but Forman confirmed it. On Friday before the event, they were 100 percent full. On Saturday, each were between 80 percent and 100 percent full.

He visited restaurants, service stations and grocery stores and heard the testimonials of booming business for himself.

The race was three years in the making with research, planning and garnering support. It was believed to be a way to showcase Pell City and the lake. And when competitors finished the race and told organizers, “‘We’ll be back next year, and we’re going to tell people about it,’” they knew the city had a winner on its hands, Forman said.

There is discussion of next year’s date taking place now. And there is talk of a possible children’s triathlon, too.

Thanks to a hard-working committee — Jerrett Jacobs and Michael Murphy as co-chairs, and Erica Grieve, Holly Murphy, Elsie McGowan and Estelle Forman — Forman called the event great exposure for the city and the lake. “It drew in new money … like a holiday,” he said. For their support, he thanked the mayor, city manager and the Council, especially Council President James McGowan and Councilman Terry Templin. It took entities coming together in partnership to make it a reality.

And it offered an opportunity to boost tourism. “I really believe Pell City can become a tourist attraction,” Forman said. “It may not be on a big scale, but it can be on a small scale. We have a lake.” To attract people to the area, “we don’t have to build anything.”

What they have apparently built is a strong foundation to bring the event back next year – bigger and better than ever.

Toughman Triathlon

80 photos

Features

Blair Farm

An Odenville Landmark

Story by Carol Pappas
Photography by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

A weathered, vintage sign points the way from US 411 in Odenville. Tarnished by age, it’s hard to tell where its burgundy background ends and the rust begins. As you get a little closer, the white letters and arrow come into view, whimsically giving more specific directions: “Over Yonder.”

Follow the arrow’s path, and it leads you down Blair Farm Road to where else? Blair Farm.

In its 1950s heyday, its 240 acres hosted cattle, horses, ponies, a Clydesdale named Blue Boy Snow and a family by the name of Blair. Dwight Blair Jr., known as “Jobby,” bought the farm in 1952 and moved there with his wife, Margaret Drennen Blair, and their 2-year-old son, Dwight Blair III. Little sisters Dana and Carol would follow in the years to come.

It was the beginning of a new story for a World War II hero turned stock broker turned horse trader — or better yet, trader of all sorts — said his son Dwight III, now a prominent Pell City attorney. “He was a real wheeler dealer.”

His father would advertise horses and ponies for sale in the Birmingham News, and families would usually arrive on a Sunday to look them over. “Kids would become enamored with the ponies,” Dwight said. “They would say, ‘Dad, please let us have this pony!,’ and the father would say they would come back.” The thinly veiled excuse was they didn’t have a truck with them.

But Dwight says his father was not to be deterred from the sale. “He was a master at removing the back seat of a four-door car” to show kids and father alike just how those children’s dream actually could come true.

“Many a pony went from here with their head stuck out of the back window,” he said. Before they drove away, the wheeler dealer always added: “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll give you half of what you paid.”

The stories of his father aren’t always as lighthearted. In 1943, he was a bombardier in the Army Air Corps and was shot down in North Africa. He was in his turret, firing at a German plane and killed the fighter pilot.

The German plane started a nosedive and then quickly reversed direction, clipping the nose of the American plane. It spiraled to the ground, killing seven of his father’s crewmates. Only he and one other survived but were captured. He was wounded in his left leg, and 15 pieces of shrapnel remained. Reported missing in action, he spent more than two years in a German prison camp, escaping one time by jumping off a train. But he discovered he could not get far because of his leg injury, and he was recaptured.

In 1945, although presumed dead since his capture, he was released in a wounded prisoner exchange and headed back home to a hero’s welcome reported on the front page of the Age Herald, which later became Birmingham Post-Herald.

He went back to school at The University of Alabama and after graduation, he did post-graduate work at Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia and became a stock broker in Birmingham.

In 1946, he married Margaret Drennen, who was from a prominent Birmingham family. “Her father asked her, ‘Are you sure you want to live out in Odenville, where you will have nothing but chickens and horse manure?’ And she said, yes,” her son recounted the story his mother told him.

In 1952, they bought a small farm where Moody High School is today, but sold it and quickly bought the 240 acres on both sides of what is now Blair Farm Road.

He remained a stockbroker until 1958 when he decided to leave the big city working life behind for good and sell horses, ponies and cattle full time along with running a tractor and car lot in Leeds called Traders Inc.

He had about 50 head of cattle and 20 to 30 horses and ponies along with the farm’s familiar fixture — Blue Boy Snow — on the sprawling open pastures. “They were everywhere,” Dwight recalled as he motioned around the property. A monument to the Clydesdale, a Blair Farm resident from 1959 to 1991 who weighed more than 2,000 pounds, still stands in the shade of a towering oak tree in one of those pastures.

Today’s Blair Farm looks a bit different than those early days of wide-open pastures and a homeplace probably built in the 1890s. It was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. It was replaced in 1953 with the house passersby see now. A barn, believed to be built in that same turn-of-the-century time, still remains. Its square nails rather than round ones hint at its age. “It’s amazing it has weathered time like it has,” he said, noting that its only change has been adding a metal roof.

Other weathered barns and sheds are scattered around the property.

Austin Dwight Blair, the fourth Dwight in the lineage, now helps his own father with upkeep of the land. It helps to have Sheriff Terry Surles and Probate Judge Mike Bowling cut hay from it for their cattle. And friends and family come there to relax, skeet shoot or hunt. “It’s a place where everybody comes and feels comfortable,” Austin said.

Now a broker in commercial real estate for LAH in Birmingham, Austin likes returning to the place he rode horses as a child and had his very own pony, Freddy Boy.

For Dwight, it’s full circle. Up to about age 13, he thought it was a wondrous place. But teenagers tend to gravitate toward more action, and he took advantage of every opportunity to spend time away from the farm with friends in Leeds and Birmingham.

Then it was off to college, a scholarship to play running back at Vanderbilt University and later, law school at Cumberland School of Law.

In the midst of a successful and understandably busy career, Dwight likes coming back to the quiet of what has become a “weekend place” now. He raises pheasant and quail, and a couple of German Short Haired Pointers named Hansel and Gretel seem as content to call it home as his father did.

It is a story not unlike countless family farms in and around St. Clair County. They, too, have weathered time with their own tales to tell.

Blair Farm

81 photos

Features

Huckleberry Pond

A place deep with memories

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photography by Michael Callahan

Huckleberry Pond sits quietly between Sugar Farm Road and Riddle Road in Riverside.

Hardwoods and other trees knit a canopy as they stand in the shallow water near shore.

In the greater depths, tall and jagged trunks of dead trees jut toward the sky.

The chirp of frogs breaks the silence and some unseen creature ripples the water.

The pond has been described as spooky, eerie, mysterious and, at the same time, beautiful.

It has different personalities, depending on time of day and season.

Daybreak is the favorite of Lance Bell, who owns 17 acres of the pond and 110 acres adjoining it. Wayne Spradley likes it best in early spring and late fall. Bobby Parker prefers winter.

One of its many moods is that “it looks like the Florida Everglades sometimes,” said Parker, who lives in Pell City.

“It’s a mystical-looking place with the dead trees,” added Greg Ensley of Pell City. “It’s a pretty place, a good place to go sit and watch animals.”

The stillness of the pond tends to shroud the fact that the place is actually teeming with memories.

“In high school, we’d sneak over there and fish, (go) frog-gigging and kill a snake here and there,” said Bell, who grew up in Cook Springs and now lives in Riverside. “I think generations and generations before me did the same thing.”

Frank Finch of Cropwell can attest to that. “We used to hang out over there when I was young.”

He and his cousins would ride a mule-drawn wagon to get there. That was in the early 1950s, when life was simpler.

“That was when kids knew how to use a weapon,” Finch said. “We killed things to eat; we’d fish on Huckleberry Pond. We knew how to take care of ourselves in the woods.”

The pond and the surrounding land just seemed to beckon those who wanted to explore, play, fish and hunt.

“It was a wild place. It was a place that was basically untouched,” Finch said. “It was a place to go back in time. We fought Indian battles. We fought World War II there, all the things that young boys do. Back then, it was a time of innocence. We didn’t have much. We enjoyed what we had.”

The memories of Wes Guthrie of Pell City go back more than 40 years. As a young boy, he went to the pond with his grandparents, Hob and Iantha Guthrie (both deceased). They would fish or his grandmother would pick huckleberries and blackberries.

“When we were young, we’d go there about once a month on a flat-bottom boat,” Guthrie said. “No trolling motor. Just a paddle and boat and your cane poles.”

Moss spanned much of the water’s surface, so it was necessary to put the fishing line down through a break in vegetation.

“It was good bream fishing and good bass fishing in the holes,” Guthrie said.

Huckleberry Pond held so much intrigue for Spradley when he was a boy that he would walk all the way from North Pell City to get to it.

“We went up there pretty often,” Spradley said. “We’d stay gone all day long.”

The fascination lasted right into adulthood, when Spradley – a renowned artist – chose Huckleberry Pond as the subject of his first wildlife print.

“(The pond) brought a lot of inspiration to me to do paintings,” Spradley said.

Through the years, Spradley has captured the pond, its mystery and its wildlife in several pieces of artwork.

Earlier this summer, he worked on several pencil sketches in preparation for his next Huckleberry Pond piece. Two sketches feature the pond’s familiar treescape. Another is of bluebirds flitting and diving.

The bluebird idea came to him from a fly-fishing experience about 15 years ago. Spradley saw bluebirds at the pond behaving in a manner he had not seen previously.

The birds would take flight, then dive down like kingfishers, Spradley said. “I didn’t have any idea bluebirds would do that. (They were) hitting the water, getting something to eat and carrying it back to the stump and eating it.”

For Dale Sullivan of Pell City, talking about Huckleberry Pond is somewhat of a sentimental journey.

“It’ll always hold a special place for me because I grew up there in its heyday. It was somewhere you wanted to go,” said Sullivan.

Many were the times he and his dad, Ernest Sullivan (now deceased) fished or hunted on pond property.

On occasions when the pond was frozen, Sullivan — as a youth — skated or rode bicycles on it.

One time while a teen, Sullivan borrowed his dad’s truck — without permission – to haul a boat to the pond. Once there, he decided to back the truck to the water’s edge to unload the boat.

By accident, he backed the truck into the pond. In the process of trying to get the truck out of the water, he nearly burned up the clutch.

Realizing he was in trouble, Sullivan begged a neighbor to use his tractor to free the truck.

The neighbor obliged and came with his tractor, which subsequently got stuck.

With the predicament now doubled in size, Sullivan called in the cavalry — which in this case was Riverside service station owner Frank Riddle.

Riddle brought his wrecker and extracted both the tractor and the pickup.

Then, Sullivan had to go home to tell his dad all that had transpired, as well as explain why the truck’s clutch would not function exactly right anymore.

“That’s one of my most vivid memories” about the pond, Sullivan said.

Just as the pond has been a natural source of human adventure, it has also been a haven that attracted animal life.

Those who frequented the pond through the years have seen quite an array of creatures, including chain pickerel, frogs, beavers, muskrats, deer, loggerhead and soft shell turtles, blue herons, snipes, whippoorwills, woodpeckers, numerous species of ducks and so very many other winged creations.

“You’ve never seen the like of birds there in all your life,” Ensley said.

In recent months, Bell has caught images on his game cameras of coyotes, bobcats and wild turkeys.

People also say the pond is fed by a spring and that the water is rather chilly in spots.

“It’s a unique place,” said Sullivan.

Protecting that uniqueness is one of the many reasons Bell purchased some pond property when it became available.

Bell said it is nice to own property that holds such a legacy of memories for so many people. He wants to preserve it and pass the legacy and the love of nature to his sons, Hudson and Holden.

The pond, which encompasses about 40 acres, is divided into three sections of ownership. Sonny and Jane Kilgroe of Pell City own another portion of the pond and bordering land. The third section belongs to Headwaters Investments Corp. of Atlanta, Ga.

Standing along the shore in an area not visible from Sugar Farm Road, Bell watched as his sons chatted and tossed sticks into the water.

“I enjoy watching them play out here,” Bell said.

Gazing out toward the middle of the pond, he said, “It’s beautiful, absolutely beautiful.”

His screensaver, he confessed, is an image of Huckleberry Pond.

Holly, his wife, said she wants to live on the expanse.

“I would like to build a house out here,” she said. “I like being out in nowhere, the slower pace.”

If it had been a snake …
Almost no tale of Huckleberry Pond, it seems, is complete without a snake story.

As a matter of fact, in enumerating some of the pond’s traits, Gordon Smith of Pell City listed snakes first.

“You would see them swim by,” Guthrie said.

Ensley said he has seen them, after dark, hanging from tree limbs close to the water, just waiting for a meal.

Sullivan has had several snakes in the boat with him, thanks to his dad. He said his dad would run the boat under a bush to make non-poisonous snakes fall into it, just to see the reaction of the occupants.

Spradley had the particular experience of falling out of a boat one time on Huckleberry Pond. “I don’t think I got wet getting back into the boat!”

Sometimes, Finch and his cousins camped overnight at the pond. But they were certain to sleep inside the wagon instead of on the ground to avoid any uninvited guests.

“There were some big snakes over there,” Finch said. “In the eyes of a child, every snake is pretty big.”

Then, there is the story of a teen-aged Dana Merrymon. He lived in the Center Star area at the time, and Sugar Farm Road was unpaved.

Merrymon and a buddy went fishing in a flat-bottom, aluminum boat. With them, they had a .410 shotgun, just in case of a serpent sighting.

The two guys had caught six or seven fish, which they put in the front of the boat. Merrymon sat in the middle of the boat, and his buddy was in the back.

It was growing dark as they rowed toward shore, but they stopped to fish one last time.

That is when Merrymon saw a head pop up out of the water. Then, the head and the rest of the body came right over into the boat to get the fish.

Merrymon yelled, “Snake!”

Almost instantaneously, he heard a deafening “boom” from behind him and realized that his buddy had shot at the snake.

The slithering visitor swam away unscathed.

But the boat was not so fortunate.

It started taking on water.

Although the water was only about thigh-deep where they were, neither fisherman wanted to be in it.

The two paddled with all their might to reach shore before the boat sank.

More than 40 years later, Merrymon, who lives in Pell City, tells that story with laughter and animation.

But at the time it happened, “it wasn’t funny,” Merrymon said. “I was scared to death!”

Additional assistance with this article provided by Realtors Bill Gossett and Carl Howard; Riverside Mayor Rusty Jessup; Porter Bailey; Julia Skelton; Vicki Merrymon; Jesse Hooks; David Murphy; Glenn Evans; John Pritchett; Jerry Smith; Bill Hereford; and April Bagwell of the county mapping department.

Features

House of Q

[Show as slideshow]

Barbecue’s rising star

Story by Loyd McIntosh
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

In the crazy, competitive world of competition barbecue, a new star is on the rise, and he just happens to call St. Clair County home. John Coon with his Kansas City Barbecue Society team, House of Q, is one of the hottest masters of meat on the circuit, regularly walking the stage and gathering hardware for his barbecue creations. His celebrity status soared even higher after his recent appearance on the hit barbecue competition television show BBQ Pitmasters.

The Springville resident now finds himself in the strange position of being recognized in public. Blessed with an equal measure of almost Biblical work ethic and a good old boy’s sense of humor, Coon has a way of putting his newfound fame into perspective. “That and a $1.39 will get you a McDonald’s cheeseburger,” he says with a booming laugh while hanging out at his shop on the outskirts of Steele. “I guess this is the closest we’ll ever be to being a rock star. It was a good feeling to get a lot of local publicity and things like that. Can’t complain.”

Coon, his partner Russ Lannom, and the rest of the House of Q gang auditioned for the show along with more than 400 barbecue teams from around the country. The team was selected to appear on the fifth season of the show and compete for the grand prize of $50,000. Coon and his crew filmed their episodes in Tampa, Florida, back in February, performing admirably in a competition that puts the skills of even the best pitmasters to the test. “It was all secretive, so nobody knew who we were competing against, and the way it’s set up you don’t know what you’re going to cook until the day of,” he says. “You open the cooler, and it’s a surprise, so you pretty much have to be prepared to cook any kind of mystery meat.”

Coon and his team won the first episode after turning heads with their versions of the secret ingredients, turkey and rack of lamb. House of Q then moved on to the next phase in the competition, losing in the semifinal round after turning in some beef ribs that failed to impress the judges. Coon mostly smokes pork ribs in competition and catering jobs and admits the beef ribs threw him a little bit. Still, he believed he had a solid plan, but in the end, the issue was with his ribs’ tenderness, and Coon knows exactly where he went wrong. “That’s actually what cost us the win. We had five slabs of ribs, so we staggered them in increments of time so we would know exactly where we would need to be for tenderness,” Coon says. “Long story short, we tasted the first three racks when we pulled them off, and they were perfect. So, the last two were actually my best looking slabs of ribs, but I didn’t taste them. I used the same time increments as what we did on the first three. We were disappointed we didn’t taste that, because it cost us the show in reality.”

Despite the loss, Coon says the experience was well worth the effort, and the exposure has been great for his business. A second generation contractor, Coon’s ultimate goal is to make smoking barbecue his full-time career. He believes the appearance on BBQ Pitmasters may just be the next step toward trading his hammer and nails for tongs and a basting brush. “We really did it for our sponsors more than for us. I don’t really care anything about being on TV, but we got picked, and we went ahead and went through the final selection process and all that, so we were able to go down there,” he says. “It was really neat. We had a ball doing it.”

The barbecue trail
Coon’s journey to the top of the barbecue mountain began when Coon was a child, learning smoking skills from his father while living on their small farm in Pinson. Coon’s father was always smoking meats on the weekends and for special occasions. “We cooked for all our church events when I was a kid, on Labor Day, the fourth of July, things like that. It was on a pit outside, all night long, just craziness, but we had a blast doing it,” he says.

Over the years Coon competed in a handful of small barbecue cook-offs, and 10 years ago, he entered his first major competition. He took his chances in the first Stokin’ The Fire cook-off, a sanctioned KCBS event held at Sloss Furnace in downtown Birmingham, on a dare. Coon admits he didn’t exactly know what he was doing. “Three of my buddies and me went down there and stayed all night. We were underneath the viaduct, and we had smoke going up. We thought that it was always supposed to smoke,” Coon says. “We about choked everybody to death underneath the viaduct all night long.”

Coon took advantage of the opportunity to learn the ropes of how KCBS competitions work. Unlike other competitions where the cooks can schmooze the judges, KCBS utilizes blind judging. The judges never see the competitors and vice-versa. In other words, personality can’t buy you an extra point or two. It’s all about the food, a fact Coon discovered at his very first competition. “I got a call the first event I ever did, which is unheard of. I was hooked,” Coon says. “That was the adrenaline rush I’ve always wanted. I’ve fished and hunted and everything else under the moon, and nothing has ever been like this right here. I mean it consumed me.”

These days Coon and House of Q are on the road 40 weekends out of the year, competing in 34-36 KCBS events and appearing at a handful of private events. Coon credits his patient family, wife Kristin and son Mason, for giving him the chance to pursue his obsession for the perfect barbecue. “I have the best wife in the world,” he says.

House of Q is earning prize money, winning competitions, and is sought after as an instructor as well regularly holding Barbecue 101 classes for barbecue newbies. He’s not terribly private about his methods, for instance, he uses cherry and applewood to smoke his meat, staying away from hickory unless he’s working with a slab of ribs unusually thick. He makes his own rub, a concoction of, among other ingredients, garlic, cumin, and chili powder. The team’s sauce, Granny’s BBQ Sauce, is a huge seller. It’s even used by a couple of dozen teams on the KCBS circuit.

The work Coon has put into House of Q has paid off tremendously. In 97 KCBS events he has finished in the Top Ten 46 times, and he finished 18th in the world in the Barbecue category at the World Food Championships in Las Vegas in August 2013. Coons has achieved all of this success while holding down his day job running the other family business, J. Coon Contracting. Since he spends many a Friday afternoon trimming ribs and seasoning butts for a weekend catering gig, the conversation inevitably turns to ‘cue.’ “I love it. It’s my passion,” Coon says.

“I don’t want to do anything else.”

Features