No Hill Too High for a Stepper

by Mike Mahan

  Also living on Highland Avenue was our other Jewish family, the Klotzmans. Sam and his brother Joe came here from West Blocton to open a general dry goods store, but the two had a parting of the ways, and Joe pulled out, moving down the street and establishing a competing dry goods store. Eventually he relocated to Selma.

  Joe Klotzman had two children, a boy and a girl named Melvin and Betty Ann. Melvin was a little older than me, and, due to his age and maturity as well as his forward thinking, Melvin became a hero to some of us, particularly us guys from Frog Holler and Shelby Street. Tall and thin, he was an excellent athlete and was very attractive to the girls. Melvin liked older women, especially the college girls, and everywhere he went the women drooled over him.

  Frogging around, Elizabeth Chism and Betty Ann Klotzman.

  My buddy, Harry Klotzman, and me sitting on his father’s decked-out Pontiac on Main Street. My dad’s Chevy is behind us and next to it is Harry’s Model A Ford.

  Mama Rose Klotzman on Main Street with McCulley’s store behind her.

  But the thing that we most admired about Melvin was his independence. We were amazed by his willingness to explore the unknown. His wanderlust was established while he was still in high school. He took hitchhiking to a high art. He would hit the road in the summer, getting jobs along the way to support his travel expenses. About the time school was to start, he would return to Highland Avenue. But Melvin really outdid himself when he headed off in search of Martha Ruth Waldhein, one of the angels from Alabama College who had returned to her home in Colombia, South America. Martha was the love of Melvin’s life, and he could not stand to lose her. Eventually he reached her, but this was not to be one of those “they lived happily ever after” stories. He returned to Montevallo a broken boy. But we were still in awe of his courage and his tenacity, and we were sorry when he and his family moved to Selma, leaving Montevallo with one less fascinating person.

  I was much closer to Sam Klotzman and his family than to Melvin’s family. I was quite close to Sam’s son Harry, who was my age, and to his sister Frances, born three years after Harry. I was often in the Klotzman home. I adored Mr. Sam and his wife Rose, whom I called Mama Rose. Maybe I started calling her that because Harry and I were often taken for brothers or even twins when we were boys. This resemblance remains today.

  I was fascinated by the differences in the Klotzman house. They had a thing that looked like a thermometer next to the front door, which Harry said was filled with blood and had something to do with the Passover. They fed me matzo balls and other Jewish foods, and on occasion they took me with them for dinner at the Jewish Country Club in Birmingham. This was quite an adventure for me. We often went on Sunday, and Mr. Sam would play golf. Harry and I, wearing our shirts and ties, enjoyed playing on the country club grounds. In turn, Harry would go to Bible School with me. The Klotzmans were devoted to their religion but intended that their children be integrated into Montevallo life.

  I remember well when Mr. Sam went off to World War II. We prayed for him at church along with all the Christians who were fighting the Huns and the Japs, as we called them. During the war Mama Rose’s mother, whom we called Mama Magoulis, came from Montgomery to live with her, helping her with the household duties and taking care of Harry and Frances. She also helped at the store. Mama Magoulis was the one who taught me to eat and understand Jewish food. It had to be kosher before the family could eat it. Being from Shelby Street, I didn’t worry about the religious restrictions or whether it was kosher or not. I just loved all her food, particularly her matzo balls.

  I remember Mama Magoulis coming out on the front porch, hollering with her very distinct Jewish dialect, “Haddy, Haddy, Francie—come home. It’s time to eat” or “Haddy, Francie, it’s getting very late.” I was sad when she left to go back home when Sam returned from the war. Other regular visitors in the Klotzman home were Harry’s Uncle Leon and Aunt Jo, who ran a dry goods business in Columbiana. I was especially fond of their daughters, Merle and Esta, and I have kept in touch with them though the years. Merle, in fact, has been our family’s doctor for a number of years.

  When Mr. Sam returned after World War II, he was warmly received by all. He brought home with him a Japanese sword, a flag, two rifles, a canteen, and other items, all of which he stored in a small room upstairs at his store. He never talked about his experiences in the Pacific, but these objects made me think he had been in some pretty rough battles. I was fascinated with the memorabilia, and when Sam was closing his store in the early eighties he called me in and gave me one of the rifles. Later, not long before he died, he gave me the rest of his memorabilia. I was greatly moved by that, and these treasures are still in my possession.

  Mama Rose preceded Mr. Sam in death, and I was asked to attend the Jewish funeral with the family. At the end of the service, family members were asked to come forward and sprinkle dirt on the wooden casket. Mr. Sam motioned for me to take some dirt as well, and I have seldom been more touched by a gesture. When Mr. Sam died, Harry and Frances asked me to join in again in the sprinkling ceremony and again I was extremely moved. Gone was a gentleman whose friendship and generosity I had so often been the beneficiary of, and I knew how terribly I would miss him.

  The Klotzmans joined the Givhans and other families on Highland Avenue in enabling a boy from Shelby Street to experience a larger world than he would have otherwise known. I shall remain eternally grateful for that.

  Few girls could fill out a sweater better than Emily Vest.

  Perhaps I should mention that Highland Avenue had not always been the elite neighborhood in Montevallo. Before the Civil War and during the late Victorian period, the most prominent families lived across Shoal Creek on Main Street. Interestingly, in those days this was a biracial community, and it remains so to this day. In my youth, I was aware that the area was primarily black, but I also knew several white families who lived there, including my friend Emily Vest and her grandfather and grandmother, Mr. and Mrs. Payne, as well as Dr. Acker, who lived in the same house as had his father, who practiced medicine in Montevallo in the later nineteenth century.

  Emily’s grandmother and grandfather, the Paynes, lived in the first house on the left after you crossed the wooden bridge over Shoal Creek on Main Street. Her parents lived in the Chicago area, where her father managed country clubs. Emily lived with them, but when it came time for her to start to school her parents decided they preferred for her to be schooled in the small, quaint town of Montevallo rather than a big city. Emily stayed for high school and college. During all those years, she spent summers with her parents in Chicago. In 1955, Emily married my friend Dudley Pendleton, and Montevallo became their permanent residence, where they raised two daughters. Dudley passed away several years ago, and Emily still resides in their home in Montevallo.

  Up the street from the Paynes lived the Willard “Milton” Davis family. I thought the Davises were the most interesting family living across the creek on Main Street. I was actually kin to them. Mrs. Davis, whose name was Una (though we all called her Mama Davis), was a Mahan. She was the great-granddaughter of my great-great-grandfather’s brother, Archimedes Mahan, who moved to Chilton County from Brierfield in the mid-1800s. One of his children, also named Archimedes but called Arky, was Mama Davis’s father. Early in her life she met and married Willard “Milton” Davis, who worked for Alabama Power Company. Later the couple moved to Montevallo with three children in tow. Milton and Una regularly added to the family until the children numbered seven. From the first grade through high school, their son Wayne was in my class, and I think there was a Davis at almost every grade level.

  The Davis family claimed several firsts in our town. Of course, they had more children than anyone else, and I can remember my parents and their friends asking, “When do you think the Davises will have more children so they can field a full baseball team?” But Mr. Davis was a trailblazer in his own right. He became Monteval
lo’s first Alabama Power Company executive, and he was also one of Montevallo’s first volunteer fire chiefs.

  Milton Davis cut quite an imposing figure around Montevallo.

  The Davis kids were impressive, and we all envied their abilities. Each had special talents, including art, music, athletics—you name it. This resourceful family always seemed ready to meet and conquer all challenges. For example, when the cyclone of 1938 came through, it blew parts of the Davis house from across the creek all the way to the backyard of our house on Shelby Street. To the Davises, this was no big deal. They moved temporarily to Wilton, and the Chilton County relatives, who were all carpenters, quickly arrived in Montevallo and with no fanfare just built a new house.

  Because the family was so large, money was always somewhat tight. But somehow Mama Davis was able to put fine meals on the table for nine people three times a day, 365 days a year. And if visitors or kids like me showed up at mealtime, this was no problem for Mama Davis. “Pull up a chair, sit down, and help yourself,” she would always say. To this day I can remember the fragrant aroma of the cinnamon rolls and cobbler pie she often served for dessert.

  Mama Davis in the kitchen where she spent a great deal of time. One of her sons, Roy, is behind her.

  The Davises knew how to have fun. Peggy, an older sister, was the younger children’s leader, and in the summer she often took the family down the street to the swimming hole at Little Springs. The vacant lot next door to the Davis home became the ball field. It didn’t matter who showed up; everybody got to play. In the summer the family would sometimes take their meals out in the yard. But the neatest thing they did for fun was when Mama Davis took all her kids down to the Strand Theatre on Saturdays and sat on the steps that led from the theater to the street so they could watch the people going in and coming out when the movies changed. They themselves usually did not actually go to the movie, but Mama Davis purchased five-cent bags of popcorn for all children present and they stood there eating it as they watched the movie patrons and conversed with their friends. At the time, no one seemed to think this was strange.

  When the Davis boys—Wayne, Paul, Roy, and Willard—learned that a coat hanger would bring a penny at the Deluxe Cleaners up the hill on Main Street, they would pick up, beg for, or somehow acquire fifteen coat hangers each, and for a penny for each coat hanger they would each get a ticket to the Saturday double feature and a bag of Mr. Eddie Watson’s popcorn.

  When Wayne and I were in the sixth grade, Mr. Davis got a promotion and took a new job in Tuscaloosa. This worked out fine for them, as Alabama College only accepted girls, but at the University of Alabama the boys could also be educated while living at home and thereby have an opportunity to lead rich lives. But their leaving Montevallo was a tragic loss for me, and I missed them very much, particularly Wayne and Paul.

  12

  Alabama College

  The life of Montevallo was inextricably connected to the life of Alabama College, founded in 1896 for the purpose of training women for useful occupations, but having become a liberal arts college for women by the time of my birth. From my earliest years I remember the beautiful girls walking around downtown—always in groups, never alone. The college was called the Angel Farm by the local boys, but we could not claim possession of this prized group. I remember busloads of horny guys from Craig Air Force Base in Selma rolling into town to attend dances, which were highly chaperoned, and sometimes even to date the girls, though under very tight rules.

  The Craig men quickly earned a very bad reputation among some of the townspeople for being adept at circumventing the rules. My mother’s beauty shop buzzed with stories of how some fellows climbed the fire escape in Main Hall to get to the girls or came up with stories as to why they were late arriving back at the dorm. On occasion it was rumored that some more brazen girls even left doors open so they could stroll right in after the dean of women was no longer watching.

  Mother and Dad liked the Craig Field boys, allowing some to spend the night at our house. The only public lodging in town was the St. George Hotel, which had twenty or so rooms—not enough to accommodate all the guys. Plus Dad had a low regard for the St. George, saying, “I hate to see anybody stay in that joint. It might have been a nice place in its day, but it’s nothing but a two-stick hotel now.” When I asked him what he meant by two-stick, he said, “One stick to prop the bed up with and another to fight the rats off.”

  1932 map of the then Alabama State College for Women

  campus, drawn by Willa Hay.

  We townspeople were keenly aware of the college schedule. I especially remember the melancholy feeling when the girls departed at the close of the school year. It was an ancient ritual. The college’s flatbed truck transported the girls’ trunks down to Rogan’s Store on Main Street, where a huge line of them was stacked higher than a boy’s head out front, waiting to be carried in Mr. F. W. Rogan’s truck to the local train stations—Wilton if headed north and Calera if headed south. They were often stacked there for two days, and we local boys could not resist climbing. Mr. Rogan didn’t seem to mind at all. After all, if throwing them onto trucks and trains didn’t damage them, what could a bunch of playing boys do?

  I couldn’t help noticing how inferior Mr. Rogan’s truck was to the one from the college. Its lights looked like big flashlights attached to the cab of the truck, while those on the college truck were built into the body. While the college truck ran smoothly, Mr. Rogan’s could be heard for a mile. Plus it blew so much smoke out its tailpipe that Dad said it killed the grass on the side of the highway. Nevertheless, it did the job, and the freight was delivered every year. After the girls left, the town seemed to shift into a lower gear, and we were always excited to see the girls and their trunks return for the following term.

  The college provided the town with some very interesting characters. Perhaps the most imposing figure from my youth was the college physician, Dr. Willena Peck, who presided over the college infirmary. A rather chunky lady wearing a monocle on a retractable cord and a white coat was a sight quite unusual for me, and I was greatly impressed. She came to the beauty shop, and when I was around she was always very nice to me, singling me out to talk to.

  I finally got up the courage to enter her domain, the infirmary. Starting when I was about twelve I spied on it fairly often, as it was said that lovely girls were lying half-naked in the infirmary beds, and my friends and I would lie on the lawn behind the building hoping to get a peek. We never had such luck.

  But one day I opened the massive maple doors with their mahogany insets and entered the infirmary. The thing that caught my eye in the lobby was a huge plaster medallion—bigger than a washtub it seemed to me. This was Dr. Peck’s emblem, I was told. The Queen of England had her emblem and so did Dr. Peck, which seemed appropriate, as Dr. Peck was clearly the queen of the infirmary. I guess I was just plain awed by her. To be responsible for the well-being of more than a thousand girls was amazing. Over the years she dispensed what she called “pink pills for pale people” not only to students, but faculty as well.

  Dr. Peck’s nephew Billy lived with her in the infirmary. Billy Peck was delicate and thin and wore thick glasses. His head was quite large for his tiny body. People said that a growth had to be cut off the back of his head and that he was never the same after that. Dr. Peck brought him down from Vermont to escape the freezing weather, sending him home to his parents in the summer. Dad cut Billy’s hair so I would see him in the shop on occasion, and I would also see him sometimes on campus. He was said to be a genius, but he was not well-adjusted socially. When he came to parties, he always stood on the sidelines. Nevertheless, his classmates seemed to like him. Once when he put a tack in his teacher’s chair in an effort to be one of the guys, he was caught and given a whipping by the principal, Mr. Tidwell. Billy’s classmates were up in arms about his punishment, thinking it grossly unfair.

  Billy’s vocabulary outstri
pped that of most of the rest of us. Once I was on the glassed-in back porch of the infirmary with Billy when he looked down to the pasture where the college’s cows grazed. He turned to me and said, “Behold yon quadrupeds.” I guessed what he was talking about and retained the word long enough to tell my friends what he said. Soon the story circulated throughout town.

  Billy got his big vocabulary from reading. Any spare moment—at school or at home—was spent with a book under his nose. One day Billy failed to return to the infirmary by dark, and Dr. Peck became alarmed. They searched at the school and found him reading in the library, so absorbed he was unaware that the sun had gone down.

  When Billy finished high school, he won second prize in a national scholarship competition sponsored by Pepsi-Cola, and he enrolled at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He had lived in a rather sheltered environment in Montevallo, and he was put in a dorm room with three others. He did not adjust well to that arrangement, but he managed to make it through his freshman year, making all A’s. The story was told that in his sophomore year he met a beautiful girl, whose friendliness had led him to profess his love. It was said he became distraught when she rejected him and that pushed him over the edge. During the fall semester of his sophomore year, he went into the chemistry lab and drank sulfuric acid. When the word of his death got back to Montevallo, we were very sorry. Some of us felt guilty for not making a greater effort at being friendly. But the truth was that nobody was terribly surprised. This world was just too hard on one such as Billy. And we especially felt sorry for Dr. Peck, who, for all her stoicism, must have grieved the loss immensely.