Tag: Other Stories

Gover’s Gardens

There is gardening and then there is something very special

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Mike Callahan

Jennifer Gover did not intend to follow in her mother’s footsteps, at least not in the path of a master gardener. But one look at the bountiful gardens that frame her home and property each spring, and it is evident she inherited her mother’s green thumb and a passion for flowers.

“My mother was an avid flower gardener,” she said. “You know how mothers have you busy doing stuff and you say, ‘I’ll never do that.’ ”

Take in the abundance of blossoming azaleas, dogwoods, wisteria, irises, daylilies — they’re all here and more — and you immediately recognize the promise made to herself as a child was never kept.

Her mother’s favorite flower? “All of them,” Jennifer replies without hesitation. She apparently inherited that, too.

The drive leading up to their King’s Circle home in Pell City is quite a welcome mat of color, vibrant azaleas and dogwoods leading the way. Bursts of color in beds found in virtually every corner and along every path on the property show off her handiwork.

The retired Pell City High School principal is quick to point out that she has help. Husband Kenny Gover, whose day job takes him to Coldwater as principal of the elementary school, is “the hands,” she said. “I’m the planner. He’s the worker.”

In the early years, the Govers began with white dogwoods from the wild. She thought, “I’m not going to get into a big yard.” Azaleas followed “little by little.”

A dozen years later, and the Gover home and grounds are a spring color showcase. And they share it with family, friends, neighbors and anyone else who happens to stop by for her “open house” at the peak of their blooming.

Passersby on drives to see spring color will stop and inevitably recognize the legacy and say, “Oh, your mother is the plant lady. We always would go by there.”

One little girl told her, “The colors are so beautiful, I need sunglasses.”

It’s easy to understand the youngster’s sentiment on a tour of the gardens, which saw an average of 20 people a day coming to get a closer look. “Some came back to walk through a second or third time,” she said. “It’s a word-of-mouth thing.” And she greets them not only with her flowers, but with open house fare, like cakes and other refreshments. “I love them coming.”

She is part of a flower group called Mahogany, and its retiree members meet once a month. But their discussions and activities go well beyond blooms and blossoms. “It’s a group of people who like to help each other.”

They clean yards and make an impact. They visit, have lunch with guest speakers — like a registered nurse or a banker — who “impact us individually or as a group.”

They go on trips to learn more about their state and its history. They have been to Gee’s Bend, Brown’s Chapel Church and the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma. They traveled to Dexter Avenue in Montgomery to see the church and parsonage of Martin Luther King.

Here at home, Mahogany gets back to the business of flowers, this year naming Gover’s creation a not-too-surprising ‘Yard of the Month.’ “It’s probably month and year,” laughed Gover.

Like a proud mother gathering her young, she is constantly traveling to and fro to flea markets and home centers to add to her collection.

She specializes in bringing distressed plants back to life so that all may enjoy the pleasures of what she has known since childhood. It is not unusual for people to “leave things for me,” she said. They may be irises or daylilies, and they tell her, “I can’t keep this alive. What can you do?”

“They never come back and get them,” she said.

And she gladly accepts the challenge, simply adding to her gardens year after year and thinking of each flower left behind as a gift.

“There is nothing like early morning in the yard,” she said. “There’s a presence of God. A bloom leaf opens. Birds are singing. You reflect, think about life — where you’ve been and where you’re going.”

Her husband enjoys the pleasures of the gardens, too, not just the work, but to sit back and “see what you’ve accomplished.

“It’s a time to bond with each other,” she added.

She tells young people when they build a house, put the plants out now. “You’ll look back and enjoy it in your life,” she said.

Her other piece of advice? “You should love what you’re doing. I love the plants. It should have been my calling.”

One look around Govers’ gardens, and it doesn’t take long to conclude that that is exactly what it is.

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Blackwood Gallery

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Springville home to art gallery of national note

Story by Mike Bolton
Photos by Jerry Martin

As college kids in love tend to do, Dean Black and Sharon Williams would hold hands on the front porch of the old house that Black called home in his college days and talk of marriage and exactly how their lives would play out.

What their friends and family chalked up to as a cute couple with big dreams was actually a game plan for the couple who in 1980 became Mr. and Mrs. Dean Black. It was a game plan that has come to fruition with Blackwood Gallery in Springville. “We’d sit at that old house near Auburn and talk about how we’d have an art gallery one day and I’d draw and Dean would make the frames for my artwork,” Sharon Black said in their gallery on US 11 in Springville. “That was our goal in 1977, and that is how it has played out.”

Today, Blackwood Gallery houses the couple’s work as well as the works of more than 40 other craftsmen. Visitors are often surprised to find bronze work, blown glass, leaded glass, handmade furniture and other woodworking treasures from Alabama’s top craftsmen in a place like Springville.

But it was the only location they ever considered for their gallery, both say. Traditional places where you might expect to find an art gallery, like Mountain Brook, lacked that laid-back atmosphere that is so important to both. Besides, many larger cities tend to frown on people riding their horses to work these days.

“I grew up in Hueytown on a lake with horses, and Dean lived in Homewood, but he spent a lot of time in Springville around his grandparents’ summer getaway that had a lake and horses,” Sharon said. “When we built the gallery here, in addition to Dean’s woodworking shop he built in the back part of the gallery, he built a stable where we could put the horses when we rode them to work.”

For all their dreams of one day owning a gallery, surely the couple could never have envisioned the success Dean would find in the field of woodworking. In his college days, his woodworking consisted of building custom gun stocks at what he called Deano’s Gun Shop, an out-building at the home he rented in Society Hill.

In those days, being accepted into the prestigious Alabama Designer Craftsmen group and constructing many breathtaking pieces for the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Birmingham Botanical Gardens was even too much for him to imagine.

Chances are you might have seen his work and not even known it.

“I did the columns for the Asian murals at the Birmingham Museum of Art and that opened a lot of doors for me,” he said. “I came back and built the bell stand at the museum from wood that they presented me from the 1939 World’s Fair. I followed that by building the bases for the samurai helmet collection.”

In 1996, the Birmingham Museum of Art had a coup as it became one of a handful of cities in the U.S. to land the traveling Qin collection. The artifacts from the tomb of Qin Shihauangdi, who established the first empire called China, are hailed as one of the most awe-inspiring collections in the world. The collection was taken from a burial site the size of Manhattan and included full-size horses and protecting warriors made from terracotta.

Black was chosen to do much of the accompanying woodwork that supported the treasures. That woodwork was seen by thousands of visitors from across the U.S.

The museum is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Wedgwood pottery in the world and the only collection of its kind in the United States. Black was chosen over other craftsmen to build the supporting woodwork for that, too. He also did the delicate woodwork in the museum’s Korean Room.

As word of his skills spread, Black was also chosen to construct the Tori, a large gate at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

Today, Black says he’s amazed at how word of his work has spread and at the inquiries he receives from across the country. His work has ranged from columns for a hunting lodge belonging to dog-racing magnate Milton McGregor to crosses and offering tables from large churches across the U.S.

All of the work is done in his shop in the back of his gallery in Springville.

“I have equipment that can do pieces substantially larger than many people can do,” he said. “It has opened doors for many of these larger projects.”

Black says he has made some inroads into one project that he really hopes never comes to be. An Auburn graduate and devout Auburn fan, he has offered to build museum-quality pieces for the school free-of-charge from the wood from trees at Toomer’s Corner should they not survive the poisoning.

“I love Auburn, but I haven’t been as diligent as I should have been in sending my money down there,” he said. “This would be a way that I could give something back. I just hope it never comes to that.”

Black said he is a firm believer that small things steer people along the paths of life and if not for a woman and her dog, there probably wouldn’t be a Blackwood Gallery today.

“I grew up an Alabama fan, but I wanted to be a veterinarian,” he said. “I went to Auburn to become a veterinarian and took all the pre-vet classes.

“I was working with a vet down there, and a woman brought in a large sheep dog that had been hit by a car. The vet did everything he could but couldn’t save the dog. He told me that I needed to watch how he handled it because it would be something I would have to do frequently in my career.

“We had this little window in the office, and I watched through the window as he told the woman and kids. I was looking at the back of his head as he was facing them. I saw him shake his head, and I saw them burst into tears.

“I knew I could handle the gory stuff, but I wasn’t prepared for that. I knew in that instant that I couldn’t be a vet. I went in and told my professors that I wasn’t even going to take the final exams because I was changing my major. I lost more than a year’s work but I changed to marketing.

“I will always be glad that I did.”

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Winnataska

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Almost a century of fun: Camp boasts spirit and history

Story by Carolyn Stern
Photos by Jerry Martin
Submitted photos

A wild place with a rushing creek and a waterfall; a chance to test your skill in canoes or on horses or to take on a Robin Hood pose by learning to handle a bow and arrow in archery class — the stuff of dreams for a boy or girl stuck in the city in the summer. Wild and wonderful, Camp Winnataska has made those dreams come true for almost 100 years.

The secluded woodland camp close to Prescott in St. Clair County is not pretentious. It has no grand entrance nor elaborate buildings. But this collection of some of the best of the natural world and of human efforts holds a special place in the hearts and minds of those lucky enough to spend time here.

Hundreds of young people flood the camp during June and July, a week at a time. They swim, hike, work on crafts, learn to function as a team and sing, sing, sing. Everything they do during their week is based on the principles on which the camp was founded, but the way they’re presented is pure enjoyment.

A fortunate coincidence laid the groundwork for this dream to come true.

In 1914, Dr. Elwyn Ballard, the first commissioner of Boy Scouts in the Birmingham area, had been looking for an isolated retreat away from the city to establish a Scout camp. One spring day, he and his wife, Florence, took a ride in their Model T from Birmingham out past Grants Mill and through Leeds to Prescott to meet up with friends Lucien Brown and a Scout worker, Hewlett Ansley, at their favorite fishing hole. In the heavily forested area, the road narrowed to just a path between the trees, and they found the friends at Kelly Creek, which would eventually become part of Camp Winnataska.

In her book, “Winnataska Remembered,” Katherine Price Garmon, daughter of future camp Director D.R. Price, quotes Florence Ballard, who was her aunt. “We fell in love with the place; the small pool, the falls, and the big pool below with towering cliffs … but its inaccessibility was one of its greatest charms.”

With Dr. Ballard’s strong endorsement, the Boy Scouts purchased some of the property, leased other acres and used it for overnight camping for two years. By 1918, however, the leaders decided that a camp closer to Birmingham was more suitable for their needs.

As luck would have it, the interdenominational Birmingham Sunday School Association had been thinking about starting a pioneer effort in religious camps for boys, and Dr. Ballard was able to bring the two groups together. The association board agreed to sponsor the program to accomplish “the fourfold goals of the association: physical, mental, spiritual and religious development.”

However, Rosa Strickland, a board member and a respected Birmingham teacher and Sunday school worker, had an objection to the plan. She insisted that a similar camp should be provided for girls. D.R. Price said, “Nobody argued with Miss Rosa.”

Other camps established around this time were taking Indian names, and Mrs. Ballard was asked to choose a name from a list of Indian words. Considering the waterfall was (and is) a primary feature of the camp, she chose Winnataska, which means “laughing water.” The number of arrowheads found on the property, along with the fact that there’s plenty of water at Kelly creek for use and to draw game to the area, indicated there had been a sizable settlement. This connection made using an Indian name even more fitting for this ancient land.

Affirming Price’s prediction, Miss Rosa’s proposal for a girls’ camp was accepted and had outstanding results when the first Sunday School Association camp took place in 1918. Out of an expected 75 boys, aged 12 through 15, only 31 registered. To be fair, some boys this age were already working. In contrast, the girls’ registration had to be stopped at 108, leaving some disappointed.

The earliest female campers (aged 15 to 17) boarded a train at Birmingham’s Terminal Station on July 17, 1918, got off at the Brompton stop and walked the final five miles to Winnataska, dressed in the long skirts and the hats of the day. (A photograph in Stockham Hall at the camp shows smiles on many faces and skeptical looks on others.)

As time passed, school-type buses were used to pick up campers at designated sites around Birmingham. Today, automobiles filled with whatever the camper feels is necessary (no cell phones are allowed) crowd the parking lot on registration days. Then the fun begins.

The camper’s huts are named for Indian tribes: Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw and Navajo. At the time camps for younger children began, the Sunday School Council was helping a religious education camp in Mexico. Winnataska began sending their Sunday worship offerings to that camp and used Spanish words to name the Chico (“little one”) cabins (ages 6 to 8): Siesta, Casa Nueva, Tienda and Adobe.

Each hut has leaders who encourage their groups to take pride in themselves and their surroundings. A simple task (to some campers) is to keep their hut clean. The fun comes when they are required to sing or cheer (loudly) whenever they’re walking outdoors. Each tribe has special songs and are encouraged to drown out the others.

“I’m Chickasaw born and Chickasaw bred/And when I die I’m Chickasaw dead./So, rah, rah for Chickasaw/rah, rah for Chickasaw/Rah, rah, rah./Bum-diddly-um-dum. Chickasaw!”

Staff members, Blackfeet (for boys) and Comanches (for girls), plan activities that encourage competition as well as teamwork — swimming, riding horses, canoeing and rope climbing. Campers take part with enthusiasm, all with the hope of being named the Honor Hut on the last day of camp.

Each day begins with Bible study in the 1930 Branscomb Chapel and ends at Hillside (which overlooks the waterfall) with an inspirational talk or a short worship service. Through all these specially planned activities, the camp continues to fulfill the fourfold purpose of the Sunday School Association — physical, mental, spiritual and religious development.

Mary Margaret Shephard is director of the summer camps, and Courtney Bean is the programs director. In 1922, D.R. Price became the first director. The camp was growing so quickly it was clear a formal leader was needed to oversee the property and activities.

Price held the position for 35 years. His immediate priority was to replace or update the existing housing for leaders and campers. Some structures were usable, and they were made more comfortable by being fitted with screens and new bunk beds. Before the luxury of the new beds, the 1920s girls sang a song about their old double-decker bunks, which had straw mattresses.

“In our bunk, in our bunk, where the hay comes trickling down, ‘till it hits you in the crown, in our bunk, in our bunk.”

In 1930, property was cleared for Branscomb chapel, a circular open-air stone structure. Lester Coupland, a stonemason and carpenter who lived near Branchville, was the principal builder. Coupland’s son, Carl, says his father and his father’s uncle, Sam Simpson, rode their mules eight miles to the job.

As construction moved along, campers were recruited to gather rocks for the walls. Price reminded them that some rocks with color or distinct shapes were more attractive than others. He always told them to get the “pretty rocks,” his daughter says. The floor and seats are made with flat stone pieces from the creek below the waterfall.

Mrs. Garmon says the building’s round shape was chosen because Native Americans revered that shape, and Winnataska’s founders wanted to honor their tradition. Another custom, also thought to be from Indian lore, has continued to dictate movement in the chapel. One doesn’t walk straight across the floor from one doorway to another. To do so is believed to be unlucky. Movement goes around the circle.

Lester Coupland was asked to be caretaker of the camp in 1935, and he moved his family from their farm near Branchville to the premises. He remained caretaker until 1940. Friends of many years, Carl Coupland and Mrs. Garmon laugh about the times they and Garmon’s sisters played in the sand pile and all around the camp when their fathers were at work. Coupland says, “I was always smaller and the girls picked on me.”

The “big hole” at the foot of the waterfall is a really good place to fish, Coupland says, but his favorite memory of living at Camp Winnataska is not about the fish. “I was able to hear the water rushing over the falls every night,” he says. “There’s no better sound in the world to put you to sleep.”

Kelly Creek runs through the property and eventually into the Cahaba River. Over the years, a number of bridges were built to join the two parts of the campgrounds, but heavy rains that raised the level of the rushing water washed them away. Finally, John Elon Stanley (caretaker of the camp from 1940 to 1961) and architect Walter Holmquist, with help from Roy Connor and Blackfeet Bingham Ballard and Fletcher Yielding, completed the bridge that carries campers over the falls today. The bridge was officially named for him at the camp’s 50th anniversary celebration.

The bridge isn’t the only sign of Stanley’s creative talent. He had been a railroad bridge builder and his impressive techniques can also be seen in the ceilings in Stockham Hall and Brewer Chapel. The beautiful and sturdy ceiling rafters were made of wood harvested from Winnataska land.

A number of structures and markers on the property honor those who have been key to the growth of the camp and in keeping alive what D.R. Price called “The Winnataska Spirit”.

They include Branscomb Chapel, Brewer Chapel, Reimel Hall, Stockham Hall, the Stanley Bridge, Rosa Strickland Lodge, Price Lodge, Norton Flagpole, Grayson Lodge and Grace Lake.

The present caretaker, Mark Buerhaus, was a Blackfoot from 1994 to 1998, and he just couldn’t stay away. He’s responsible for management of the 1,400 acres of camp property and for 55 structures that encompass 87,000 square feet. He says he couldn’t possibly do it all without his assistant, J.T. Braxton.

Buerhaus is a busy man with a family on the property and is on call 24-7. He’s an enthusiastic supporter of Winnataska and knows where the campers are at almost any time of the day or night. Yes, night: neon (ask a camper) and pirate nights, mission impossible hide-and-seek, country night and Indian night. All include some sort of costumes and the absolutely necessary singing and dancing. Wherever Mark is needed, he goes. Even if it’s into the night activities.

Mrs. Garmon, as the daughter of the camp’s first director, a camper herself and a niece of the Ballards, who found the property, feels a family responsibility about retaining the camp legacy. She tells about walking around the grounds one summer day and hearing very loud music coming from Stockham Hall. “I went over to check on the activities. The girls were being taught line-dancing.” She wasn’t quite sure about that or the music. But one little dancer caught her eye: “I thought, ‘If doing this gives her the feeling she’s a real dancer, that’s a good thing.’”

To date, more than 100,000 campers have sung the songs, hiked the trails and established friendships that last through the years. “Many campers are fourth-, fifth- and sixth-generations of families,” says Mrs. Garmon, “mostly from the Birmingham area. They wouldn’t think of going anywhere else.”

At a celebration of Winnataska’s 50th year, D.R. Price quoted a postcard sent home by a Chico camper: “Dear Mother, went swimming in the morning. I almost drowned. Camp is fun. This afternoon, I’m going to play with snakes.”

Why do kids like to go to camp? That about sums it up.

For a first-person account of what it was like to live at Camp Winnataska during the depression, check out the full edition Discover, The Essence of St. Clair online at ISSUU or in print.

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Men of Steel

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Fincher family sharpen skills as bladesmiths

Story by GiGi Hood
Photos by Jerry Martin

In today’s ever-changing and fast-paced world, where one technological wonder is all too quickly followed and then bested by yet another, the Fincher men of St. Clair County might best be defined as an anachronism.

Ray, his brother Jack and his nephew Jon are creators, designers, craftsmen, fabricators. But their works are light years removed from the technological wonders of our time. The passion of their work reverts to a much slower and simplistic time where ideas were born in the brain and created by the hand.

The Finchers have discovered a little known world — the universe of bladesmiths (or more commonly known as knife makers). Each and every blade is unlike any other; one of a kind. Metal is the common thread that links their trade. Placed in a coal, charcoal or propane fire, it is heated to temperatures sometimes in excess of 1,800 degrees, where its physical properties become softened to the point it can be hammered out until it fits the puzzle that exists within the mind of the maker.

Ray was the first to become interested in knife making. “About 12 years ago, I was attending a gun show and bought a handmade knife from a blade master named Chuck Patrick,” he said. “There was just something about that creation that captured my interest. I think it was the simplicity, the creativity, the idea that something so simple, yet so special, could be made by hand.”

He then started buying knife parts and assembling them. Not long after, his brother Jack and his son, Jon, also became interested in his newfound project. While assembling knives was fun, the more involved they became, the desire to create their own knives grew. As a result, all three enrolled in classes at Texarkana College in Texarkana, Arkansas, to study and begin their certification in The American Bladesmith Society, which is the national organization for bladesmiths.

Certification is a multi-level process that begins with apprenticeship, progresses through a journeyman program and ends with the title of Master Bladesmith. Jon and Jack say they are not into their craft for the certification, just the pure enjoyment of creating one-of-a-kind knives from beginning to end. Ray is more active in it and has the goal of attaining journeyman status.

Jon, who was only 15 when he began, had to have permission from his principal to be absent from high school while attending the two-week classes in Texarkana. Swapping one type of education for another, he quickly fell in love with his newfound hobby. His first class, blacksmithing, culminated with the making of his first test knife. The test knife was required as one of the steps in completing his apprenticeship.

“It was fun; it allowed for individual creativity and it was also physical,” Jon explained. “There’s just something exciting about taking a flat piece of steel, heating it and then pounding on it until you’ve made your very own creation. It is very physical and very challenging. I loved it from the beginning, and I probably always will.”

Jon, a Marine who is in school at the University of South Alabama, makes a bee-line to the forge anytime he returns to St. Clair County. When observed as he works and explains the importance of each step, his passion for his art is clearly apparent.

Jack, Jon’s dad, enjoyed the knife assembly portion. But when the forging began, both father and son were truly hooked. “Jack, who earned his engineering degree from Auburn University, is both a seasoned professional with a great mind for detail and an eye for craftsmanship,” Ray explained. “He was immediately interested in knife making, but when Jon fell hard for it, that further cemented Jack’s passion. Anything Jon loves, Jack loves, so it was a match made in heaven for father and son — actually for all of us. Our mother instilled in us the importance of family togetherness, and she would be proud to know that we have carried that with us in all of our endeavors.”

Describing himself as a problem child who definitely marched to the beat of a different drummer, Ray was sent to Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia, during the regular school year. His summers were spent at another military school in Hollywood, Florida, where his love for deep-water diving was born. During his high-school years, he worked in a pipe shop. After graduating high school, he worked as a pipe fitter before joining the U.S. Marine Corps. After his time of service, he worked as a field pipe worker.

Following in the footsteps of his father, and having had the opportunity to become experienced in every aspect of pipe fitting, fabrication and design, he decided to embark on running his own business. “I had a pick-up truck, a barrel of tools, very little money but lots of desire, tenacity and determination,” he remembers. As his business, Fincher Fire Protection Systems, began to grow, family once again became intertwined when Jack, with his education, expertise and strong work ethic, went to work with Ray. Years later, after building the business, Ray decided it was time to retire and participate in his many other interests and his new love of bladesmithing.

Today, Ray, Jack and Jon all work out of the shop that Ray has built on his St. Clair County property that he shares with his wife, Nancy, and their Tennessee Walking Horses. Simply put, Ray loves knives, and Nancy loves horses. From the road, the property doesn’t speak of or give hints related to the diversity that exists within the confines of the fences that enclose the beautiful pastureland, barns and horses.

However, after driving through the property to the back shops, Jack, Jon and Ray’s world most certainly exists in tandem with Nancy’s. The huge shop, filled with high-priced and fine equipment doesn’t look like a hobby shop. It has all the accoutrements of a serious business: a forge, kiln, presses, lathes, table saws, trim saws, finishing equipment and multitudinous other high-tech tools.

It also houses a large supply of exotic materials, worthy of being used to make the handles for the finest of their creations. The supply is seemingly limitless. Tiger maple; desert iron wood; mesquite; giraffe bones (harvested from the carcasses of giraffes that have been killed by lions); Zircoti, a fine wood from Central America; and even petrified wooly mammoth tusk or walrus oossic are just a few of the exotic materials they use to create the beautiful handles for their metal masterpieces.

The Fincher guys love their hobby and have plenty to show for it. Ray said that, even though they sell their creations, it is still a hobby and not a business. “We turn everything we make back into our tools, our equipment, the stock we need, and our training,” he said. “Quite often, we travel to other parts of the country to attend schools, seminars and work with other bladesmiths to learn more about our trade. In conjunction with the Alabama Forging Council, we also travel around the country and help in the presentation and teaching the youths of today about the practices of another era.”

One of their greatest goals is learning how to produce Damascus Steel. A tedious and multi-stepped process, it is pattern welded and created by the layering of steel. The bladesmith starts with alternating layers of steel, forges, draws out and folds it over and over to create unique patterns.

Finally, as the blade is etched with acid, beautiful patterns can be seen within the layers of the Damascus Steel blade. As Jack pointed out, “There are no limits here. An infinite number of variations are possible. It’s incredible. They even have ways of putting your name or image in the steel. It’s called Mosaic Damascus. The possibilities are endless.”

The Finchers are getting ready for the Batson Blade Symposium, which will be held April 14, at Tannehill State Park, just south of Bessemer. In June, Atlanta will host the Atlanta Blade Masters Show, where literally thousands of people from all over the world are expected to attend.

They hope others share their enthusiasm. Forging opportunities are available for newcomers, and youths are particularly encouraged to get involved. The State Blacksmith Association and the Alabama Forge Council maintain top-notch forging facilities within the park. It hosts the Batson Symposium and an annual conference in September promoting smithing, in general.

At the present, the Finchers’ passion is still considered a hobby that will hopefully be passed to other generations. Ray best sums it up when he say he loves achieving in a field where learning is constant. “It slows us down, it makes us think, it gives us time to appreciate the intricacies of life, and it gives our family time and opportunity to dream, to create and enjoy the meaningful time that we are able to spend together because of our shared interests.”

Ray has one final dream. “Jon is so very talented. He loves this (and so does his dad). Given his foresight, his drive, his desire, his commitment to being a bladesmith, I think it will be quite sad if he doesn’t take the step to move from the arena of an enjoyable hobby to creating a viable business doing what he loves and what he is best at. Currently, he is the Fincher legacy, and I hope he will make the most out of his talent and the passion he possesses and that he will not only share it with our younger family members, but with the world as well.”

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Shoal Creek A Year Later

Tragedy, triumphs mark life in the valley

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Jerry Martin

Folks around Shoal Creek Valley have said it often enough over the past 12 months — “getting back to normal.”

But in this St. Clair County valley, normal has a new meaning since a tornado’s fury swept all the way through it, shattering homes and destroying lives in its path.

Tears find their own trail down Buford Sanders’ weathered face. With a determined gaze, he raises a single finger and vows this will be the last time he tells his own story of loss. “It’s time to look forward, not back.”

As he recounts the details of April 27, 2011, it is with the freshness of a memory made — not a year — but a moment ago. “It was 6:30 p.m. We saw it was coming. We lived at the top of the hill. My wife and I had no place safe to go, so we simply hunkered down in the middle of the house.”

The storm first hit the west end of his house overlooking Shoal Creek Road, blowing away a room, a porch and the roof. “It came back and blew off the east end,” he said. All that was left was a sturdy piece of wall where the couple crouched.

“We were thinking everything was OK,” Sanders said. The house had been lost, but they were safe. Just then, two of their grandchildren were “coming up the hill, hollering and crying that they needed help.”

The flow of tears comes in waves from this point as he tells what happened next. His son and daughter-in-law and one of their daughters had been blown 75 yards from their home into a blueberry patch.

The death of his daughter-in-law, Angie, came quickly. His son, Albert, lasted three or four hours. “He told me he thought he was going to die. I told him, ‘No, son, I love you too much.’

“ ‘I love you, too, Daddy,’ he told me, and those were his last words. It was just a matter of time, and he was gone.”

During Albert’s final hours, all Sanders could do was keep his son comfortable. No medical help was able to get there because the tornado so devastated the valley that it was virtually blocked from one end to the other. “We could hear the chainsaws running in both directions,” he said.

The Sanders family were like many in Shoal Creek Valley. They lived near one another; their generational ties strong. “We worked on things together,” he said of his son, Albert. “He was my buddy. It was sad his life came to an end.”

Buford Sanders and his sons raised their families on the same property, a single driveway leading to all three homes. In an instant, all three homes were swept away.

His other son had been thrown from his home by the winds, but he recovered and is doing well, his father said. His granddaughter, Cassie, spent five weeks in the hospital undergoing 12 to 15 surgeries and has little memory of what happened in the hours and weeks that followed the storm.

She used to be a runner. “She loved to run,” Sanders said. “She ran track. We had a track for her around the hay field.” Her recovery since April 27 has been painful and slow, but she is beginning to run again, entering 5K races, a proud grandfather noted, underscoring her resiliency.

He, too, is beginning to return to some semblance of routine. He and his wife have been back in their new home for about six months, he said. “If I just lost the house, I could feel good.

“But every step I take, I see the tragedy.” Just outside his back door still lay hundreds of acres of downed trees across the mountainside, a constant reminder of a storm so mighty and strong it could wipe out a forest and kill a dozen people in a matter of moments. “If it had just left all my family intact, I’d be the happiest man on earth.”

Just before the storm hit, he said he called both of his sons and told them to go to their safe places. “They did what I asked them to, but it wasn’t good enough.”

Sanders’ conversation vacillates between past and future. “The hurt of losing some of your blood is bad,” he said. “But the community and I are looking forward and looking ahead, not back. You have to suck it up and say this is the way it is. Keep going,” he said.

“So many people befriended us. They helped cleaning up. It was dangerous even to walk around. You lean on one another in times like that. So many people were so good to us.

“A fella I had never known built those kitchen cabinets,” he said, pointing across the room to what could only be described as the intricate work of a master craftsman. “When I went to pay him, he didn’t charge me. Things like that. A lot of people I had never seen before came and helped. I made lifelong friends. I’m grateful for that.”

Looking to the future, he said, “I guess from now on it will get somewhat better. It will be a long time. I have a strong little wife. We’re Christian people. We believe the Lord will take care of us through the battle and there will be a reward at the end.”

He shares a special kinship with the community that has suffered so much. The community came together “in mind and spirit” through the storm and the months of a painful aftermath, he said.

But the lesson from all of this, he said, lies not in the homes destroyed nor does it dwell in the material possessions snatched away by a greedy gust of wind. “The tragedy of all this is the lives that were lost in the twinkling of an eye.

“I would have loved to have swapped places.” Albert was 44. Angie was 43, and they had three daughters. “They had a lot to look forward to.”

Now it is up to Sanders to look forward, he said. “The important thing is the lives that were lost in this valley. The devastation of property is bad, but the other things are a lot worse.

“We have to look forward. You know, onward, Christian soldiers.”

• For more on Shoal Creek, read Building for the future amid remembrances of past and Pell City engineering firm rebuilds after direct hit in this month’s edition of Discover, The Essence of St. Clair Magazine.

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The Flying Pig

[Show as slideshow]

Grapes, grains and gifts make
patrons flock to Springville shop

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Jerry Martin

Dené Huff loves drinking good wine and craft beers, and smoking a good cigar. By opening The Flying Pig in Springville, she was able to bring all her vices together under one roof. “I got tired of driving to Atlanta for good beer, good wine and my wine kits,” she says.

She opened October 28, 2011, in the little house behind and between PNC (formerly RBC) Bank and the Springville Antique Mall. She specializes in imported and domestic craft beers and wine from small, family-owned wineries, has on-premise and off-premise licenses, and sells wine openers and aerators, Red Neck wine glasses (small mason jars on stems), and other adult-beverage-related gifts. Upstairs, she has grains, yeast, hops, wine kits and equipment for hobbyists to make their own wine. Hence her shop description, “grapes, grains and gifts.”

The name for her business came from her frustration in dealing with the Alabama Beverage Control Board. She couldn’t get them to return her phone calls, they messed up her paperwork five times, had her driving back and forth between Ashville, Pell City and Lincoln to get a good set of fingerprints. “I must have logged 1,500 miles trying to get everything resolved,” she says. “One day I announced, ‘We’ll get this resolved when pigs fly. …’ My kids heard, ‘when pigs fly,’” and said that’s what I should name my shop.”

Originally from Texas, Dené’s military background (she was a Marine corpsman) and her husband’s job have taken them all over the United States. “Just throw a dart at a map, and I’ve lived there,” she says. She and husband, Joe, and daughters Lily, 13, and Aria,11, came to Springville two and a half years ago when Valspar made Joe manager of its Birmingham plant. While in Trussville looking at houses, the family took a wrong turn, found the Drive-In at Argo, and fell in love. They stumbled onto Springville right after Memorial Day, when the flags were still up. “I knew it was home,” she says.

She doesn’t carry “grocery-store beer” brands, seeking more imagination in the line she sells. Craft beers, on the other hand, have hundreds of years of thought, ingenuity and, well, craftsmanship behind them. They aren’t mass produced, and some have six or seven hops in them. “I get women in here saying, ‘I hate beer,’ but before they leave here, I’ve usually found a beer they like,” Dené claims.

Within three months of opening, she had a regular clientele. Friday and Saturday nights seem to be their favorite times to meet, but you’ll run into at least one of them almost any night.

“We’ve been friends with the Davises for 20 years,” says Laura Sparks, as she sips her favorite Banana Nut Bread Beer. “We used to meet at each others’ houses, now we come here. We like the hospitality, and that our favorite beers are kept cold. A lot of beer here you won’t find at local bars, convenience stores or Walmart.”

The atmosphere at The Flying Pig is such that even her 15-year-old daughter feels comfortable. “She can’t drink the alcohol, but she’s looking forward to the designer sodas that are coming,” Laura says.

“You can sample several beers and wine from all over the world,” says her husband, Ray. “You can’t sit here and drink to oblivion, though. This is not a bar.”

Rob Brantley drops by two to four times per week for the beer and cigars he can’t find anywhere else. “You can have a good meal at a local restaurant and top it off here with a good wine or beer. And it’s walking distance from my house,” he says.

Gary Davis is a local blacksmith who, along with wife, Susan, frequents The Flying Pig for two reasons: Dené and the beer. “We like the atmosphere,” Susan says. “It’s not a smoky bar. There are no obnoxious people. You could bring your family. Dené knows her customers, knows when to cut off their beer.”

Dené is experimenting with live bands on weekends, and has decided acoustic instruments work best in such a small setting, so people can talk over them. A self-described foodie, she loves to experiment with recipes and has made friends with customers who share her interests. Describing herself and her girlfriends as “adventuresome,” she has been known to have buffalo or elk flown in for a dinner party. “My girlfriends will try anything,” she says.

One such gal pal is KoKo McTyeire, who subscribes to Cook’s Illustrated, and tries many of the upscale food publication’s recipes. The two frequently gather at one or the other’s house to experiment with food, and have been known to invite whoever is in the shop at closing time.

Asked to come up with a scrumptious menu and to pair it with good wines, Dené and KoKo prepared a meal for two Discover contributors that nearly knocked them off their bar stools. The menu started with an appetizer of Roasted Red Peppers and garlic hummus topped with chopped tomatoes and served with torn pieces of naan, a Middle Eastern flat bread. She also had a tray of Kalamata olives and bleu cheese-stuffed olives. The entrée was pot-roasted pork loin with blueberry and Marsala wine reduction sauce, and dessert was fresh berry gratins with Zabaglione topping.

“We selected two quick-and-easy recipes along with two that are a little more involved,” Dené says. “We used ingredients that are readily available, either from local vendors or grocery stores. We bought the pork roast at the Chopping Block in Springville, for example, and KoKo grew the blueberries.”

The hummus is easy, costs about $3 and took Dené five minutes to make. A versatile appetizer, it can be served with pita or tortilla chips. Her recipe serves four to six people, and leftovers will keep several days when stored in a tight container in the refrigerator.

Dené paired the hummus with a $9 bottle of Vista Point Pinot Grigio from California and, for those who prefer grains to grapes, Unibroue La Findu Monde, a French beer from Quebec. She used the Vista Point to show that you don’t have to spend $45 to have a good-tasting wine. “The Pinot Grigio is light and crisp and makes a nice complement for the garlic in the hummus,” she says. “Lots of my customers swear it has a vegetable undertone.”

She chose the beer because she wanted to show that beer can go with everything, from starters through entrées and on to desserts. “I think the undertones of this beer make it a wonderful addition to the flavors of the roasted peppers and garlic,” she adds.

The first time KoKo prepared the roast pork, she couldn’t find the herbes de Provence. So she looked it up online, and found what herbs were in the mix. “I had most of them on my shelves, so I made my own mix,” she says. “Now, you can buy it at Walmart.”

For the entrée, Dené chose a buttery Chardonnay called Creme dy Lis, and a beer called Boulevard Smokestack Series Sixth Glass Quadruple Ale. She picked the buttery (oaked) Chardonnay for the pork “just to add another layer and texture to the tongue,” she says.

“I enjoy the oak flavors of the wine with pork, chicken and delicate fish,” she says. “I didn’t want something to overpower the roasted pork. I believe a red would have done that. I like the quad beer for that exact same reason. It has a gentle flavor of spice that complemented the herbs on the pork, without overpowering the taste.”

The dessert pairings of Pimo Amoré Moscato wine and Lindemans Kriek Lambic beer were no-brainers. She says the Moscato is always a safe bet. The beer is just something fun she thought would complement the berries. “It doesn’t take a sommelier to be able to pair wines and beer with your food,” Dené believes. “It just takes a little understanding of what you are drinking, Google and simply knowing what you like. If you don’t particularly care for a Cab (Cabernet Sauvignon) by itself, pair it with a wonderful steak or roasted lamb. It will change your opinion of that particular grape. You must be willing to be adventurous if you want your pallet to expand.”

The dessert was prepared with KoKo’s homegrown blueberries, and Dené felt that the Kriek Lambic, a Belgium malt beverage with black cherries added, would pair well with it. “I call Lambic the original wine cooler,” she says of the fruity-tasting, sweet beer. “I sell what I like. That way, if I go belly up, all this beer and wine are mine!”

• Check out our recipes in the April 2012 edition of Discover, The Essence of St. Clair Magazine.

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