Tag: Features

Wonder in Wood

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Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

When Lisa Phelps tells you she loves wood, you sense a gross understatement. She used four different hardwoods and a lot of pine in the new home she shares with husband, Kenny, in Odenville’s Aradon Farms. That doesn’t include the oak, cherry and maple in some of her antiques. Close your eyes, and you can almost smell the forest.

“I like woods of all kinds,” she says, reciting a materials list that includes cedar, alder, hickory and sweet gum.

Much of the wood in her house has a story behind it, from the cedar tree that provided a stair rail, towel racks, shelves and candleholders, to the heart-pine flooring that retained its natural knot holes.

The use of natural wood accents and textures in home decor is one of the hottest trends in home design. Lisa had no idea she was being trendy, however. She just knew what she liked. “I wanted a rustic look,” she says.

She got it, both inside and out.

Muted brown brick with weeping mortar, i.e., mortar that appears to be ever-so-slightly oozing, dominates the face of the house. Cedar posts top stacked-stone pillars to brace the roof of the porch, repeating the stone in the walkway and steps. On the concrete porch, a piece of driftwood picked up at a local flea market and a willow chair add to the rustic look.

Lisa spent a lot of time prowling antique shops and salvage stores while Benchmark Construction was building the house. She found the antique panels that divide the small study from the great room and entryway at Hannah Antiques in Birmingham. She complemented their wrought-iron insets with wrought-iron handles from HGH Hardware, also of Birmingham. “The handles are one of a kind, because HGH orders them from a company that throws away the wax mold after each casting,” she says. The stained-glass window in the study, which has a starburst pattern, is more than 100 years old. It, too, came from Hannah Antiques.

From floor to ceiling, the great room blends Lisa’s love of wood with Kenny’s love of the outdoors. The floor is unusual because Lisa wouldn’t let the installer fill in its knot holes, the normal practice after laying heart-pine. She wanted them open to make the floor appear older and more rustic. An antler chandelier, made from white-tail deer and purchased from a sporting goods store in Florence, Alabama, hangs from the cathedral-style, tongue-in-groove pine ceiling. Most of the other antlers scattered about the room are from deer that Kenny, his four brothers and their dad shot. Posts and corbels are made of cedar, while baseboards and door frames are made of pine. David and Scott Roy, of Roy Lumber, Bessemer, made the corbels.

Lisa designed several centerpieces based on the antler theme. One, on the credenza behind her sofa, features antlers grouped around a small cedar candleholder that Kenny made. The centerpiece on the glass-topped breakfast table consists of a large hurricane glass filled with antlers, with a candle in the center, on a white charger plate. A floral arrangement in the entryway uses antlers, and the dining room table shows off her grandmother’s wooden dough bowl as a container for pebbles, peacock feathers, an old-fashioned milk jug and a piece of driftwood.

The rifle on the sweet gum mantel is a reproduction of a cap-and-ball musket and belonged to Kenny’s dad. An Ansel Adams print, a deer statue and more antlers round out the mantel’s adornments.

A maple deer-leg table adds a touch of whimsy. Picked up for $40 at Hoover Antiques, it is topped with a new lamp featuring, you guessed it, antlers. The lamp came from Inline Lighting in Pelham. Lisa commissioned Stray Cats Home Decor of Childersburg to make the small oak sofa table next to the glass doors leading to the screened porch. The table displays a little brown jug, a clock and a lamp on top, along with Lisa’s jar and bottle collection on the bottom shelf.

The 2,700-square-foot house has three bedrooms and 4.5 baths, plus a bonus room upstairs that’s as large as an efficiency apartment. It’s actually a scaled-down version of a 4,700-square-foot home the Phelps saw but couldn’t afford. “We tracked down the architect, Mark Tidwell of Trussville, and got him to draw it smaller for us,” Lisa explains.

All of the countertops in the house are made of granite except for the one in the master bath, which is made of marble. In the kitchen, a hammered-copper farm sink rests in an island. “I chose copper because it doesn’t grow bacteria,” Lisa says. Kitchen cabinets are made of alder, which Lisa deems, “a poor man’s cherry.” Although pot-fillers normally are centered over range tops, Lisa had hers off-set to the left, because she had an accent tile she wanted in the center.

“I had never seen this done before until I built the Phelps house, but it’s becoming more popular,” says Dennis Smothers, owner of Benchmark Construction.

Her only regret in building the house is her choice of refrigerators. She bought a huge Thermador because of a sale. “I bought the fridge, and got a microwave and dishwasher free,” she says. “The fridge was too much money, which Kenny and Dennis tried to tell me, and it just isn’t worth it. I do love my Thermador gas range, though.”

Bathroom vanities are made of hickory, except for the one in the powder room off the kitchen. That one is an antique dresser from Denmark that a friend from church, Jack Collins, turned into a vanity by removing the drawers. The rock sink on top came from Southeastern Salvage in Irondale.

The stairs to the bonus room are located between the kitchen and the guest bedroom. Lisa knew she wanted a cedar hand rail for those stairs, but couldn’t find one the length she needed. So Scott Roy cut down a cedar tree from his own property, Lisa’s son-in-law scraped off the bark, and Kenny fashioned a hand rail out of it. Not one to waste any leftovers, he made several coat and towel racks for hallways and bathrooms, a picture-frame shelf for the guest room, plus various candleholders and bookends.

The master bathroom measures 15 feet by 18 feet and features a fiberglass tub for Lisa and a 4-foot-by-10-foot, multi-colored slate shower for Kenny. Lisa found a bamboo kiva-style ladder that she placed at the entrance-end of the shower for decoration, but with its vast distance from the shower head, it could easily keep Kenny’s towels dry.

Most of the furnishings in the house came from the couple’s former home in St. Clair Springs. They did, however, purchase a few new items, such as the dining room table and its stuffed chairs, which came from Pier I imports in Hoover. Lisa wanted a blue wall in the dining room to pull out the blue in the chair-cover pattern. Kenny and Dennis tried to discourage this decision because they said it made the room look “beachy.” But Lisa prevailed, and the men now agree that it looks great.

Lisa praises Smothers as an artisan as well as a builder.

“He came up with many ideas to enhance the rustic look we wanted,” she says. “For example, instead of crown molding in the dining area, he used cedar planks. He fashioned a triangular-shaped cut-out at the top of the divider between the entryway and the great room, to give the entryway a little depth.”

Smothers can’t say enough about Lisa’s innate decorating abilities.

“I’d hire her as a decorator if she’d do it,” he says.

Features

Return of a classic

Argo Drive-In introducing a new
generation to an American movie tradition

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

As a child growing up in north Alabama, Faye Riggs, 65, often went to the drive-in with her parents and sisters. They paid by the carload, with some money left over for snacks and drinks.

“We’d drive around until we found a speaker that worked, then Mom and Dad would sit on the hood of the car, while we girls played on the swings in front of the screen,” recalls Riggs, who now lives in Tallahassee, Florida. “They watched the movie and kept an eye on us at the same time. We kids loved being outdoors where we could run around and not get bored.”

Those were simpler times, before shopping malls and multiplex screens, before you had to sign away your birthright to pay for a night at the movies.

It was this affordability factor that motivated Brian Skinner to build the Argo Drive-In. At a church meeting, he and friends talked about the expense of going to the movies, and how much cheaper it had been to go to a drive-in. “That’s when the idea was born,” says Skinner, 51, owner of the Crawford and Skinner Insurance agency in Springville.

He tracked down a newspaper article he had read about a new drive-in on the West Coast, contacted the owner, and asked a lot of questions. He found 3 acres of undeveloped land on Angus Street, just off U.S. 11 in Argo. He got help from an elderly gentleman in Trussville who used to build billboards. “The screen is nothing but a giant billboard anyway,” Skinner says.

His first feature, “Titanic,” drew 171 cars opening night, May 22, 1998. Back then, he showed movies seven nights a week, all year round, charging $10 per carload, except on Wednesdays, when the price dropped to $5. He was very successful. “We’d have mini-vans with five or six people in them,” Skinner recalls. “The public loved it.” The distributors didn’t. They said the carload pricing cheapened their product. So three years ago, Skinner was forced to transition to individual pricing to get the first-run movies he shows. Now open Fridays and Saturdays only, “the nights we can make some money,” he charges $5 per adult, $2 for children under 12, and nothing for children in car seats. He operates from early May through September, plus Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, weather permitting. Sometimes, on a Thursday or Sunday night, someone will rent the theater for a church group, office party, birthday party or customer appreciation night.

Drive-ins were born 80 years ago in Camden, N.J., invented by Richard Hollingshead Jr., who capitalized on the success of drive-in restaurants. They became immensely popular because parents could take children in their pajamas and moms could leave their hair in curlers. Later, they became a hangout for teenagers, who could make out in cars without parental interference. Their popularity peaked in 1958 with almost 5,000 across the United States. Then televisions began popping up in every household, and shopping malls became teenage hangouts, throwing drive-ins into a slow, steady decline. As of March 13, 2013, there were 357 drive-ins with 604 screens (many are twinplexes) in the U.S., according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association (UDITOA). The industry has seen several signs of growth over the past decade as families rediscover their affordable concessions and double-feature admissions.

Alabama has 10 drive-in sites with 16 screens, according to the UDITOA, including the three that Skinner owns — Argo, the Starlite in Anniston and a twinplex in Harpersville. The Starlite closed indefinitely when a storm flattened the screen last spring. That same storm twisted Argo’s marquee, but didn’t damage the 26-foot-by-60-foot screen. Made up of some 66 sheets of corrugated tin covered in a flat-enamel paint, it’s built tough, Skinner says.

Looking like a giant, gravel parking lot dotted with orange cones, Argo’s capacity is 175 cars if all are parked correctly, i.e., two between each set of cones. More can be accommodated if parked fender-to-fender, as they were for the theater’s 208-car viewing of “Dr. Doolittle,” starring Eddie Murphy. “That was a record-breaking night,” says Alex Bosworth, the 19-year-old Jefferson State Community College freshman who works the gate at Argo. “People were parked all along Angus Drive, up Highway 11, in the fields, everywhere. They were walking in carrying lawn chairs.”

Noticeably absent are the stands mounted with speakers that movie-goers used to pull into their cars — and often pulled off with. Gone, too, are their scratchy sounds, now that car radios and boom boxes pick up the movie’s audio from the small FM transmitter in the projection booth. “Today’s sound is as good as your radio,” says Skinner, who uses 89.1 on the FM dial.

A small, two-story cinderblock building at the back of the parking lot houses the concession stand on the first level, the projection booth on the second. Popcorn sells for $3 and $4 a bag, hot dogs for $2, soft drinks for $2 and $3. “A family of four can come in and have a good time on $20,” Skinner says.

In the projection booth, the 35 mm film whirs through the Cinemascope projector, which sends its beam through a tiny, stationary window pane toward the giant screen 275 feet away. The whirring sound comes from the fans that blow antifreeze over the 4,000-watt bulb to keep it cool. Three giant metal platters hold up to three hours of film, which comes in via UPS in 20-minute reels that must be spliced together, then taken apart before shipping out again. “One of the funniest things was when we spliced a movie out of sequence,” says Skinner. “Very few people knew it. My biggest worry was whether the credits were at the end!”

Argo caters to families, which make up 75 percent of its patrons. Looking through movie choices on his order form, perusing trade papers for ticket grosses, Skinner knows not to select anything intense. “Cartoons, comedies and action-adventure do best at a drive-in,” he says. Saturday nights draw the most cars, he adds, but people buy more food on Friday nights, when they come straight from work without dinner.

Showtime starts at dusk, usually around 8 p.m. One warm Friday night last summer, cars were backed up to Highway 11 when the gate opened at 7:30. More than 50 vehicles spread out across the lot, most parked with their rear-ends facing the screen, their tailgates down or their rear hatches propped up. Dressed in shorts and flip-flops, jeans and hospital scrubs, patrons set up lawn chairs in truck beds and on the ground, then tossed Frisbees and softballs before the movie started. These “ozoners,” as drive-in patrons were once called, came from St. Clair, Etowah, Jefferson and Shelby counties for the al-fresco viewing experience.

Nine-year-old Ashton Hutcherson, son of Cynthia and Robert Hutcherson of Argo and a student at Springville Elementary, loves propping up on pillows in the back of his family’s SUV, where he doesn’t have to peer over people’s heads to see the screen.

Karla Lowery and Kathy Arrington, sisters from Gadsden, have been to the Argo several times. They park close to the concession building to be near the bathrooms and so their smoking doesn’t bother anyone. This night, they brought along Karla’s kids,11-year-old Austin and 7-year-old Heather.

“We love it,” says Kathy. “You can have a conversation about the movie without disturbing the person next to you.” She doesn’t mind the trains that rumble through several times each night, passing so close behind the concession stand you can almost touch the box cars and tankers.

Amy Roy of Argo brought her son, Axel, 3, and daughter Chloe, 10, plus some friends from Hoover. “I had never been to a drive-in until we moved to Argo from Atlanta nine years ago,” she says. “My mom has been with us, and she went many times as a child and teen.”

After his 60-40 gate split with distributors, Skinner barely keeps his head above water at Argo. The industry is moving toward a digital format, and he prays that 35 mm film will be available for a few more years because the switch is expensive. He makes money at Harpersville, though, and reasons that Argo gives teenagers jobs and families a good time.

“It’s fun, and it gives me pleasure to see families here,” he says. “It’s very entertaining.”

Features

Renovations by the water

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Wow factor comes to life in Junkins’ lakeside home

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Michael Callahan

Step inside the lakeside home of Lori and John Junkins, and you immediately come face to face with the ‘Wow!’ factor. Actually, there is plenty more than one of those factors.

The three-story A-frame towers above the shoreline of Logan Martin Lake, angled toward its main channel with a wall of windows and glass doors that frame a breathtaking view.

But take a look around inside, and that same awe seems to envelop friends, family and visitors alike.

It wasn’t always this way. One thing led to another, they say. It began with the enclosure of the loft to enable a more private master suite. But no worries. The view is still there with a large picture window overlooking the main level below and a bird’s-eye vantage point of the lake just beyond. Satin curtains, warm colors and a mix of antique and contemporary furniture are the perfect complement.

For most, that would have been a major renovation. Little did the Junkins know then, that would be their ‘small’ project.

At Thanksgiving, 20 people made their way through the narrow, galley kitchen, which served as a main entrance to the house. And John said they knew it was time to re-imagine their home.

Originally, they had an architect come up with a plan to give them more usable space and design an entrance. But bedrooms for children Jake and Amelia on the main level would have been lost.

Time for Plan B, they said. Their appraiser, Jeff Jones, suggested an eat-in island for the kitchen, and Lori took the idea to the next level from there with the skill and craftsmanship of Dennis Smothers and Pell City-based Benchmark Construction.

Open space replaced a galley kitchen that was separated by a single bar with dining area on the other side. Wide-plank hardwood floors enlarged the look of the room and gave it a richer feel. Custom cabinets designed by Lee Kerr in Anniston, running along the interior wall as well as built into a sloping exterior wall of the A-frame, are a rich, dark wood.

Granite countertops, brushed-nickel fixtures, a gas range and a pendant with three lights that took Smother’s crew with a 36-foot ladder to hang from the house’s tallest point are just a few of the amenities that make this space so special. The 6-foot, 8-inch-by-5-foot island with granite top features a rounded edge that makes seating more suitable to dinnertime conversation. Leather and wood stools fit perfectly with the décor.

The main-level guest bathroom and a master bathroom underwent a major makeover as well. The original, small master bath was a formidable challenge, but Lori knew what she wanted and designed it by doing away with an original wall that separated the bath from closets. It now has a much more open space. Renee Lily of Lily Designs of Pell City consulted on the renovation of the main level bath.

The master bath is greige — a warm and inviting color cross between grey and beige. Lori designed the vanity herself with arched doors and varying counter heights to give more flat space between two basins made of green, crystalline bowls with brushed nickel fixtures.

Three 1879 lithographs of birds nests and an egg — “my favorite,” said Lori — hang above a soaking tub surrounded by greige marble backsplash cut in small rectangles, giving it a stacked stone look. The backsplash runs from the bath to the vanity to the shower, bringing the room all together.

Across is a large, glass walk-in “rain shower” with oversized shower head to give a rain effect. And the tile floor is a wide-plank, weathered wood look. It is hard to imagine it is made of tile.

The guest bath below uses the same color scheme and amenities, enhancing the natural flow from room to room.

The Junkins’ dream makeover is now a reality, and the months of work are well behind them. They have enjoyed entertaining friends and family and just hosted a post-wedding party for Lori’s nephew and bride, Clay and Rachel Craft. More than 70 attended, and space to accommodate was never a problem with the new design.

With an older home, “you have to be creative,” said Smothers. “I just followed Lori’s lead. She was great to work with.”

Lori returned the compliment. “He is a great builder and designer.”

All you have to do is take a look around at the finished product, and you know they both are right.

Features

Sweet success

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Hobby becoming backyard business for Riverside beekeepers

Story by Graham Hadley
Photos by Michael Callahan

What started with 3 pounds of bees in a mail-order kit a few years ago has become a thriving backyard business for one Riverside couple.

Nick and Lori Thomas, the husband-and-wife beekeeping team, work together to harvest honey, tend to their ever-expanding bee population and manage the sale of honey, bees and wax — and all in their spare time.

Graduates of Jacksonville State University, they both have jobs at the Anniston Army Depot and are busy raising a family, too.

While they are not ready to quit their day jobs, the demand for their products is growing almost faster than they can keep up with it.

“We actually sold too much honey last year,” Nick said. “We did not have enough left over for ourselves,” continued Lori.

This year, honey production is much higher, though, both because they have more hives and because each one is more productive.

“We are as excited as our repeat customers are to see the increase in the honey this year,” Nick said.

It started with old stories

Holding up her baby son, Ethan, Lori says he will make the third generation of beekeepers in the family. “First your Papa (Nick’s grandfather), then Nick and, one day, this one.”

Nick is quick to point out that his grandfather, Wayne Hare, was not exactly a “beekeeper” in the truest sense of the word, but it was his stories that captured Nick’s imagination and drove his interest in bees.

“He was not a beekeeper. He would go with his uncle to rob bee trees of honey. He would tell me stories of how they did it, how they would find bees and follow them,” Nick said. They would cut out the beehives and take the honey home.

“He really sparked my interest with those stories,” Nick said.

After they were married, Nick would often toy with the idea of keeping bees as a hobby.

“He had talked and talked about it. So one Valentine’s Day five years ago, he got his first hive,” Lori said.

Three pounds of worker bees and one queen came in the package — a simple wood frame with screens on both sides.

The project was a success from the word “go.” The first year, the colony swarmed — the process by which one hive has grown and splits into two. Often the old queen will take half the workers and look for a new home.

Nick saw the swarm in the air and employed what he thought was a bit of a wives’ tale from his grandfather — he threw his baseball cap into the flying bees.

“I don’t know why it works, maybe they think they are being attacked by birds, but you throw the hat and they cluster — land all in one spot. My grandfather told me about it, and it worked,” Nick said.

They quickly gathered up the swarm.

“One turned into two; two into four, and so on,” he said.

Currently, Nick and Lori have around 15 colonies of bees. They have had as many as 21 colonies, but they sell off the extra colonies to other beekeepers.

“One guy drove all the way up north with the bees in his car — he called to let us know he had arrived with no trouble,” Nick said.

Several years after that first batch arrived, Nick’s hobby is starting to make money for them and help pay for itself. They made a little profit last year and, with this year’s windfall of honey, they are expecting a much larger profit — unless they buy more equipment or expand their operation, Lori said.

“There are a lot of startup expenses. Bees are not cheap, especially professional honey-extraction equipment,” Nick said.

Handle with care

Not only are bees not inexpensive, they require special care and handling, both to make sure the bees thrive and to avoid stings — something that is not entirely possible for beekeepers (or magazine writers, apparently).

The Thomas’ operation produces honey, beeswax — which they sell in bars and as candles — and bee colonies called nucleus hives. So far this year, they have harvested 480 pounds (more than 40 gallons) of honey. That is a huge increase over last year’s 120 pounds.

And, though they can’t be certified organic because Nick and Lori have no way to control where the bees gather their nectar, they do manage their entire operation without harmful chemicals or artificial additives. Instead, they find natural ways to control pests, like using cinnamon to remove parasites.

Likewise, the Thomases double filter their honey but don’t pasteurize it like big commercial distributors do, a process which both of them say destroys many of the beneficial and homeopathic properties of the honey. They also say it is not necessary. Honey is, by its very nature, mostly sterile and has a near-infinite shelf life.

“People say our honey tastes better than the big commercial brands, which are so over filtered, over pasteurized, over processed,” Lori said.

Even their wax is just that, beeswax — no additives or scents. “It just smells like honey,” she said.

What Nick says he enjoys most are caring for the bees and making sure the colonies are healthy and watching for swarming, which is important to prevent because you not only lose bees, they eat lots of honey before leaving. He also enjoys harvesting the honey, but says that can be a lot of work, often requiring long stretches in a hot bee-suit.

Before approaching the hives stacked across the back of their property, Nick and Lori suit up in outfits that cover them head to toe, with screens around their head so they can see out, but the bees can’t get in.

Nick says stings happen, but not nearly as often as you would expect from someone who handles thousands of bees every day. Part of that is because Nick and Lori keep Italian bees, which are more docile than other breeds.

Carrying a smoker — a can with burning leaves or grass — they approach the hives, opening the sections where the bees build combs to store honey, not the areas where the bees actually build cells for breeding. Then, they remove the racks.

Each rack contains honeycomb covered in wax caps, every cell full of honey. They gently remove the bees and store the racks in a case to carry back to the garage where their equipment is kept. The whole process takes only a few minutes.

Once back in the garage, Nick or Lori quickly closes the garage door — if they did not, the bees would follow the honey inside.

“One time, I had been working in here and had left the door open after draining most of the honey out of the extractor — there was maybe an inch in the bottom. I came back down and the garage was full of bees. They were everywhere,” Nick said.

“I learned then what to do when your garage is full of bees. I left the top off the extractor and closed the garage door. The bees all went in and ate the honey left in the bottom. Once they got their fill, I opened the door and they all flew directly back to the hive. They were all gone.”

After hanging up their suits, Nick and Lori set up kind of an assembly line, with Lori removing the racks from the case and giving them to Nick, who uses a special tool to quickly scrape the caps off the honey comb, exposing the honey.

He places the racks in an extractor, a large steel centrifuge that literally spins the honey out of the racks. From there, it is poured out of a spout through the filters and into a container to be bottled.

And, though they will sell jars with the wax comb in them by special order, generally the combs stay in the racks, which are taken back out to the hives to be refilled by the bees.

It takes a lot of work and energy for the bees to rebuild the combs if they are removed, so leaving them in means more productive hives and healthier bees. And Lori and Nick both point out that, like any other animal they keep, the health of their bees is important to them.

The honey is bottled and sold, either in small parcels or in bulk, to their customers. The wax caps are melted in a double boiler and poured into molds, made into candles or just as bars of wax, and sold.

So far, they sell out to their customers and don’t have enough to put in stores, but Nick says they would like one day to have their products sold off of shelves next to other brands.

“Right now, many of our customers buy in bulk. We have one lady who bakes with it, so she buys a lot,” Nick said.

Beyond their backyard

Admittedly, Nick and Lori have almost the ideal location for beekeeping — they originally bought enough land for their horses — and have taken time to learn about the process, using that knowledge to continually improve their techniques.

Lori said one thing they had to do was dig a pond on the property. They have a fountain out in front of the house, and bees, like everything else, need water. The fountain became their favorite source.

“It was like a bee highway between the hives and the fountain. Every time you would walk out there, you were getting bumped by bees going back and forth.” It was time for Nick to dig a pond in the back, she said.

In addition to their land and the pond, Nick says they are surrounded by about a hundred acres of diverse woodland, which is the perfect environment for the bees to forage in.

Lori has a degree in chemistry, which comes in handy with the business, and Nick is continually working to broaden his knowledge — and they both want to share their knowledge and experience with others.

About a year ago, Nick and Lori formed the St. Clair County Beekeepers Association, a new organization for the county. An affiliate of the Alabama Beekeepers Association, they meet with other beekeepers from around the area to share their knowledge and experience.

And that process is a two-way street. Nick, who is the president of the association, prepares presentations for the meetings, often expanding his own information resources in the process. In return, they learn additional trade secrets from veteran beekeepers.

And, like their beekeeping operation, the association has been a success. In operation since last August, the St. Clair Beekeepers Association now boasts around 30 members.

Nick and Lori also raise and show exotic animals — everything from snakes to African pygmy hedgehogs. To learn more about the Thomas’ operation, visit their website, www.thomas-farm.com. To learn more about the St. Clair County Beekeepers Association, www.sccba.net.

Editor’s note: Michael Callahan gets a special nod for shooting these photos without a bee suit or netting.

Features

Ralph Compton

Western Author, Odenville Icon

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Jerry Martin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

compton-country-boy-eddie — Bill Compton on the Country Boy Eddie Show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A common past

[Show as slideshow]

St. Clair Springs log homes

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Jerry Martin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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