No Hill Too High for a Stepper

by Mike Mahan

  Mister also showed me the old Delco battery system, a large bank of 48-volt direct current batteries located in a small house down under the hill. From the Delco house large copper wires ran from a battery connection plate up a small utility pole and from there was strung overhead into the house. Inside was a switch box with funny looking switches that turned the DC lights on in each room. There were small cords hanging from the center of the ceiling, and a DC light bulb was screwed into the receptacles. In the ballroom, or the big room as it was called, several cords were required. Of course, by the time I bought Montebrier in 1964, the DC bulbs and lighting system had been replaced by Alabama Power Company’s 110-volt alternating current light bulbs. But I was fascinated by the old system.

  Mister also showed me the one-cylinder gas engine he used to pump water from the spring into a tank that was located on a steel tower sitting next to Montebrier’s back porch. Once the tank was filled, the water flowed by gravity to the kitchen and bath. I loved to hear this old pump engine run, as it had a wonderful rhythmic firing pattern, as if it were played by a drummer. It called out repeatedly, “Paradiddle, paradiddle, paraddidle, pair; paradiddle, paradiddle, paradiddle, pair.” Of course, the water was cold when it came out of the brass spigot at the kitchen sink, and there were no electric water heaters to get hot water from. Miss Jean would have to heat it on the stove, then pour it into the tub. She had two stoves, but mainly used a four-legged electric one made by General Electric. It had four eyes on top and an oven to the right above the eyes.

  Mr. Jessie “Jaybird” Rutledge, noted citizen of Brierfield, caretaker of the Montebrier Club, and close friend of “Mister” and Jean Pittman. Mr. Jaybird was close to the Mahan family, befriending my Great Aunt Adelaide, my dad, and finally me. He spent his last working years at the newly created Brierfield Ironworks Park in the 1980s.

  Back when Montebrier was hosting parties, dancing, and gambling events, there was only one commode and one lavatory in the house. In 1936, when Miss Jean and her first husband moved to Montebrier, they put a bathtub, a sink, and a commode in the old kitchen pantry. By the time I first saw that bathroom, the brass spigots had become quite dirty-looking, though I can’t say that bothered me at all. Nor was I bothered by the fact that the commode, tub, and sink drained though a pipe directly into Mahan Creek. Mister informed me that this waste water flowing into the creek made for a good fishing hole.

  My favorite time at Montebrier was at night, when Mister and I would sit on the front porch and listen to the cicadas and frogs. Miss Jean would be inside reading so it’d just be us two. We didn’t talk much, but we were as close as could be. Occasionally, I would see a shadow coming up the drive, and it would be Mr. Jaybird Rutledge, who had spent most of his life on that property. Now he lived in a house up by the gate. Sometimes he and Mister would just talk for a while, but occasionally Mister would remove his shoes and socks, and Mr. Jaybird would trim Mister’s bunions. He would put Mister’s naked foot on his knee, take out his pocket knife, which was extremely sharp, and with surgical precision trim the hard, white, dead skin off of Mister’s bunions. During all this time Mister would suck on his pipe, and I’d look at the stars and think how good a place this was. But since I didn’t have any bunions, I never got to experience Mr. Jaybird’s surgical skills.

  My trips to Montebrier lasted until I was in the seventh or eighth grade. I’m not exactly sure why they ended. Maybe there were more cool things to do with my cool friends—particularly my girlfriends—rather than waiting on the curb in front of 159 Shelby Street for the Pittmans to pick me up. But when Mister died in 1954 while I was a student at Auburn I was flooded with memories of Montebrier.

  During my first marriage from 1956 to 1959, there seemed to be no room for Montebrier, but when I brought Linda to Montevallo in 1961, the first thing I did after taking her to meet Mother and Dad on Shelby Street was, according to her, to take her directly to Montebrier. We could not have known at the time that it would be called home by us and Miki and later by Stann. In 1974, Montebrier was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. If I am truly a stepper, then Linda’s and my efforts in saving historic Montebrier by bringing it to life as a home and sharing its historic fabric with so many people over the last forty-five years ranks at the top of my accomplishments.

  Montebrier, my home, May 2013. Photograph by Daphney Walker.

  Before Linda and I purchased Montebrier, we visited the house with our friends John and Marny Owens and their children.

  Part V

  Living

  the Life

  18

  Schooldays

  Going to school from first grade to high school was pretty much the same. I’d get up between 6:00 and 6:30, reminded by Mother to brush my hair and brush my teeth. Lacking a family car some of the time and too close to ride a school bus, I made the daily trek to school and back by foot or later by bicycle. In my early grades, Mom or Dad or Maggie would walk me the seven or eight blocks to school, and on rainy days a neighbor would carry me by car. But beginning in the third grade, I was on my own. Most days I would strap my wooden violin case to the handlebars and pedal to school. Occasionally, I wondered what people might be saying about that spectacle.

  Milton “Weed” Jeter and me beginning our formal education at Alabama College’s nursery school.

  On my way to school, I would exchange greetings with people like Mrs. Latham, Mr. Rogan at the corner of Main, Smiley Frost when you reached Valley Street, Bloomer Wilson at Middle and Main, Mr. Eddie Mahaffey, Mr. Taft Hill, and others. In the big oak trees that lined Main Street, birds would sing happily and the squirrels would chase each other, and this was all a part of my morning’s entertainment. I have always been acutely aware of nature’s sounds, I think because the elementary school principal, Mrs. Charlotte Peterson, the music teacher, Mrs. Farrah, and the math and history teacher, Mrs. Minnie Dunn, taught me how to be a good listener.

  My dad sitting proudly in the fire truck he almost destroyed forty-five years earlier.

  I started my school days in the nursery school run by Alabama College. It was housed in a two-story Victorian white framed building, and I would spend my mornings and early afternoons under the supervision of Miss Ethel Bickham. This place was wonderful for a three-year-old. I thought the playground, with its swings, sandboxes, and sliding boards, could not be more perfect. There was a special swing, which we called Miss Bickham’s swing, that was designed like a saddle. You put your feet on a bar in front of you and your hands on a bar above your feet and you could achieve mobility back and forth without any adult help. The swing was held by four ropes instead of two, and that made it easier to achieve greater heights than you could on a regular swing. The girls, like Sarah Pat Baker, Joy Holcombe, and Laura Ann Hicks, could not make Miss Bickham’s special swing go as high as we boys could, so they preferred to play in the sandbox doing girl stuff with little china plates and cups. We boys had no interest in the sandbox, but invariably at the end of play period we would go over and destroy the little sand cakes and pies the girls had created. And invariably Miss Bickham or one of the student teachers would take our hands by the fingers and turn our palms up, striking them with a twelve-inch ruler. Usually it did not hurt too bad, but occasionally a tear would slip from my eye. Yet I never did stop messing up the little girls’ creations.

  Miss Ethel Bickham with Joy Holcombe standing in the background. I learned a lot at Miss Bickham’s, including what Joy wore underneath her dress.

  Miss Bickham’s school day was extremely structured and ran on a schedule about as predictable as the trains that ran through Montevallo. You ate at a certain time. You pulled out your sleeping mat once in the morning and once after lunch and took a nap whether you wanted it or not. You sang when instructed to do so. You colored and fingerpainted on Miss Bickham’s orders. She did not brook any protest from us.

  My next school was the kindergarten the college
ran. Housed in the Alice Boyd building on campus, the kindergarten was even more structured than the nursery school. We had to be there exactly on time and were given assignments by only one teacher. We sat in one room with little desks and round tables with little chairs. We did have playground once in the morning, and here we learned games like kickball. I quickly discovered on the playground—even at that tender age—that I was not a jock. There were no sandboxes or Miss Bickham’s special swing. The swings, with just two chains, were much harder to swing in, requiring some help from the teacher to really get going. We didn’t have any rest time or sleeping mats to lie on, but following lunch we were sent home, and I spent the afternoons at the shop with my parents.

  Two years before I started first grade, the old elementary school, which sat at the corner of Valley and Boundary streets, burned to the ground. Although I was only five at the time, I remember the excitement it caused because Dad drove to the fire in the brand-new Peter Pirsch fire truck the City had just bought. In the excitement of dealing with the smoke and flames billowing out of the heart-pine structure, he forgot to turn on the cooling system that pumped fresh water into the block and radiator of the six-cylinder Chevrolet engine. Before long the engine burned up. So the new fire truck met its Waterloo on its first trip out. This was a minor scandal, and Dad was, of course, mortified, but luckily the City had insurance and could replace the motor.

  When I began regular school, my first teacher was Mrs. Alice Rice. She intended to get us off to a good start, stressing order, discipline, routine, and punishment as the four elements of a sound education. We were all somewhat terrified of her, as she walked between our desks incessantly, dressed in all black with flat lace-up shoes. But worse than her austere appearance, she was constantly armed with a wooden twelve-inch ruler, which she was ready to put into use at any infraction. My failures were mainly not paying attention, talking, and, as she put it, not cooperating, and on a number of occasions my little white palm was made red by Mrs. Rice’s whacks. You knew right away how bad your failure was by the number of whacks she gave you. After that you got a tongue-lashing, explaining why she had had to inflict the punishment.

  Very different from Mrs. Rice was my third-grade teacher, a shapely young beauty named Mrs. West, who had been a Wave in the U.S. Navy. While Mrs. Rice seemed old enough to have taught Abraham Lincoln, Mrs. West was new and fresh, full of laughter, walking up and down between the rows of students not to keep order but to converse with us in a pleasant way. If you couldn’t answer a question, she didn’t make you feel bad, the way Mrs. Rice had. She asked us to report on our interests and hobbies, and she encouraged us to make colorful bulletin board displays. She was a disciple of progressive education that Dr. M. L. Orr, head of the education department, was responsible for bringing to Alabama College.

  Progressive education, a liberal philosophy of educating the whole child, was just taking off across the nation, and we were made to feel privileged to attend such a school. I think the whole system went against the traditional Three R’s—reading, writing, and arithmetic. We were to progress at our own speed, and we received only pass or fail grades, no A, B, C, or D. Report cards would say something like “Mike has passed his math, history, music, but he could do better if he really applied himself.” But progressive education did not really make me want to work at my maximum level, so I just piddled around a lot of the time. In dental school years later, I encountered a philosophy that took me back to my progressive education days. We said that anything above seventy was passing, and any effort beyond that was wasted, as our diplomas would all say the same thing. Except for the few students who graduated at the very top of the class, we had all pretty much adopted that philosophy.

  Although I was never a top student, I had a lively curiosity and learned a lot from my teachers, but I never applied myself sufficiently to be distinguished as a scholar. I was never elected president of anything. I ran for vice-president of the student council and lost by seven votes. I never made first chair in the band, and neither was I an athlete. But what I did have was enthusiasm, and my teachers liked that about me. I could energize a group and make them excited about a project. Teachers liked to give me jobs to do, and I was proud to be singled out. I actually liked to erase and clean the chalk boards and to run errands down to the principal’s office. If a teacher needed something found for a class project, I would quickly volunteer.

  One of my favorite teachers was Miss Susie DeMent, who taught commercial subjects. By the time we were in the ninth grade, we all thought we needed typing. For many of my classmates, especially the girls, it would provide them an avenue for employment, and those of us who planned to go to college were told that typing would be invaluable to us as well. So in the tenth grade I signed up to take a typing class from Miss Susie, whom we called the Mother Superior of Typing.

  Mother said I was likely to be very good at typing. After all I had taken piano lessons for nine years, and I also was able to play stringed instruments. Certainly, she said, the dexterity required for those activities would transfer to typing. Alas, my mother was wrong. I sat down dutifully before the manual Royal typewriter assigned to me and began to bang out a, s, d, f, j, k, l, ;. Over and over I typed this sequence. It seemed like running scales on the piano, and I felt pretty confident. Then we proceeded to “Let us now praise famous men,” which was not quite so easy. Then it was time to be speed-tested. I scored a miserable twenty words the first day. Ed, Joe, and Harry all scored higher, as did every girl in the class. I never was able to reach forty the entire semester, and I had to admit that my musical skills were not transferable.

  Susie DeMent, aka Miss Susie, aka Miss Montevallo High School. She taught many generations of students the art of typing and shorthand. Her dedication and love for teaching made her a Montevallo legend.

  I liked Miss Susie so much that I felt bad that I was not doing better in her class. But Miss Susie was in charge of the school newspaper, the Spotlight, which she reigned over with the care that the editors of the New York Times must have given to their publication. She demanded absolute perfection. Maybe if I did well on the staff of the Spotlight, she would overlook my deficiencies in typing.

  I first signed on as a reporter, a job I quickly realized was not for me. I could interview people pretty well, but my writing left something to be desired, and Miss Susie saw that immediately. Little of my work was deemed worthy of the column inches it would require in the newspaper. So it didn’t take long for me to find my niche in the more technical side of the publication. Jobs like cleaning the mimeograph machine or straightening up the printing room I eagerly took on. I also distributed the papers around town and mailed copies to other high school newspapers in Alabama. When the Spotlight won state awards, I was as proud as the writers were.

  Miss Susie continued her work with the Spotlight long after I graduated, taking the paper into full color and digital printing. She also remained a fixture at all school events, particularly athletic competitions. She was the official scorekeeper for the three major sports, and she always dressed in the school colors, orange and blue. Students all seemed to love Miss Susie, and she became a mentor to many. In her eighties, she still was an active fan of the Montevallo High School teams, and when alumni returned for home games, she was the first person they wanted to speak to.

  Vinnie Lee Walker seated on the rocks at Davis Falls during the class of 1952’s picnic there. Miss Walker was feared, respected, disliked, loved, and dedicated beyond words to the art of teaching English and literature to generations of Montevallo students.

  My senior English teacher, Mrs. Vinnie Lee Walker, bore very little resemblance to Miss DeMent. Feared by many and respected by all, this woman was the last great hurdle we students faced on our educational journeys. I knew I was in for it, as progressive education had allowed us slackers to get by with murder, and I had not gained all the basic skills required. This thin, graying woman had high standards, an
d she was not about to compromise them. We read the best literature, and we wrote about what we had read. I did her assignments quite perfunctorily, as I had done most of my high school career. But here there was one difference. My papers came back with C’s and D’s written in red. Up until then I had embraced the philosophy of “don’t sweat the little things; just get the big picture.” The utter failure of that philosophy became abundantly clear when six-weeks grades came out. I fearfully opened the card to see a D in English. When my parents saw the grade they were none too pleased, either. As for me, I underwent a conversion, accepting Mrs. Walker as Lord and Savior of Senior English, and with the help of my friends Ed, Emily Vest, Jane Triplett, and the student teachers from Alabama College I was able to make A’s and B’s the rest of the year. Vinnie Lee Walker accomplished more with an academically cavalier guy from Shelby Street than any other teacher I encountered.

  At our high school, you were pegged as an athlete, a brain, a musician, or a nobody. But that changed for a number of boys when a short stocky man named Moon Thornton came to town to teach vocational agriculture. He started a Future Farmers of America chapter, offering opportunities for the nobodies to build their confidence up. He took them places and formed a barbershop quartet that competed with quartets from other schools. He had them entering speaking contests. They proudly wore their FFA jackets, decorated with patches won in hog-calling contests and other such events. For many kids who were getting no encouragement at home, Mr. Moon was just what they needed. He also had a great effect on people who had never been classified as nobodies.