Another article for my employer’s monthly publication Reference Notes:

Montgomery and the River Region: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow by Mary Ann Neely

Ref 976.1

As an educator, author, and scholarly writer, Mary Ann Neely has studied and lovingly documented Montgomery’s history for many years. She is a graduate of Alabama’s own Huntingdon College and Auburn University.  As businesses and historic homes change hands, city landscapes are damaged and rebuilt by flood and fire, and philosophies for management of city resources have changed, Mary Ann Neely leads us through a whirlwind tour of Montgomery, Autauga, Elmore, Lowndes, and Macon Counties – and we don’t even have to brave the heat and tired aching feet to see it.

Her extensive knowledge of the history of our community is accompanied by old daguerreotypes of Montgomery then, and critically acclaimed photographer Robert Fouts’ images of Montgomery now.  Mr. Fouts spoke alongside Ms Neely at the Alabama Center for the Book’s Book Festival this past April. His dedication for his work shone through. He noted the loving, extremely painstaking work of sorting, cataloging and preserving his mentor John E. Scott Jr’s extensive collection of historic photographs.

Mr. Fouts and Ms Neely then got themselves into many situations that were precarious at best in an effort to reproduce the angles and views in those old photos, to allow the reader to compare then and now. Stories of knocking at the doors of complete strangers in remote areas, ‘not really’ trespassing, and hanging precariously off of bridges or standing in traffic in an effort to get the exact shot added enjoyable detail to their description of the process of writing the book.

Each section of the book details the origins and growth of a section of our community. We see the inevitable losses of time—the Parkmore Drive in is now the site of Advance Auto Parts. Mothers will no longer purchase their daughters’ bridal trousseaux at Al Levy’s.

Court Square here in Montgomery has come a long way from the Wild West look of 1874 to its serene, small-scale urban look today. The “Hog-Wallow in the Square” became the graceful fountain decorated by Hebe, the Goddess of Youth and Cup-Bearer of the Gods, in 1885. Our current downtown revitalizations reflect a similar spirit of progress and awareness of the need for beautification of public places.

Driving around downtown Montgomery on one important errand or another, one might wonder about this or that landmark—the Commerce Street tunnel, for instance—but never have time to follow up on its significance. The tunnel flooded the basements of buildings along Commerce Street in 1929 and was closed for nearly fifty years. Restored and re opened nearly fifty years later, it is the gateway to the River and the Amphitheatre. 

Painful moments in our community’s history are documented as well. The city’s effort to make ‘separate but equal’ truly equal after the 1901 constitution was sincere. Mayor William Teague ordered arrest of Montgomery Traction Company officials and employees who refused to create equal trolley routes for blacks. As we know now, this effort deteriorated into the conditions which led to the bus boycott of 1955. But today, improvements to the Court Square area have restored it to a more pedestrian friendly, graceful nod to the area’s original proportions and purposes.

Our riverfront, in 1898 piled high with muddy bales of cotton waiting to be shipped to Mobile, is now a place for outdoor recreation and city-sponsored entertainment.

In the second half of the book, Charles Barnette’s corporate profiles highlight the people and institutions who built our area from the frontier-like towns of 100 years ago to the growing metropolitan region we live in today. The history and the movers and shakers of businesses from hospitals to utilities to churches to higher education to industry remind us of where we’ve been and the potential in our future.

My only complaint about the book is that it leaves me hungry for even more details. As time passes, the marks of the personal and communal history of our community fade. How did the people live who rode those trolleys and built those businesses and boycotted those buses? What was the shipping business centered on our river like, and how much of it remains? How do our citizens live now, so that we can have a record for future books like this one?  It would take several volumes, I am sure, for Ms Neely and Mr. Fouts to cover all the many, many changes to Montgomery and other neighborhoods and communities. I hope they are still working on it!

In closing, I quote Mary Ann Neely. She echoes my hunger for additional detail. On pages 19-20 she writes:

‘In some instances, there are images that may be disturbing where once elegant mansions or simpler cottages have given way to industrial sites, car lots, or vacant weed-infested fields, but in others there is a tree, a building, a view that instills that wondrous sense of continuity that gives the viewer such a satisfactory personal feeling of “I have been there, and I like what I see.” That is the purpose of this book—to give the reader the understanding that, yes, we have been there – that all humanity has connections with every other generation. Of course, we wear different clothes, travel in different vehicles, live in different houses, but look into the eyes of an individual in an old photograph, wonder how it felt to live in a dogtrot house in the winter, attend Tuskegee Institute in 1890, wade through Downtown Prattville in the flood of 1939. We are all a part of what we have met, either in this life or through the pictures that reflect the change and the continuity of Central Alabama’s unique and beautiful River Region.”

Tonight, when I need my insomnia, it has finally deserted me. I am lonely (an existential thing, not a lack of loving sweet friends thing cause I have those in spades, saw several of them tonight, and I don’t have enough time to be with all of them as much as I want.) I am exhausted. I need to get a lot done before heading out for my trip this weekend. I want to leave the house clean and peaceful, I have no choice but to a) get all the crap out of my car and b) get crap selected and packed into the car. I want to ‘just quickly run up) a couple itsy bitsy baby quilts for Courtney’s cousin’s teeny weeny 26-week twins, who decided to come much more quickly than their September due date. And I am so tired.

My high school best friend is just as deliciously mean as ever and I love her so much and I can’t wait to see her. She’s bad, bad, bad. Her little sis just had the baby (out of wedlock, the only way to do it). She announced to her extremely loving, sweet, and clean living mother that she’s through with men and it’s women only for her from here on out. And we’ve connived to make her brother my second husband and make me his third wife, which is gonna be tough cause I identify and empathise with his second and current wife in many ways. But they’ve given up on him having any kids, and my childbearing years are almost over, right? But if I lived with him I’d probably be sick of him too. The everyday magic I expect… Feh. Maybe we could just have a baby together. His wife’s too old… I could have my freedom AND my baby and he could have his beloved wife and his baby. Don’t people do that sort of thing all the time? Still, I have this horrible fear of abandonment and fear the reality that my marriage isn’t working out and so could I never contribute to the abandonment of someone else or the demise of someone else’s marriage. So as good as it sounded…

I gotta figure something out quick. I will soon be older than her mom was when she thought she was going into the change but had surprise baby Kell instead, who now has her own surprise baby.

And I wonder if they’ll let me get in the tanning bed they keep in the garage. (You might be a redneck if… but don’t forget I pride myself on it.)My mother said the tanning bed would cook my ovaries, but I’m not using them right now. And I gotta tone down these varicose veins and stretchmarks posthaste. Skinny legs are not sexy legs, trust me.

G’night.

It came to me today. All I want when I leave work is to go to a place where I am happy. It could be a social gathering, populated by the good girlfriends I already have, who are generally too busy with kids and home to meet me after work. It could be anywhere that people are glad to see me and know something about my joys and my issues– one of our homes, a local park, a bar might not be so good because of the various legal and financial ramifications, but it would be okay, especially if it was a table outside. It could, probably should, also be a place I go in solitude, one I have built, whether physically or emotionally/spiritually, for that purpose.

I’m reading David Wann’s Simple Prosperity right now and thinking hard about what this guy says– we are so busy earning and acquiring and consuming things to make us happy that we miss out on what really makes us happy– like strong relationships, fresh air, health, a tranquil home, fewer but more truly lasting and beautiful or useful possessions, truly good food, and community. My friends and I often dance around the simple truth of our irritated and exhausted discontent and isolation when bitch about the education system we have vs. the education we want for our children, or talk about the lack of ‘walkability’ in our town and of social capital in our lives. I think we’re onto something, although we’re going to have to do a lot more thinking/wangling before we make much of a change– if we ever do.

Anyway. Consume less. Be happier. My mom and dad told me so. Their parents told them and/or they figured it out some other way, and they passed it along to me.  Okay not in so many words, but they definitely had the consume less be happier thing well in hand.

My family prepared me for life with so many important truths– some of which I’ve been able to make use of more readily than others, because until very, very recently I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees.

But that’s not because they didn’t tell me.

Here’s the first installment of my thoughts on these issues. Here’s what I got from my parents, loud and clear.

Homegrown Tastes Better. I wasn’t so much about the homegrown veggies as a kid, but I darn sure could put a hurt on some peaches or strawberries fresh from the garden or the orchard down the road, especially sliced, poured over a biscuit and smothered in ice cream. There will never, ever be a storebought tomato, peach or strawberry like the ones that came out of my parents’ or grandparents’ gardens, and it breaks my heart that those days are gone. I can eat a really good tomato on white bread with a pasteurized process cheese slice and Miracle Whip, and be so happy it is indescribable. I could eat that for breakfast lunch and dinner for quite a while, I’m reasonably sure– at least as long as tomato season lasts.

Clothes and linens we make are better. I’ve been making, buying at estate sales and thrift shops, and hoarding cloth napkins since long before I became a cloth diaper/cloth napkin/no paper towels or wipes allowed ecofreak. I now have separate groups of towels for floor/bathroom cleaning and dirty jobs, dishes/food prep use, and towels to be used on actual people, and never the twain (or whatever the equivalent is for three) shall meet.

I do stop short at toilet paper, tissues, and feminine hygiene, although 1. I feel guilty about it and 2. I have a girlfriend or two who even uses cloth for those as well and while I can’t bring myself to do it, I get it. I totally get it, and I’m okay with it. It’s just, well, you know. What’s the difference between that and a cloth baby diaper? Okay, I’m just not at the place where I can manage grownup bodily substances, not my own and not others.’

Like every kid between, say, nine and whenever they get to start picking out their own clothes, I was often embarrassed that I did not have designer clothes like my little friends, and ashamed of the economies my parents would employ when buying for our family. But my mother put such love, talent, and style into clothes she made for me that I felt like a princess. She made sure there were no seams to irritate my incredibly sensitive skin (a symptom of my ADD, who knew? I thought it was just cause I’m a princess). She made sure I had pockets for my fiddly busy nervous hands. She chose fabrics in themes that reflected something I loved or had done lately. She found a beautiful costume pendant from her childhood, with a blue jewel in the center, and put it on a blue velvet ribbon for a choker to go with the dress she made for my band concert in seventh grade or so. I felt like a girl in Seventeen magazine.

Now I feel like a total loser if I don’t give a friend or loved one a quilt when a baby is born. I can kind of rationalize if I can go get them, say, a Strasberg item or a truly iconic toy (for a while I was all about the Glowworm)… but I still feel like I’ve let them down. I mean, I strip quilt, piecing on the machine… but I do the actual quilting by hand and I love it. LOVE it.  (Notice I’m not saying I do it well.)

My dad built beautiful furniture for us. When we lived in Texas I had a jungle gym he made, INSIDE my house, in the living room. What does that say about my parents’ priorities? (or maybe they were scared the tarantula we found in our back yard one time would carry us off… no that’s not true, because I spent hours outside by myself back then. Well, then it must have been their priorities!) I always think about how sad my childhood was. I always forget about the jungle gym and the three story dollhouse he made. It was taller than I was. I never realized how cool that was until just now.

I had a funky cool desk painted a lovely shiny blue outside and white inside. My brother had a beautiful captain’s bed… my mom has a wonderful sewing cabinet which must have two dozen little drawers in it.  My parents had beautifully painted tall shelves for all their books and records. They have a side table in their front hallway that was sanded and oiled so lovingly that it looks and feels like satin.

We absolutely do have a terrible sweet/carb addiction and a propensity for weight problems in my family… but my mother made our sweets. She made pies, cakes, chocolate chip cookies, exotic, beautiful, incredibly delicious and troublesome desserts out of fancy schmancy cookbooks. My standards are now so high that I am often disappointed… we happened on a bakery in one of our small towns that made sweets that were just as wonderful as home made. I can still remember the incredible Black Forest Cake my parents bought Just Because. But it didn’t take long for the modern era to send that place out of business. It’s sad, because storebought just never has tasted that good.

I’ve been fantasizing about having enough actual dishes and flatware (even if they came from the thrift store) for huge parties so that I don’t have to throw away paper plates and plastic cups and forks– and having time (or staff) to wash and room to store such– all of my life.

And I’ve always fantasized about having a  home out in the country that was big enough for ten or twenty people to come and stay in perfect comfort– plenty of bathrooms, plenty of rooms and beds, plenty of space to relax in relative quiet and solitude or get together for a huge loud party in a main living area big enough for a band and dancing.

We Need Nature. My parents cursed us by moving us to various insanely backwoods, rural parts of the country when I was growing up. The isolation was painful at a time when kids want so badly simply to Belong. But now I think about playing with my cousins in my grandparents’ huge back yard until the last shred of daylight was absolutely gone,  or the long solitary hours in the fresh air, walking through woods or old unused fields by myself when I was 10-14 or so and I so wish I could have them back and give them to my child.

I get panicky when I can’t be in some fresh air and sunshine some portion of every day. I find that my child, any child, behaves so much better with an hour or two of outdoor time each day. I put a lot of time into my (still extremely ragged) yard and (still not too productive) raised bed gardening, and it gives me so much satisfaction regardless of result.

We Need Actual Experiences. My parents also took us to do all sorts of things I would never admit to when I was growing up, and many times it was just a misery. We found fossils and cracked geodes out in the actual outdoors where such things actually occurred naturally. Okay, that was actually super cool. But I still couldn’t tell anyone about it.  We hiked, cross country skiied, canoed, fished, ice skated, shot BB guns occasionally but only at targets (or, in the case of my little friends at daycare, at each other), went to a few outdoor live music festivals (horrid dorky music like bluegrass, shudder, which I now love with all my heart!) and folk museums and worst of all, CAMPED. What a misery! But now I can’t imagine children who live their lives shuffling to school and back again, with no recess, their only recreation television and video gaming. I can’t imagine a life where I didn’t know that there used to be such things as blacksmiths and butter churns and corncribs and relative safety for children spending long unstructured hours alone outdoors.

I’m not there yet… some aspects of the life of blacksmithing and churning butter must have been incredibly oppressive and difficult– if it weren’t we’d still be doing it right? Creating true community and home and happiness, as opposed to consuming it–I’m not quite sure what that means to me.  But I’m thinking about it really hard.