No Hill Too High for a Stepper

by Mike Mahan

  On Main Street to the right of the St. George Hotel was Dawson’s Variety Store, owned and run by Mrs. Dawson, who lived in a small house on Oak Street. The Variety Store was always kept very clean and organized, and she monitored closely those entering and leaving. In fact, she gave everyone who entered the store a once-over that you would think would be reserved for strangers. Mrs. Dawson seemed particularly suspicious of children and adolescents, and when we went in there we didn’t loiter. But people needed the gift items, candies, and school and office supplies she carried, and she never hurt for customers.

  Looking southwest down Main from Boundary Street about 1959. The St. George Hotel is the two-story building on the right.

  Also on Main Street was Mrs. Elliot’s grocery store. To enter this drab building covered with dark red brick-patterned tarpaper, you had to leave the sidewalk and go up three wooden steps. It was dark and rather dreary inside, but I learned soon that it held many delicacies. I usually got an RC from a chest near the door and some oatmeal cookies from a canister by the large brass cash register. Sometimes if they had some nice bananas, I’d buy one. But the real treat was a hot dog cooked by Mrs. Elliot, placed on a bun with mustard, catsup, and sauerkraut. This culinary masterpiece sold for a whopping seven cents. When the weather was warm and the front doors to the store were propped open, you could smell those hotdogs all up and down Main Street. I thought no smell was better.

  On the left side of the St. George Hotel was the Modern Beauty Shop, which was owned and operated by Mrs. Louise Young. For a while her shop was situated next to Dad and Mother’s shop, but Mrs. Young needed more space and built a new concrete block building, utilizing the latest construction technology. In Dad’s shop there were many sidewalk superintendents who monitored the construction and predicted this new method of building would not last.

  The building actually looked nice inside and out and attracted the ladies from all walks of life. Mrs. Young not only cut and fixed hair, but she had a full stock of up-to-date women’s cosmetics. While Mother’s customers had to walk through the barbershop to get to her beauty shop, the Modern Beauty Shop was just for ladies, and Mrs. Young especially attracted the college girls. Laurie Orr remembers how the Modern Beauty Shop was the site of the beginning and end of her criminal career. She and Jane Russell and Betty Klotzman coveted an expensive brand of lipstick called Tangee that was on sale there. It came in only one color, but they thought it was the finest they had ever seen. They had enough money to buy either the lipstick or a milkshake at Wilson’s Drugstore, and when they thought about it they decided that the milkshake was a necessity, but the lipstick was not. But they wanted this luxury so much that they decided to shoplift it. After all, you couldn’t easily shoplift one of Mr. Bloomer’s milkshakes. The girls brazenly went through with their crime and were not caught.

  Mr. and Mrs. Mitch Young’s greatest gift to Montevallo, according to the young male population, was not the Modern Beauty Shop, but was their beautiful daughter Clara. She was the cutest, best looking of the younger generation of Highland Avenue babes, and she had admirers from both sides of town and from the surrounding countryside as well.

  Like other fine structures on Main Street, the Modern Beauty Shop was torn down at the same time the St. George Hotel was razed to make room for the new Merchants and Planters Bank.

  Part IV

  Getting Out

  of Town

  16

  Wanderlust

  I always loved traveling, and my parents seemed always willing for me to take advantage of the opportunity to see places, far and near. Sometimes it was weekends with country kin in Maylene or city kin in Birmingham; sometimes it was riding the train to Rome, Georgia, and back; sometimes it was going as far as Mobile and Poughkeepsie, New York, to visit my older sisters. The experiences I had on these travels have had a lot to do with the person I have become.

  My dad’s sister, Katherine “Kate” Mahan Lacey, in her World War I nurse’s uniform.

  My Aunt Kate, Dad’s sister, lived at Maylene on a 600-acre farm. She was a nurse during World War I, having been trained at St. Vincent’s hospital, and after the war had married Bob Lacey. Despite the fact that the farm was quite primitive—no running water or electricity—I loved going there for the weekends. Uncle Bob was a railroad man, and on some Friday afternoons on his way home he would stop his ’41 Ford in front of our house on Shelby Street and say, “How about letting Mike go out for the weekend.” I was always glad when he came, because I loved my adventures there with my many cousins: Bobby (Bob’s son by a previous marriage), Philip, Agnes, Stanley, Jack, and Margaret Ann.

  Some of my Lacey cousins, left to right, Jack, Agnes, and Stanley.

  Baths out there were certainly an adventure, especially when the weather was nippy. We’d go out to the creek that beavers had dammed up, making a nice pool, and my cousins would jump right in as if there was nothing to it. I remember jumping into the icy water, jumping back out shivering, and back in again, until I became acclimated to the cold water. I can’t say how clean I was when I crawled back out, but I always felt proud that I was tough enough to stay in and wouldn’t have to bear the ridicule of my country cousins.

  One fall when I was there I looked out at a field with rows of dug sweet potatoes. My cousins told me excitedly that tomorrow George, a black tenant farmer, was taking the potatoes to sell in Siluria. We’d have to get up in the morning real early to load and size the potatoes.

  The next morning the two mules stood before the wagon, and George had put the sideboards on the sides of the wagon. “Now y’all kids pick up those taters and bring ’em over to this wagon and dump ’em,” he said.

  Philip answered, “But we have to size them first.”

  George looked a little aggravated and said, “Just do what I say. Dump ’em in the wagon.”

  I jumped up in the wagon, and the others handed me box after box of potatoes, which I emptied all together onto a growing pile. When we were loaded, George got hay and a tarpaulin to put over the yams. Then we all took our seats atop the potatoes, and he climbed up to the seat in front of the wagon.

  It was five miles to Siluria on the bumpiest dirt road imaginable, and there were no springs on the wagon. I thought at times my insides might shake out. But eventually we arrived in Siluria. As we prepared to take the potatoes over to a pump to wash them, Philip asked again, “Now, George, when are we gonna size them?”

  “Hell, boy,” George answered, “we ain’t got to size ’em. Didn’t you know big taters is always on top? Little taters is always on bottom.” We pulled back the tarpaulin, and, sure enough, what George said was true.

  Although I was happy at Aunt Kate’s house, I was also glad to return to Shelby Street, where we had a good many more of life’s amenities. But I was all ready for the next chance to travel, and quite often that would be to Birmingham to visit my Aunt Lorene, who lived in a magical place called Quinlan Castle.

  While my Uncle Bill Morrell was in Europe during World War II, Aunt Ween—as we called my mother’s sister—took an apartment in the fine old building called Quinlan Castle. She moved Momma in with her, and when I was nine or ten I would catch the bus to Birmingham to see them. Once in the city, I would get on the street car that took me to Five Points South, from which I could easily walk up to the Castle.

  Quinlan Castle was a huge stone building, and I thought it looked like something out of a medieval tale. I loved it there. I’d play out in the courtyard with other kids who lived in the complex, and sometimes we would roller skate on the sidewalk out front. At night I slept in a bed next to the steel casement windows, from which I could look down and see all the lights of the city. This was a real excitement for a kid from Shelby Street, where the streetlights were scarce.

  There was a tearoom down the hill at Five Points South, and Aunt Ween would take me down for a snack from time to time. The place was shiny and white,
and I always placed the same order: cinnamon rolls and iced tea. The rolls had chewy raisins and were covered with the whitest sugar icing I had ever seen. The iced tea was colder than any other I ever had. And I was proud to be sitting there with Aunt Ween, who I knew loved me very much.

  When I think of another trip I took twice when I was around ten or eleven, I’m surprised that my parents would have allowed me to make such a trip at such a young age. Mr. Burr Fancher, who worked for the Southern Railway, was the conductor on an old steam train that ran from Montevallo to Rome, Georgia. Perhaps it was because they trusted Mr. Burr, perhaps it was because Dad loved trains so much, but they allowed me to catch the No. 16, which had passenger cars, a mail car, and freight cars. I had been by train to visit Sister in Berney Points, so I was not in the least frightened or anxious. I was allowed to punch tickets for Mr. Burr who gave me pretty much free run of the train. I spent a good bit of time watching the black man who shoveled coal, and at stops, of which there were quite a number, I would follow the brakemen and switchmen around looking for hot boxes. In those days there were no ball bearings, only babbit bearings, so oil had to be put into boxes filled with a mass of string. It was easy for wheels and axles to get damaged and heat up, even catch on fire. I would carry red flags, which the workers would place on hot boxes that needed to be checked at the next stop.

  When we got to Rome, I would have dinner with Mr. Burr at a boarding house that catered to railroad men and spend the night in the hotel. Then the next morning after breakfast we’d catch No. 17 back to Montevallo. I’d really feel the big shot for several days. What other boy in my acquaintance had had such an experience?

  Other trips took me to Mobile and New York to visit my older sister, Tootsie. Just as I had done in Mobile, I visited her and Sidney several times in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Sidney took the job with the Federal Bearings Company.

  I don’t remember much about what we did in Poughkeepsie on my first visit, but I remember the train trip there. After we crossed the Mason-Dixon line, I noticed that the facilities were no longer segregated, and I was surprised to see black families taking seats right in the car where we were. In New York City, we came into Penn Station and had to transfer to Grand Central Station. I was amazed that Mother could negotiate the trip from one station to the other so easily. Later, Tootsie brought Mother and me back down to New York City, and we stayed in the Barclay Hotel. Now that was something for a boy from Shelby Street. I went around with my mouth open for three days. We climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and looked up and down Manhattan. I was especially impressed with the green rectangle that was called Central Park, and I was thrilled when Tootsie helped me pick out where the Barclay was.

  I was also amazed at the displays at the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum. I could not believe what I saw when they took me to Rockefeller Center to see the Rockettes. When the show was over, the Rockettes disappeared as the entire stage dropped down.

  We sat with hundreds of people eating food from the automat. We came well-stocked with coins to pick out our hamburger steaks, Waldorf salads, and pieces of apple pie with cheddar cheese. After lunch as we walked back to the hotel, I looked into the window at Macy’s, and there I was stunned by what I saw: a television set. Of all pieces of luck, the Brooklyn Dodgers were playing on the screen. They were my favorite team, and there I was between Mother and Tootsie watching them. I was too shocked for words, and I wished that my friends in Montevallo, especially Joe and Jack, were there to see it with me. There would be no televisions on Shelby Street for a few years yet. Mother and Tootsie had a hard time pulling me away from that window.

  When Dad and I drove Putnam Porter to New York City to board a ship, we drove on up to Poughkeepsie after seeing him off. At that time Tootsie had an apartment in an old Victorian home, and you could see the Hudson River out the window. She and Sidney would take bottles out of a bar, which looked like a radio cabinet to me, and they would shake up martinis or mix Manhattans for Dad and themselves. It seemed to me they drank a lot, and Dad seemed to be enjoying himself mightily. They also drank when we went to restaurants.

  In the dimly lit restaurants Tootsie and Sidney took us to, I quickly got a taste of high-class food for the first time. Sidney ordered Roquefort dressing on his salad. I had never heard of it, but I decided to order it too. Then he ordered scallops, which were also a new item for me, but I decided to order them too. I didn’t mind trying new things. The Roquefort dressing had a faintly rotten taste to it, but it wasn’t bad. When the scallops arrived, I looked at the little medallions closely and said to Uncle Sidney, “What exactly are scallops, Uncle Sidney?”

  He thought for a minute, then said very seriously, “Well, Mike, actually they are the muscles out of the eyes of big fishes.”

  Dad and Tootsie laughed when he said it and I was a little surprised, but Uncle Sidney’s answer seemed well within the realm of possibility. I had eaten chitterlings, tongue, tripe, and even mountain oysters, so the idea of fish-eye muscles didn’t faze me. Uncle Sidney looked at me closely as I tore into my plate of scallops, and he grinned when I said I liked fish-eye muscles about as well as catfish.

  In 1945 Uncle Sidney was diagnosed with tuberculosis and had to be put into a sanitarium that sat up high on a hill on the outskirts of Poughkeepsie. He spent a year confined to a single room that opened onto an uncovered porch. He was supposed to stay on the porch even when the weather was cold, and he complained about the frigid air.

  In late May of that year, Mother and I boarded a train and traveled to Poughkeepsie to keep Tootsie company for a while during his confinement. Tootsie’s apartment was several miles from the sanitarium, and every day we would take a cab to go over and spend the day with Uncle Sid. For a twelve-year-old, those days became very long, and I quickly became bored. But one Saturday when we went to see Uncle Sid, all that changed.

  I had heard on the radio that the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus was coming to Poughkeepsie, and I asked about going. Tootsie made it clear that the circus was not on the agenda for that visit, but I managed to put it on the agenda for myself.

  On that particular Saturday afternoon, as I walked around the grounds of the sanitarium, I heard music coming from down the hill. I rushed excitedly in that direction, and there it was: the circus parade in all its glory and spectacle was passing by. Band members in bright-colored spangled uniforms led the way followed by gaily decorated carts and wagons pulled by trucks, white horses, and even elephants. There were several four-wheeled cages holding tigers and lions, and one cage had a sign that read, “Gargantua: The World’s Biggest Gorilla.” Gargantua sat in his cage looking as dignified as an archbishop. I had a perfect place to see everything, and when the last wagon came by, without the slightest pause, I fell in with a large crowd of children and adults who followed the parade for over a mile to the fairgrounds.

  Now it was time to set up the Big Top, and I was fascinated by all the activity. Amazingly, I thought not once of Mother or Tootsie, or even poor Uncle Sid. I was, I guess, living in the moment. Everything seemed to be going by a preconceived plan. What seemed like hundreds of workers were staking the elephants and tying up the horses. Wagons, carts, and cages were placed in their proper places, and huge rolls of dirty white canvas were spread out in the open space where the tents would be erected. I watched with keen interest as the various pieces of canvas were laced together, creating a single piece of canvas that seemed to me as big as Montevallo High School’s football field.

  Four-man teams wielding huge sledgehammers stepped forward to drive the tent stakes, which seemed to me as big as automobile axles. One man dropped to his knees and held the stake in place, while another lifted his hammer and began driving the stake into the ground. A loud ringing sound came from the impact. Immediately and in a precise rhythm, the next driver came forward and struck the stake again. This continued until the stake had reached th
e desired depth. The pattern continued until all the stakes were in the ground. This anvil chorus was one of the most artistic things I had ever witnessed.

  The next thing the workers had to do was to put the tent poles into place and lift the canvas on them. But this was too much for the men alone. Special leather harnesses were placed on the elephants and horses to enable them to do this lifting. The man in charge gave orders, and in a perfectly synchronized way the animals pulled the heavy canvas upwards in the poles and the mighty tents rose magically. I thought it one of the most beautiful things I had ever witnessed. It was like seeing life breathed into a dead body.

  With the tent in place, things relaxed a bit and the whole place seemed to become a little town. Smaller cooking tents were put in place, and almost immediately the cooks set to work. Sanitation tents with showers and toilets were put in place. Huge trailers with generators provided the electricity needed for the show.

  It was only when the sun began setting that it dawned on me that I should think about heading back to the sanitarium. I have a very good sense of direction, so I had no fear about how to go. As I walked down the street, I noticed a car pulled over to the curb, and Tootsie jumped out. I could tell from the look on her face that she was not happy. Some man I didn’t know was driving the car, and I caught a quick glimpse of Mother sitting in the back seat. I learned that Tootsie and Mother had become so alarmed they called Tootsie and Sidney’s best friend Jack to come over to the sanitarium to decide what to do. He immediately said, “It’s obvious. Like every kid his age wants to do, he followed the circus parade.” They just drove in the direction of the fairgrounds until they spotted me.