No Hill Too High for a Stepper

by Mike Mahan

  Dr. Peck was only one of the Alabama College faculty who fascinated me, though not always for such lofty reasons. I think it is safe to say that there was not a person in Montevallo who didn’t observe and comment on Miss Helen Blackiston, who taught biology and was an expert on flowers. Her chosen mode of transportation was a bicycle, and she had a habit of riding her bicycle up hills and pushing it down hills. We all thought it should have been the other way around.

  In those days, most bicycles did not have chain guards, and we would put rubber bands around our britches legs to keep them from getting in the chain. Miss Blackiston wore a costume unlike anyone else’s. Before anyone dreamed of pedal pushers, Miss Blackiston fashioned herself some knickers so that she would not have to chance getting caught in the chain. Occasionally we would see Miss Blackiston riding her bicycle in a dress, and we watched that carefully, assuming that at some point the skirt would get caught in the chain and be ripped off. Miss Blackiston was not a very attractive woman, which will give you some idea of how hard up my friends and I were for the sight of female flesh.

  Another eccentric who appeared in Montevallo when I was in high school was the British writer Pierre Stephen Robert Payne, who was invited to be the chairman of the English department in the late 1940s. We had never seen anybody quite like him, and we immediately gave him the name of Sir Robert. He was the talk of the town for lots of reasons, but for none more than the infamous movie he produced while here. Its story line was the love life of a young woman just going out into the world. For its day, people thought it was scandalously precise. A young student from Calera had the lead, and everybody thought this would launch a great career that would take her to Hollywood. But the most interesting actor in the movie to me was the uncle of my close friend Joe McGaughy. Alvin McGaughy had the male lead, and he cut a fine figure with his good looks, accentuated by a fine moustache. Alvin worked at construction, and instead of heading off to Hollywood, he kept to his old job, bringing the first backhoe to Montevallo.

  I could not get in the Strand Theater for the premiere. But I witnessed the huge crowd of well-dressed locals who managed to get an invitation. I also saw them come back out, and I must say that there were lots of baffled looks on their faces. Somebody told me that it was the damnedest thing they ever saw, that a girl even smoked a cigarette she held between her toes. Afterwards, there was an even bigger showing in Birmingham. Among those attending was old Dean Napier, who had tried to maintain standards and decorum on campus for many years. He was not sure that Alabama College would ever recover from such a travesty.

  When I was in high school, I encountered another Alabama College person on my walks home from school. This was Mrs. Virginia Barnes, who I was told was Alabama’s most noted artist. She first taught at the laboratory school at Montevallo High and later in the Alabama College art department. But that didn’t keep her from spending most of her time on her own art. Her specialties were silkscreen, watercolor, woodcut, and portraiture. When I returned to Montevallo after graduating from Auburn University and was working for Alabama College, I learned the silk screening process from her. She showed me how to stretch fine silk tautly on a frame, how to paint those parts with lacquer that you didn’t want to print, and to press ink through the silk. Only those parts not blocked out were painted. She became so adept at this method that her silk prints were exhibited in cities of the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.

  Another person on campus whom everybody loved was Dr. W. J. Kennerly, head of the chemistry department for many years. We all called him Dr. Kennerly, though many people said a doctorate was never conferred on him. What made him so special around town, especially to younger people, was that he was an accomplished magician and hypnotist. And he was not reluctant to show off his talents—in class, at Scout meetings, pretty much anywhere. My Cub Scout troop saw him twice. He could make things disappear, could pull handkerchiefs from his sleeve and rabbits from a hat. But the hypnotism was even more impressive. He could put somebody under in a flash and have them telling anything. I decided it would be better to avoid being hypnotized because I didn’t want to embarrass myself or anybody else. The hypnosis, however, had a very practical use beyond entertainment. If someone lost some money, for instance, he could put them under and discover where it was. This happened several times, and we were all impressed.

  Mr. Kennerly lived on a street off Highland Avenue near the imposing gate to two huge houses in the woods across the road from the President’s Mansion. Both were occupied by members of the Alabama College faculty. I was extremely impressed by these houses, and eventually I was able to become familiar with both. I decided that their inhabitants really knew how to live.

  Living in one of the houses was a sophisticated couple named Douglass, who had come to Montevallo from England with their two young sons. It was unusual in those days to have two automobiles, but they did. The first, which they called the Little Machine, was an Austin they brought from England, and only two people could ride comfortably in it. Mr. Douglass could be seen quite often tooling around town in it. He often boasted about its gas mileage. The other car was a four-door Dodge sedan, which they called—yes—the Big Machine. It was used for family outings and longer journeys.

  Don Douglass was my age, and Mrs. Douglass devoted herself to him and his younger brother. She wanted them to have every advantage, and one thing she instituted toward that end was a Cub Scout den in Montevallo. Joe McGaughy and I made up the Shelby Street contingent in this group, and we were joined by Ed Givhan and Harry Klotzman from Highland Avenue. All told, about ten of us met weekly with Mrs. Douglass, who was the den mother. I was thrilled to have a chance to go through those fine gates and into that handsome two-story house, which rivaled Mrs. Craig’s house. Our meetings usually took place in the spacious sunroom, which had large ferns on iron stands year-round.

  About once a month there would be a pack meeting at night, attended by our parents. The Cub Scouts were mainly run by women, but each den had an akela, a man who could advise us on matters that women folk were thought unable to address. Mr. Douglass was our akela.

  Cub Scouts I found extremely fun. I liked to wear a uniform, and I liked the manuals we had to read. We all had projects to earn badges, eventually working our way up through three levels of wolf, bear, and lion. We were also taken on field trips, mainly on campus. In the biology department we were shown the butterfly collection, for example. Outside experts were called in to speak to us. One of my favorites was Martha Allen, a spunky art professor, who would come to our meetings and tell us about art. Mrs. Douglass, whose house was full of original paintings and sculpture, thought art appreciation was vital for persons of quality, which she was determined that all of her Cub Scouts would become.

  Sometimes we were allowed to play in the spacious side yard. Next to a small servants’ house, the Douglasses had planted a stand of bamboo that grew to an immense size. The stalks were four inches in diameter. It looked like the jungles I saw in the picture show on Saturdays. The scouts were allowed to cut the bamboo and make whistles, and another time we made boats out of some of the largest stalks and sailed them on Shoal Creek.

  One big project of the year was a pinewood derby. Mr. Douglass instructed us on making the racers, and then we would have the derby, racing each other. Our cars were about ten inches long. They were made using directions in the Cub Scout manual, and we had to get our wheels from Loveman’s Department Store in Birmingham. Mr. Douglas built a track with four lanes and placed it in the sunroom. Four of us would place our cars in the lanes, and upon the signal of Mr. Douglass we released our cars, which traveled down the track that measured about six to eight feet and then down eight or ten more feet on the ramp that went to the floor. We screamed loudly, hoping our car would be the first to cross the finish line. The winner of that race competed then with the winners of the other heats, until finally from the final pair a winner emerged. Although I never won the
race, I did very well, as Dad helped me fine-tune my car. He and other fathers came to the race, cheering on their sons.

  Near the Douglass home was another imposing house, in which lived Mrs. Chamberlain, the piano professor at Alabama College who regularly traveled to Europe. This lady carried herself so high that people began to refer to her as “The Duchess.” Her husband, who was never to my knowledge called “The Duke,” was in the coal business, and that enabled them to live at a very high standard. I knew Mrs. Chamberlain because she was a customer at my mother’s beauty shop, but I never saw the inside of this house until I was in my teens. The only reason I did then was that my friend, Putnam Porter, who also taught in the music department, rented a room there, often inviting us boys to come by for a visit. I thought the Duchess’s house an exceedingly fine place. I remember clearly the grand piano in the living room that was covered with a tapestry. I also remember the giant oil paintings on the walls and the fine oriental rugs. This, I thought, was the way to live.

  Later when I began to play in the Alabama College Orchestra I got to know Mrs. Chamberlain, and she was always very nice to me. I was struck with how sophisticated she was as she talked of her travels to Europe and the fine music she heard there. It set me on fire to see the world. In those days nobody flew in airplanes. To get to Europe, one went to Birmingham by car or train, caught the Southerner to New York, then crossed the Atlantic by ship. When I saw Mr. Rogan loading the Duchess’s trunks onto his old smoking truck to take them to Birmingham, I would be excited thinking about where they might go before returning to Montevallo.

  The Duchess’s tenant, Putnam Porter, came to Montevallo after World War II. Today he would be called a homosexual or be said to be gay, but in those days we never said any such thing. No one ever called him a queer. In fact, I don’t think his homosexuality registered with any of us young men he befriended. But in retrospect it seems strange to think of the keen interest he took in the young men of promise in Montevallo. He took us to dinner in Birmingham. He took us to the beach in his 1949 Chevy sedan. And no one, including Mother and Dad, seemed to think a thing about it. After all, he was a gentleman and nice and a good Presbyterian. And the truth was that I never remember his propositioning anybody. He certainly never did anything untoward with me. We all liked him very much, not just for the attention he paid us, but because he was so interesting to be around. He had seen the world, had served in the Navy during World War II, and wore his sophistication as comfortably as an old coat. There was nothing provincial about him.

  We were fascinated that Putnam played the huge E. M. Skinner organ in Palmer Hall on the Voice of America. He recorded two series of programs featuring organ music that went out from Palmer Hall, where he and others put on concerts. It thrilled a young boy on Shelby Street to think of people all over the world listening to Organ Music of the Centuries and Music from Montevallo. It was one of our claims to fame.

  My friend Putnam Porter at the console of Palmer Hall’s great E. M. Skinner pipe organ.

  Every summer Putt played the organ at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. Dudley Pendleton and I took advantage of his free lodgings in the summer of 1953. I wanted the adventure. Dudley wanted to get engaged to his sweetheart, Emily Vest, who spent each summer in Chicago with her parents.

  While he was teaching at Alabama College, Putnam twice got grants to study organ in Europe. The first time, Dad and I drove him to New York in his Chevy, and there he caught a ship for Europe. I felt connected to the larger world in ways I never had before, and I loved it. The second time, I was in college, and a friend and I drove him to New York. It was on this trip that I gave him a nickname. There were many trailer trucks on the two-lane roads we traveled, and it seemed that most of them were Fruehaufs. Putnam would say, “There goes another Fruehauf,” and after a while I started calling him Frue, which I did for his entire life. Putnam did a great deal for me, and I remained a loyal friend until he died a few years ago.

  Among the college people, another deserves recognition. Mr. Cooper was in charge of the campus steam plant, a big brick building with a high smokestack. This plant, which roared loudly twenty-four hours a day, generated the college’s electricity as well as produced steam heat for the campus. As a teenager I was allowed to go in and look around. Because the workings of the plant were so loud, Mr. Cooper spoke in an extremely loud voice. Even then, you sort of had to read his lips. Down in the basement were mountainous piles of coal, which workers shoveled into the huge furnace. I couldn’t help thinking that they needed a stoker like Mrs. Craig had at her house on Shelby Street. Mr. Cooper explained that the steam went underground through asbestos pipes to radiators all over campus.

  Mr. Cooper’s loud voice sparked stories around town. One day he went to the library to check on something. He approached the desk and bellowed, “What’s the problem here?” The librarian, Miss Abi Russell, looked shaken, and she began to answer him in a whisper. “Damn it, lady,” he is reported to have roared, “If you’re going to talk, TALK.”

  Probably one of the most colorful arrivals to Alabama College occurred in November 1946. Everyone knew immediately that Ralph and Marcia Sears brought talent, style, and intelligence to our community. Ralph was hired by Dr. Caldwell, the college president, to be a faculty member in radio and speech. He had studied radio broadcasting, and his voice was so beautiful that he was immediately dubbed “Golden Throat.”

  Marcia and Ralph “Golden Throat” Sears gave so much to so many in their new hometown.

  I still have a vivid image of them driving around Montevallo in their maroon 1946 Hudson convertible. It had everybody talking. Staid Dean Napier was not sure how the college personnel would accept a new faculty member who drove a red Hudson convertible.

  The Searses first moved up to Nabors Street into a house Dr. Paul Bailey had built, but in 1950 they moved to Frog Holler and rented Hen House Jeter’s home, which was vacant because Todd and Snooks had bought a farm, thinking that the country would be beneficial for their family. Marcia immediately took a job on the faculty of Montevallo High School, where she taught English and history. All the Shelby Street and Frog Holler clan were excited to learn that she would be our teacher.

  The first major impact Ralph had on the town was establishing Alabama College’s radio station, which was heard throughout the town. Earlier there had been a radio station in Comer Hall, an affiliate of WAPI in Birmingham. Ralph’s operation was headquartered in Reynolds Hall.

  In the summer of 1947, the Searses astounded the town as they loaded up their Hudson convertible and took off for summer studies at the University of Southern California. No one could imagine driving to California just for a summer of studies, and all were relieved to see them return in the fall, not in the maroon ’46 Hudson, but in a brand new Hudson convertible. Everyone wondered how they could afford such fine cars and dress as they did in the height of fashion. I think most of these responses resulted from envy. We who lived on Shelby Street liked it that they lived on our side of town and not on Highland Avenue.

  The radio station grew, and Ralph became Mr. Alabama College. Marcia continued to teach, but in her second or third year she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, Steve. By then they had caused another stir in the community when they purchased a beautiful green 1950 Packard convertible. It seemed to fit perfectly the image of Ralph Westgate Sears and his glamorous wife. It had a hood ornament unlike any we had ever seen: a big chrome bird sitting right in the middle of the hood. These people were definitely high rollers.

  Ralph became director of public relations for Alabama College, and Marcia became a writer and editor. They had two daughters, Sally and Randy. With the birth of Randy in 1956, Ralph and Marcia left Frog Holler and moved to a new home in a subdivision off the Siluria road.

  The academic life didn’t seem to be all Ralph wanted. He ran for city council and was elected. He spearheaded many new businesses in Montevallo and lat
er became mayor. He established an AM radio station, WBYE, in Calera, in partnership with Ed Ewing, who was from Wilton but had attended school in Montevallo.

  Montevallo was always blessed with talent, creativity, and class, but I guess, next to my mother and father, Ralph Westgate Sears, our golden throat, encouraged a little guy from Shelby Street to go up on fool’s hill and see what makes the world go round and round.

  This does not at all exhaust the long list of colorful and remarkable people at the college during my youth, but it will give you an idea why I always was grateful that Alabama College was in Montevallo.

  13

  Country People

  When I was growing up, there was a clear distinction between town and country. We in town felt superior to the country kids, who lived in Dogwood, Boothton, Marvel, and other self-contained communities that had sprung up as mining towns in the early twentieth century. They all were largely supported by the coal companies that provided housing, community centers, schools, and commissaries for their workers and their families. Pea Ridge, a small mining community a few miles from Montevallo, was different. Pea Ridge families, for the most part, owned their own homes, and among the community’s residents were families like the Picketts and Lawleys—the FFPR’s or the First Families of Pea Ridge, as they were called. It sort of seemed to be accepted wisdom that Pea Ridge was as far above the other mining communities as Highland Avenue was above Shelby Street or Frog Holler.

  Since the first grade, I had been attending school with country kids from such places as Dry Valley, Spring Creek, and Moore’s Crossroads, and we had thought little of it. But they were not mining communities. Until the mining kids began attending Montevallo High School in the seventh grade, we had little chance to know them. I had, of course, seen the mining people when they came to Montevallo on Saturdays to shop at the stores lining Main Street. Some of them even came to the Strand for the Saturday afternoon features. I had seen some of these kids in Dad’s barbershop. But I really didn’t know them.