No Hill Too High for a Stepper

by Mike Mahan

  Next door to the Mahan house and behind Laura Ann Hicks in this photograph was the two-story Hartley house.

  The Lathams

  On our side of the street, two houses toward town from us, lived Mr. Tommy Latham and his wife in a house that had been moved to the lot it sat on and was jacked up like the Hartley house. We called him Mr. Tommy, but for some reason we always called her Mrs. Latham. Mr. Tommy had run his own grocery store, but when I knew him he ran a store up on Main for Mr. Teamon McCully. You knew that Mr. Tommy was in charge because of the giant silver safety pin he wore on his white apron. Under his apron he wore an impeccable shirt and tie and dress slacks. He knew everybody in town, and everybody knew him. In those days, grocery stores delivered, and if he wasn’t too busy Mr. Tommy would deliver your groceries himself. I liked to go to the store, so Momma or Maggie would send me up there two or three times a day to get an item or two.

  I was especially fond of Mrs. Latham. I thought she was a grand lady, second on Shelby Street only to Mrs. Craig. She might not have traveled to Europe like Mrs. Craig did, but when she left her house it was a beautiful spectacle. She had a two-toned blue and black 1930 Buick sedan with gorgeous blue velvet upholstery. It had large solid wheels, not spokes like other cars in the neighborhood, and a big chrome gearshift with a shiny black ball on top.

  Mrs. Latham was my first employer. Every Saturday I would wash her Buick, whether it had left her garage during the week or not. Both she and Mr. Tommy walked to work, so driving was not an everyday occurrence. She also hired me to pick rocks out between the tire treads because she said that it made the tires last longer and because she didn’t like the click they made when she drove down the concrete streets. She kept a meticulous yard, and she also hired me to rake leaves and to transfer flower bulbs.

  Running down beside the Latham house was Island Street, which at the time was unpaved. On the right at the bottom of the hill was a rundown house occupied by a colored man. Most black Montevallians lived across the creek, but people said it was okay for the black man to live on our side of the creek, as his house was down under the hill.

  The DeSears

  Two houses down, away from Main, one of my best friends, Gene Baldwin, lived in a dirty yellow house with his papaw and mamaw, Mr. and Mrs. Robert DeSear. They, like the Wilsons, lived in a house they rented from Pete Givhan, but their house was far older than either the Wilsons’ or ours. It was not well-kept on the outside, and there was a broken cement wall along the street, which had cracked when the roots of a large chinaberry tree worked havoc with it.

  Gene had a bad case of asthma, and it seemed to me that while other kids got presents at Christmas, Gene got asthma. Mother said that the DeSears did not keep their house warm enough, and that is why Gene had asthma.

  We were impressed with Mr. DeSear, but he was always a sort of mystery to us. We weren’t afraid of him at all, but he seemed somewhat unapproachable. He sold burial insurance and would leave home early in the morning in his little black car with a rumble seat, working his debit for a company in Birmingham and returning about dark. Mr. DeSear struck a dandy pose. Tall, stately, and gray-haired, he wore gold-rimmed glasses and a flat-brimmed straw hat with a beautiful turquoise band. His black cap-toe shoes were always polished perfectly, and he wore dark blue three-piece suits with a white pin stripe. A rich gold watch chain went from one side of his vest to the other, and he also wore a gold stick-pin in his tie.

  Mr. DeSear was a courtly man. He walked along the city sidewalks a great deal, and whenever he met a woman on the sidewalk he would tip his hat to her. When a man asked him how he was doing, he always had the same answer, “Good as they make ’em, don’t give a damn where they come from.” Mother thought he had little to do to use the word damn so casually.

  Mr. DeSear owned guns, and Gene and I were fascinated by them. I was not allowed to have a gun, not even a BB gun, and Dad didn’t have a gun because Mother objected to them so strenuously. Mr. DeSear joined the fox hunts, carrying a twelve-gauge shotgun, which was stored in the hall closet. Gene and I would slip in there and handle the gun, both vowing that we would have our own shotguns one day.

  Mr. DeSear had a chicken house, and every year he planted a vegetable garden near it. He grew corn twice as tall as I was, and he used brush to prop up his tomatoes and beans to keep them off the ground. When President Roosevelt asked all Americans to plant a Victory garden during the war, Dad complied, thinking it was his patriotic duty to do so. But he never really liked it, and when the war was over there were no more gardens at 159 Shelby Street. In response to the president’s call, Bloomer Wilson said he was as patriotic as the next man, but damned if he was going to plant any vegetable garden.

  I had many meals with Gene and his grandparents, and I always went there for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Gene had a breakfast ritual he invariably went through. He would spoon Mamaw’s grits onto his porcelain plate, and put a large pat of butter in the center, stirring them until the butter melted. Then he would take crispy bacon and crumble it over the buttered grits, after which he would smooth the mixture over the entire plate, pick up his fork, and eat the mixture with a look of extreme contentment on his face. At home, I would try to duplicate his ritual, but I never seemed to achieve his level of perfection.

  One of my best friends, Gene Baldwin, all dressed up in front of his grandparent’s house.

  Gene’s grandparents, Alma and Robert DeSear, in front of their Shelby Street home.

  Home from Gordon Military Academy, Gene Baldwin had his picture made with his buddy and neighbor, Ed Bridges.

  Gene, stationed in Korea, waiting for a scramble at the alert shack

  June McQueen, Gene’s Alabama College girlfriend and later his wife, the girl he “buzzed” while flying his jet down Montevallo’s Main Street in 1952.

  Gene, who along the way had gained the nickname General, left Montevallo late in high school because his mother, Ladean, who was in education, was not satisfied with the educational program at Montevallo High School. She sent Gene to Fort Gordon Military Academy in Georgia for his junior and senior years. Afterwards, he returned to Montevallo with his best friend, Herndon Davis, but they decided they wanted more in life and went to Birmingham to join the Navy. At the recruiting office, Herndon immediately signed up, but Gene got cold feet and didn’t sign. Instead, he entered Alabama College in 1950, but he didn’t do very well and after one year joined the U.S. Air Force, becoming a jet pilot. He had always been interested in planes, and this was in many ways a dream come true. He made many flights, but his most memorable one came in 1952.

  In May 1952, residents of Montevallo could not have imagined an F-94 jet with afterburners roaring over town at 500 feet, but that is exactly what Gene did. He first buzzed Alabama College, barely missing both the top floor of Main Dormitory, which was called the Buzzard, and the concrete water tower. His “buzz” of the campus frightened some and it impressed some, but the main thing it did was to make the heart of his lover, June, race almost as fast as the plane was traveling. Leaving campus, he buzzed down Shelby Street. He apparently enjoyed it so much that he turned around and buzzed straight down Shelby Street again. After that, he flew off to his squadron in Pensacola, Florida, leaving June and his townsmen behind, but definitely with a good story to tell about the antics of a wild man, Gene Baldwin.

  I was at home on Shelby Street when Gene made his first pass, and I heard the deafening noise as the General passed over. I rushed out into the yard to see what in the world was happening, but I knew in my heart that this had to be the work of Gene Baldwin. I watched as the plane made a sharp turn onto Main Street and gave the town one last buzz. The whole incident had not lasted over five minutes, but what a five minutes!

  Gene went on to have a distinguished career in the military. He flew combat missions for twenty-five months in Korea. But in our minds, none of that was nearly so fine an achievement as buzzi
ng his hometown.

  Hobart Love

  Another neighbor who got the attention of the neighborhood kids was Hobart Love. He lived just down the street in an apartment with his wife and two daughters. I occasionally played with one of the daughters on a long upstairs porch on the house. But it was not the house that was really Hobart Love’s domain. He was the mysterious man who sat above the balcony in the Strand Theater in a metal fireproof booth (because early film stock was highly flammable) running the projector. When we went to the picture show, we would always check Hobart out. Occasionally when I’d have to have a bathroom break during the movie, I would see Hobart downstairs talking to the owner of the Strand, Mr. Eddie Watson, or eating popcorn, and I would wonder how the movie could be running without him. Later we discovered he could be downstairs because he knew how long a reel would last. He would just have to be back upstairs to see some little spots appear in the upper right-hand side of the screen. That was Hobart’s sign to switch to another of the three pre-set projectors. My friends and I would watch for those little spots as if they were some vital secret code that we were privy to. Occasionally Hobart would fail to see the spots, and the movie would stop. We kids would whistle and boo and hiss until the movie came back on. Then we would clap loudly.

  We especially envied Hobart because he got to see every movie that came to town. We only got to see the westerns on Saturday.

  The McGaughys

  Down the street from us lived two of my bosom buddies, Jack and Joe McGaughy, and their parents, Mr. Luther and Miss Rebecca. When I think of their house, I think of the terraces out front that Mr. Luther covered with white rocks to keep from having to mow on such a steep grade. Until the end of World War II, Mr. Luther drove various routes for the Alabama Coach Company located on Middle Street and owned by Mr. Wyman Brown. Like Dad, Luther was too old to be drafted, but he carried workers, including Dad, back and forth to work in the government’s gunpowder plant in Childersburg.

  Mr. Luther was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis, which affected his hand and foot coordination, making it impossible for him to continue driving. But he continued working for the company, selling tickets in a little room between the white and colored waiting rooms at the bus station downtown. I loved to go down to the station and watch him selling tickets to Pea Ridge, Dogwood, Marvel, and all the little mining towns near Montevallo. You could also buy a ticket from him that would take you to Birmingham, and I was able to do that on several occasions when I would go visit family there.

  Finally Mr. Luther’s condition got so bad that he couldn’t work at all. First he became confined to home, and later he was completely bedridden. Luckily, some great news drifted down from Dr. Hubbard’s office: there was a new miracle drug called cortisone, and maybe injections of this miracle drug would get Mr. Luther well. The shots did help enough that he was able to go out onto the porch and could occasionally ride in the car. But his appearance changed. His face got very fat, and he developed a hump on his back. His hair turned a funny color and then fell out, and it wasn’t long after that that he passed away. It was the first death of a friend’s parent that I experienced, and I found it very stressful. Luckily, Miss Rebecca was a strong woman. She continued her job teaching home economics at Montevallo High School, and, with the help of Carrie Boo Deviner from Brierfield, she kept an orderly home.

  Mr. Luther’s garden, which he had kept as long as he could, was not abandoned. The boys and Carrie Boo saw to that. Miss Rebecca continued to cook marvelous meals, to which I was often invited. I can still taste the fresh corn on the cob, the sliced tomatoes, the thick slices of onion, the green beans, the cornbread, and the meat—fried chicken, liver, or crisp streak-of-lean.

  I shall never forget one event that took place in the barn behind the McGaughy home. Joe and Jack, Dolan Small, other boys, and I loved to take the corncobs and have wars, shooting them with slingshots. A friend named Grady “Beaut” Houlditch, a quiet and serious boy, was playing war with us one day. We had found a sack of lime in the barn, and we would dip the corncobs in the lime so we would have proof if we had made a kill. Jack hit Grady directly in one eye, blinding him in that eye. Amazingly, Grady and his family accepted it as just one of those things that can happen, and there were no repercussions, except that we were forbidden to ever dip the corncobs in lime again.

  Grady “Beaut” Houlditch, me, and Harry Klotzman in front of Holcombe’s grocery store and Dr. Mitchell’s dental office.

  Carrie Boo was the one who gave the boys their nicknames. Joe, who was my age, was called Hon Darlin’ and his brother Jack, two years older, was called Sugar Babe. The boys in the neighborhood shortened the names to Hon and Shug, and those names stuck. Joe and I started Auburn in 1952, and since we lived in different dorms I didn’t see him for a few days. I hadn’t realized, but we were in the same ROTC class. I entered the huge hall, which had raked seating for several hundred students, and went down front to take a seat. I looked back behind me to see if I recognized anyone and was thrilled to see my buddy Joe there on the back row. I jumped up and without thinking yelled out, “Hon Darlin’!” Joe jumped up and waved back. Silence fell over the room. In those days you could not call your best male friend “Hon Darlin’” without arousing suspicion, and our classmates eyed us warily. I realized what was okay on Shelby Street was another matter in the larger world.

  Carrie Boo later came to work for us, becoming an integral part of our family, maybe even more so than Maggie had been. After I married and returned to Montevallo, Carrie became a companion to my daughter Miki, as Maggie had been to me. Carrie Boo stayed with us through marriages, births, and deaths, and, when Mother died, her head rested on Carrie’s shoulder.

  Mr. Dyer

  We had yet another neighbor who fascinated me and the other kids on Shelby Street, but he was almost universally disliked by the adults. His name was Mr. H. I. E. Dyer. This was the first person I ever encountered with three initials, and I had no idea what the H and I stood for, but the E stood for Edward, and everybody called him Ed Dyer. Before the war, he had lived in what we called the house under the hill, but I wasn’t much aware of him until his return when the war was over. There had once been a gristmill on Shoal Creek, which ran down behind our house, and Mr. Dyer set out to rebuild it. He was a very hard worker, beginning his labors at sunup, and we neighborhood kids watched the project from a distance, much impressed with Mr. Dyer’s energy. Once the mill was finished, he began to raise the dam on the creek to get the water he needed to run the mill. He brought in a lot of workers to drill holes in the dam and install iron bars and then to pour a two-foot layer of concrete across the dam. When he finally opened the floodgates, he drained the creek, exposing the rocks above the dam. For the first time in my memory there were actually shoals in Shoal Creek. He also built a millrace to move the water from above the dam to the gristmill’s turbine.

  All over town there was talk about Mr. Dyer’s project, and most didn’t approve. Did he, after all, have the legal right to raise the dam? Would he flood Mulkey’s Bottom? Would Mr. Jeter’s garden plot be affected? Would we be able to have the carnival down by the creek as usual? Despite their fears, people seemed powerless in the face of a determined Mr. Dyer. Everybody just admitted you couldn’t do anything with him. The single exception I know of was the young Catherine Bridges, who lived with her parents in a big white house on Shelby Street just above the dam. I was told that when Mr. Dyer began to bulldoze along the creek toward their property, she placed a chair on their property line and told him that he’d have to run over her to bulldoze her place. For once, Mr. Dyer backed down. He had met his match in young Catherine Bridges.

  Mr. Dyer’s infamous Shoal Creek dam.

  Mr. Dyer finally got his operation up and running, grinding corn and peanuts to make meal and cow feed. He also had a fantastic corn-shucking machine. He did not have a switch to throw or a button to push to change the speed of the wheel for variou
s operations, but would place an iron bar into the works at the proper location. I loved to hear the growling sound diminish as the water wheel in the pit slowed down and watch the dust-covered belts, each wider than both hands, become visible as the speed slowed down. Then I’d watch the belts move over to other pulleys, which were designed to do another job, slowing down or increasing the speed when the wide belts were moved in one direction or another. I was astounded at Mr. Dyer’s engineering.

  I was also fascinated with Mr. Dyer himself, who worked shirtless in most all weather. He was always covered with corn dust from head to belt, the grinding residue hanging from his nostrils, his ears, and his eyebrows. Somebody in the neighborhood nicknamed him the Monster, but I didn’t call him that. As time went on, we were not afraid of him and were often down at his mill site. One day he showed us how to drive a bent nail. Most people straightened bent nails, but Mr. Dyer demonstrated how, if you hit the head of the nail at exactly the right angle and with exactly the right amount of force, the nail would straighten itself. We thought it was pure magic how he could do that.

  I caught from Mr. Dyer a lifelong habit—collecting “good stuff.” He had more treasures on his place than anyone I knew, and his stuff was an endless source of pleasure to me. There were stacks of wood and lumber, tools of every sort, and pieces of machinery here and there. Among the various piles roamed his four cows. Dad always said that Mr. Dyer’s stuff was junk, but I knew better. I knew that Mr. Dyer would find a use for it all. Just give him time.