Tag: Other Stories

World’s Greatest Archer

Story by Jerry C. Smith
Photography by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted photos

Schoolboys often dream of marrying a favorite teacher, but Howard Hill of Shelby County actually pulled it off and, with her help and support, became a true legend in his own time, the World’s Greatest Archer.

Ashville’s Elizabeth Hodges had taught high school English in Wilsonville, Alabama, where Howard attended. Apparently their attraction was mutual, as he married her a few years later. They had a long, storybook life together, and now lie in final rest beside each other in Ashville’s New Cemetery.

Born in 1899 on a cotton plantation in Shelby County, Howard’s father made archery equipment for him and his four brothers and taught the boys how to use them. Howard grew up using weapons of all kinds, but his bow was always his favorite.

According to Craig Ekin in his book, Howard Hill, The Man And The Legend, Howard killed his first rabbit at age five and, in his excitement to show his folks the game he’d brought home for supper, left his bow in a cotton field. It took three days to find it.

Howard entered Auburn’s veterinary school at age 19, but did so well in sports that animal medicine was soon sidelined. A tall, powerful young man who excelled at anything athletic, he lettered in baseball, basketball and football, earning the nickname of Wild Cat.

Howard didn’t neglect his archery interests while at school, often slipping away on weekends for long target practice sessions which, according to Ekin, usually involved shooting some 700 to 800 arrows. Howard was so appreciative of his years at Auburn that he created a college archery program at the school after his retirement. Many of his artifacts are now displayed on campus.

In 1922, Howard moved into Southern League semi-pro baseball, often playing pro golf in off-season. It was about this time that he married Elizabeth, which Ekin describes as the best move Howard ever made. “Libba,” as he called her, realized from the start that archery was Howard’s destiny, and she encouraged him at every opportunity.

Niece Margaret Hodges McLain describes her Aunt Elizabeth as a perfect southern belle whose petite stature only made Uncle Howard seem that much larger. Mrs. McLain recalls the Hills visiting Ashville during breaks from movie work.

Howard often cooked meat entrees for family gatherings by the same method used on safari in Africa. He would dig a pit in the ground, build a big fire in it, then place meat wrapped in wet cheesecloth among the coals, cover it up, and let it cook all day, a process similar to Hawaii’s imu pits used at luaus.

While waiting for dinner, Howard would set up hay bales for targets, and demonstrated his many archery skills and trick shots. Margaret recalls seeing him shoot tossed dimes from the air, as well as helping the youngsters learn archery. Howard was well-respected in Elizabeth’s home town, where the local theater showed many of his films and short subjects.

Three years after their marriage, the Hills moved to Opa Locka, Florida, where Howard worked as a machinist at Hughes Tool Company, founded by the father of aviation pioneer Howard Hughes. While there, he read a book called The Witchery Of Archery, by Maurice Thompson, that inspired Howard to set forth on a path that would bring him worldwide fame and set new records, many of them unbroken to this day.

Howard made his first bow while working at Hughes. It wasn’t a very good one, but it signaled the start of a new career direction in archery. He continued making bows and arrows and working in the machine shop until 1932, when their California experience actually began.

Ekin relates that Howard was approached by famed newspaper editorial writer Arthur Brisbane, who wanted the Hills to move to his desert ranch near Barstow, California. Howard was to coach his sons in physical sports, while Elizabeth would tutor them in academics.

After Howard’s one-year contract ended on the Brisbane ranch, he went to Hollywood, intent on making a documentary film he had written, called The Last Wilderness. It emphasized hunting America’s big game rather than spending fortunes on jungle safaris.

The film was a quick success, made entirely outdoors without using a single studio set. Howard’s amazing archery skills were featured as he brought down every kind of large game animal in the American wild country. For the next year or so, he tirelessly promoted this movie by making personal appearances at each showing, dazzling his audiences during intermissions with incredible demonstrations of pinpoint accuracy.

Among Howard’s amazing feats were shooting dozens of arrows, rapid fire, into the exact center of a target from 45 feet, not only from a standing stance, but also lying on his back, side, belly, and from between his legs. His arrows often got damaged in these stunts because they were grouped so tightly there was scarcely room for them all in the target’s tiny center spot.

Howard also appealed physically to his audiences. At more than 6 feet tall, his muscular build and dashing good looks would have easily qualified him for leading roles in movies. He was immensely strong, able to pull any bow with ease. In fact, some of his bows were so powerful they took two men to string them unless he did it himself.

One of Howard’s first major records was a long arrow flight of more than 391 yards, set in 1928 using a bow with a draw weight of 172 pounds that he built for the feat. He could keep seven arrows in the air at one time, and split a falling arrow with another.

Some favorite stunts were shooting at small objects in midair such as coins, rings, wasps, etc, shooting cigarettes out of some brave soul’s mouth, rolling a barrel down a hill and firing an arrow into its bunghole, splitting narrow sticks with arrows, shooting birds from high in the air, striking a match with one arrow, then extinguishing it with the next, shooting two arrows at once to burst two separate balloons, ricocheting arrows off wooden boards to hit a target, and breaking several balloons consecutively that had been blown up inside each other.

When asked how he hit moving targets so easily, Howard replied, “You have to train your eye to look at a single spot. If it’s a man, you look at a shirt button; if it’s a Coca Cola sign, you look at the center of an O. You have to look at infinite spots.”

Ekin remarks that when Howard was “looking at a spot,” his eye would appear as if it were literally going to pop right out of its socket. One thing that caught your writer’s notice in Hill documentaries was the way he laughed and joked with bystanders, but the minute his bow came into full draw, a dead-serious look would suddenly appear on his face. As soon as the arrow was loosed, however, he immediately became jovial again. It’s like he was two different people.

Howard’s hunting skills were legendary. He killed more than 2,000 large-game animals with his bow, including a rogue bull elephant. Taught to hunt by a Seminole Indian, he could track any kind of creature, often dispatching it with one arrow from a distance that would have challenged a gun hunter. Elizabeth often accompanied him on safaris and other big game hunts.

But despite his predatory skills, the man was not without a sense of humor. According to Ekin, on one western hunting trip he fooled his comrades into thinking they were eating veal brought from home when it was actually a wild burro he had shot the previous day and cooked in his signature fire pit.

Another time, Howard slipped a fox into a huge kettle of rabbit stew. On yet another trip, Howard and his companions were perturbed by a fellow hunter’s thunderous snoring, which continued despite all attempts to gently waken him. Finally, Howard simply rolled him, sleeping bag and all, into an icy creek.

His skills and uncanny accuracy soon caught the eye of Hollywood producers in 1937, when Warner Brothers was shooting The Adventures of Robin Hood. This high-dollar movie starred Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn (for our younger readers, Flynn was sort of like today’s Kevin Costner, but far more macho). Facing a select group of some 50 accomplished archers who tested for the movie’s arrow shots, Howard easily topped them all in accuracy.

According to Ekin, director William Keighley told Howard, “You’re hired. Tell the head property man what equipment you want and report Monday to teach 22 actors and six principals how to shoot.”

Howard made many shots with the camera looking over his shoulder from behind, substituting himself for an actor who had just been filmed from the front while pulling the same bow. He performed many dangerous precision shots, such as knocking a war club from Basil Rathbone’s hand and shooting at running spear throwers.

By his own estimate, Howard “killed” 11 men while shooting Robin Hood. Some were shot while on galloping horses, falling to the ground with an arrow sticking out of their backs or chests. In reality, his blunted arrows had imbedded themselves into a thick block of balsa wood backed up by a steel plate, worn under their tunics. Had Howard’s aim been off by just a few inches, it could have been fatal.

Actors complained that a powerful bow he used to insure accuracy packed such an impact force that they didn’t have to fake falling from their horses; he literally knocked them off. He did all the bow shots for Errol Flynn, as well as numerous Indian battle scenes for movies like They Died With Their Boots On, Buffalo Bill, and several other films involving archery.

In a foreword to Howard’s book, Wild Adventure, Errol Flynn said, “When you meet Howard Hill you know darn well you’ve met him before, but you can’t remember where or when.“ The two became friends while on the Robin Hood set and spent many pleasant days afterward hunting, partying and fishing from Flynn’s yacht, the Sirocco, where he made one of the most incredible shots of his career.

He dropped a wooden barrel over the side, then threw the barrel’s cork after it. Quoting Ekin’s 1982 book: “While the boat and barrel were bobbing up and down on the waves, Howard proceeded to shoot the cork with an arrow that had a line attached to it. After retrieving the cork, he then shot the arrow again (with the cork still on the end of it), perfectly plugging the hole with the cork! This was made into a movie short, and can still be seen today.”

In 1940, Howard set up an archery shop in Hollywood, where he turned out some of the world’s finest bows and arrows. He made them for superstars like Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers, Iron Eyes Cody, Errol Flynn and Shirley Temple — complete with archery lessons.

By 1945, Howard had mostly given up on competitive shooting, since no one could beat him. In fact, he won 196 Field Archery tournaments in a row. His attention turned to hunting and exhibition work. He and Elizabeth built a fine, Southern-style colonial home in the middle of 10 acres in Pacoima, California, using marble imported from Sylacauga.

By the 1950s, Howard was making his own hunting movies, such as Tembo, released by RKO in 1952, which is still a film classic. In all, he produced 23 short subject films for Warner Brothers. He wrote several authoritative books on archery and big-game hunting, like Wild Adventure and Hunting The Hard Way, and has been featured in several other archery books.

In 1971, Howard was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. Birmingham sports editor Zipp Newman wrote, “Never has one man so completely dominated his sport as Howard Hill.”

His signature bows and arrows are still being manufactured and sold at Howard Hill Archery in Hamilton, Montana, operated by longtime friends Craig & Evie Ekin. For those interested in watching Howard’s demo films, Youtube offers more than a dozen, mostly filmed in the quaint, gender-patronizing style of the 1940-50s.

After an unparalleled lifetime of making bows, movies, and unbroken records, Howard and Elizabeth retired to a large, colonial style home they built in Vincent, which still stands today. Howard passed away in 1975 after a bout with cancer, and Elizabeth, always at his side, joined him in eternal peace less than a year later.

They now lie in repose in the Hodges’ family plot at the New Ashville Cemetery, just inside the fork of its service road. Their headstone is framed with two drawn bows, but nothing else at the site commemorates his world fame. Always the dedicated wife, Elizabeth’s marker does not show her birth date, only a final one, so as to not draw attention to the difference in their ages.

Margaret McLain describes Howard and Elizabeth’s life together as “a very long love story. She was his greatest fan.”

For a story on how Howard Hill touched the author’s life, read the print or digital version of Discover The Essence of St. Clair October & November 2014 edition.

When Mays & Jones was the place to shop

Story by Jerry C. Smith
Photos by Wallace
Bromberg Jr.
Submitted photos

Its motto might well have been MOUNTAIN BROOK GOODS AT PELL CITY PRICES. The owners of Mays & Jones Department Store spared no effort to bring the finest merchandise to their establishment.

From 1923 until its closing in the mid 1970s, Mays & Jones was the premier clothing and linens emporium in Pell City, and according to many who worked and traded there, the store’s business personality mirrored the quality of its goods.

Originally built in 1905 as Pell City Bank & Trust by the town’s founder, Sumter Cogswell, the building was remodeled in 1923 as Mays & Jones Department Store. Its construction was of brick made at Ragland Brick Company. Although solely owned by local retailer Blair Jones, he added his wife’s maiden name to the store’s façade to show that it was indeed a family business.

Pell City resident Florence Compton, now 89 years of age but looking 60, relates that she loved every minute of her 31 years as their bookkeeper. Her career began in 1943, just after she graduated from Pell City High School. “It was a wonderful place to work,” she says. “Mr. Jones had a heart of gold and would bend over backward to see that every customer was able to find exactly what they wanted.”

Mays & Jones was not without competition. Downtown Pell City hosted other stores that carried similar inventory, such as Mitnick’s, Cohen’s and Roberson’s. Lorene Smith, who started her long career in Ladies’ and Childrens’ Shoes in 1946, often accompanied Mr. Jones on buying expeditions to ensure the store carried only the best medium-range goods. Jones also had buyers who went to dealerships in New York and elsewhere. He wanted his store to be the destination of choice for local folks who wanted uptown quality at an affordable price.

Garland Davis of Mineral Springs Road tells that he and twin brother, Harland, often picked blackberries at 50 cents per gallon to pay for their school clothes and would never think of buying them anywhere other than Mays & Jones.

Former store manager Mack Taylor, who served from 1968 until 1971, advanced their trade even further by arranging for advertising fliers, originally printed for Bob Cornett’s local newspaper, St. Clair Observer, to also be inserted in the Birmingham News. Soon customers were coming in from all over. Taylor says there were often 40-50 people waiting for the doors to open on sale days, many of them from Birmingham, Ragland and Ashville.

Most store employees had long tenure and displayed a strong loyalty to Mr. Jones. Florence and co-worker Lorene recall working with Jones’ wife Dixie Ann; Virginia Nelson; Linda & Etha May Haynes; Carolyn Robertson; June Tillery; twin sisters Clara & Mary Mays; Warner Hammett; Tommy Davis; Mildred Hardwick; Thurman Henninger; Nettie & Mary Cornett; Dixie Ann’s brother “Buddy” Mays; Peggy Pruett; Louella Starnes; Helen Hutton; Florence’s sister Clara May Compton; and Thurman Burnham. They also recall Tom and Essie Lovell, who worked together. He was in floor sales, and she handled clothing alterations.

Thurman “Red” Henninger created eye-catching window displays. He later set up his own Red’s Menswear store on Martin Street, next to the old Jack’s location. “Bunny” Beavers was janitor and also managed the stock room, which stayed very busy due to their ample stocks and liberal layaway plan.

Customers first
The store’s normal complement was eight to 10 workers, mostly in floor sales. As with many firms in those days, there were few of the benefits people take for granted today. Workers were paid a flat monthly salary. They worked six full days a week, except Wednesdays, when everything in town closed at noon. All hands were expected to be there promptly at opening time, formally dressed and ready to work. Everyone stayed until the last customer had been served.

This policy sometimes became irksome as last-minute customers dropped in, particularly on Fridays, shopped at great leisure, then left without buying anything. Employees were not allowed to clean up or shut down any department as long as a customer was in the store.

Many part-time extras, usually teenagers, were hired during big sales and the holiday season. Their layaway system saw heavy use during these times. Large numbers of paychecks were cashed on Fridays, some from the ordnance works at Bynum, but mostly from Avondale Mills. And you did not have to be a regular customer. Mr. Jones felt that, if he cashed enough checks, you would soon shop there because of their thoughtful service.

Among Mays & Jones’ product offerings were shoes for the whole family; women’s coats, dresses, stockings, lingerie and sportswear; men’s suits and haberdashery items; some house linens; and other soft goods.

They also ordered custom uniforms for local banks and other firms with staff who served the public.

At one time the store sold toys and other home items, but its inventory eventually centered around clothing and personal items. Brands included Jarman, Sewell, Connie and Red Goose shoes, and Arrow and Van Heusen shirts.

Levi jeans were a best seller. Made from local Avondale Mills denim, these were not pre-shrunk. Many fashion-conscious buyers would put them on wet, then let them shrink-dry to conform to their body shape.

The shoe department sported an X-Ray machine, common in those days before we became aware of the dangers of radiation. Most often used on growing children, these devices displayed a live image of the bones of both feet inside a shadow image of the shoes. Youngsters gleefully wiggled their toes while Mom and the sales clerk studied a green screen inside the darkened cabinet to determine toe-room for growth. Thankfully, these well-intentioned hazards went away in the middle 1950s.

Lorene adds, “You wouldn’t believe how many people tried on shoes on the wrong feet. And one lady said she needed a larger size because her feet “expired real bad.”

Gerald Ensley related a story about buying shoes during World War II. In those days, leather was a strategic material needed for the war effort, so purchases were made using ration stamps, with only one pair a year allowed. Gerald’s mother had given him a stamp, and told him to buy some school shoes for the coming term on their charge account.

Gerald was told to buy brogans, a simple, inexpensive, rugged shoe whose un-cured war-time leather often wrinkled and discolored when wet. Upon reaching the store, however, Gerald first did a little window shopping, and noticed a fine-looking pair of patent leather shoes on a mannequin. Mom or not, he decided that’s what he wanted.

Mr. Jones told Gerald that he knew his mother had not sent him there to buy those, as such shoes often came apart from the rigors of being on a young boy’s feet. But Gerald insisted, and left the store sporting snazzy, shiny patent leather shoes.

Unfortunately, it had been raining that day, and the way back was sodden with mud holes and puddles. By the time Gerald got home, his fine new shoes had loose, flapping soles and had long since lost their glassy sheen.

A helping hand
Mays & Jones had a long-standing reputation for helping those in need. Florence relates that they had more than a thousand credit customers. Taylor tells of an unemployed truck driver who came there looking for work clothes but had no money. He was given clothes on credit, and as soon as the man got his first paycheck, returned with a payment. Further, he brought Taylor 5 pounds of shrimp from his new job of transporting seafood from Florida, and thence used the store for all his family’s clothing needs.

Taylor says that Mr. Jones customarily spoke to everyone, even people walking by on the sidewalk. Lorene adds, “He didn’t spend his day sitting back there in his office; he was out front greeting customers.” He was known for commiserating with townsfolk in needy circumstances, offering kindly advice as well as goods. A dedicated community man who never refused to make a charitable donation, Jones served as an officer in the Chamber of Commerce and Lions Club and was a devout Methodist.

The building’s second floor was reserved for rentals to business clients, among them the Pell City DHR office. Current building trustee, attorney Ted Van Dall, says that during the building’s hundred-year-plus history there has always been at least one lawyer upstairs. Attorney/judge Edwin Holladay was once a tenant. Dr. R.A. Martin’s brother, Claude, had a dental office there.

Another one-time tenant, Bill Hereford, was a former attorney, judge and mayor of Pell City. He says the front windows were helpful to lawyers because they could see who was walking with whom from the courthouse to Rexall for lunch and who visited other law firms on the square.

Hereford purchased the Jones’ family home on 3rd Avenue North in 1987 and still lives there today. It’s a magnificent old dwelling, faithfully preserved except the old steam radiators and attic fan have been upgraded to central heat and air.

He tells that the Jones family had the first television set in Pell City in the early 1950s and that Jones delighted in inviting neighborhood kids in to watch the Saturday shows. Jones’ daughter, Dixie Ann Newman, was a former legal client of Hereford’s.

After Jones’ passing in 1968, the business was owned for a few years by Dixie Ann’s family, the Newmans, before the main store was shut down in the early 1970s. Some remaining inventory was moved to another short-lived location in the present Ben M. Jacobs Masonic Lodge building. Established by Mack Taylor, this new store was called Mays & Jones Home Goods.

In 1975, the original building suffered major damage in a tornado that struck downtown. Various other firms have since occupied its repaired premises, which now hosts Farmer’s Insurance Company. The old bank safe and vault still exist, far back in a rear corner. It’s always left open and unused because the combination is long-forgotten. It’s only been robbed once, by someone who chiseled a hole through the second floor, then blasted the safe with dynamite. The yegg was never caught.

Both Florence and Lorene speak highly of their days at Mays & Jones, naming it an ideal place to work and shop. Most anyone over age 60 in Pell City will attest to its quality, fairness, and genuine concern for customers that brought them back year after year.

Fore more images of Mays & Jones Department Store, read the full digital or print edition of the August & September 2014 edition of Discover The Essence of St. Clair Magazine.