by Mike Mahan
O. C. also introduced me to the use of the quill, and he was the one who taught me to catch suckers. Suckers are very tricky to catch because, unlike the bream or bass who grab the bait and run with it, they bite the bait very gently. The cork or quill, I discovered, would not bob up and down very much, but just ease away and slightly go under water. O. C. said that just as the bobber went under I was to set the hook. I came to love to watch the quill slowly moving down as it tacked along the water, and I got very good at picking out just the moment to make my catch.
Ordinarily the fish we caught wound up on the supper table, crisply fried, and we would eat the fish tails and all, even crunching the little bones. But Dad and Mother would not hear of our eating the fish from the Sewer Hole. In fact, no white people I knew would eat fish caught in the sewer hole. They said they were nasty. But O. C. straightened me out on that. He said, “The fish always likes the Sewer Hole cause there is plenty of food, but lots of time fish gonna leave and swim upstream to the dam after they eat down here. So them dam fish the same as the Sewer Hole fish. It’s funny how some people will eat fish caught up by the dam but won’t eat these down here. They the same fish.”
Any fish I caught in the Sewer Hole I gave to O. C., who had no reluctance in eating them. He said that, after all that stuff passed through the fish’s body, it was clean as a whistle. I wasn’t so sure about that and could never bring myself to eat a Sewer Hole fish.
O. C. didn’t limit himself to the Sewer Hole. He also loved to fish on the discharge side of the gristmill. “Those fish got plenty to eat here so they lots of fish in here,” he would say. Then he would add with a wink, “Course they ain’t as hungry as they are in some other places.” O. C. would sit and fish for hours, sometimes accompanied by Miss Lilly, an old black woman who was almost as crazy about fishing as O. C. Both had infinite patience.
At some point, my friends and I heard about redhorse fishing, and we were eager to try it. To get a redhorse fish you had to go to the Cahaba River, which was over near the coal mining towns of Marvel or Boothton. You didn’t catch redhorse with a hook. You snared him with a lasso made of copper wire on a bamboo pole. You had to get to swift water where the bottom was covered with small rounded pebbles. Redhorse only came upstream in the river a few days each year to spawn, usually in the middle of May.
The male, which was called the horse, was the first to come upstream. He would find a place where the water was swift and the bottom was covered with pebbles. With his horny head he would dig out a “bed” maybe a foot and half or two feet in diameter, waiting for his mare to come upstream and lay her eggs in the bed. She would go just above the bed and thrash about, muddying the water. The clear Cahaba would become reddish or brown for two to three seconds as her eggs came out of her, washed downstream and settled into the bed. Immediately the horses would fight to see who would have the opportunity to deposit their sperm over the eggs. Typically, the horse who built the bed dominated the others. He was a mean dude who did everything to keep the young horses away from his home life.
Redhorse had been coming up the river hundreds of years. It is said that in the nineteenth century there would be thousands of redhorse beds covering as much as an acre. There were so many fish congregated there that people could wade out in the water, take their snares and lasso all the redhorses they wanted. People used to come in their wagons loaded with salt, take big treble hooks tied to a heavy piece of string, throw the big treble hook out over into the river, and just snag the redhorse. They were thrown onto the bank, where they were cleaned, salted down, and taken home to cook. Redhorse, which are somewhat like a mullet, have a lot of bones and are somewhat tricky to prepare. But once a person learned to prepare them properly, they were mighty good eating.
As a boy I always wanted to go redhorse fishing, but I never got to. When I was about forty-five, I went for the first time with a third-generation redhorse fisherman, Charles Griffin. Now I go every year for a day or two when they are running and Charles will take me. But things have changed. No longer is the redhorse plentiful. So I always free them after they are lassoed. I can’t stand to see them bleed.
After World War II, fishing took on a new meaning for the boys on Shelby Street. Mr. DeSear’s daughter Roberta married a veteran named Tony Elliott. When he visited, he would go down to the creek bearing great big casting rods and reels, and we were astounded at how far he could throw his lures, their triple hooks glistening in the sun. I saw him catch two fish at one time more than once. He taught us boys to bottom fish. We didn’t have rods, but he taught us to tie two or three Golden Eagle claw hooks (which he introduced us to) on the line above the lead and drag the baited hooks on the bottom. We were very successful with this way of fishing, but none of us would rest before we had our own rods and reels. I was shining shoes at Dad’s shop, and I would hardly part with a nickel I made before I got my own rig. We would announce proudly that we were bottom fishermen.
Tony Elliott became our hero, not only because he taught us to bottom fish, but because he would show us the M1 carbine he had brought back from the war. He was an excellent shot, and we would watch as he slipped in the clip and began firing at fish and snakes down at the creek. He killed quite a number. All of us boys now wanted us an M1 carbine, but he said we’d have to join the military to get one, and that was off in the future somewhere.
For now we had to get our excitement some other way, and we were presented with lots of excitement when the “viadock” (as we called the viaduct) was begun in the late 1930s. Jeter’s Bottom had been at the end of Middle Street, but this viaduct was built through it to give those coming from Calera better access to Montevallo. Until then, Calera people had to ford Shoal Creek and bounce along the railroad tracks until they reached town. Or they could drive farther to Shelby Street, crossing the little red bridge into town. Dad called the viadock the Eighth Wonder of the World because it was said to be the first bridge in the United States to cross a creek, a road, a railroad track, and a footpath. Besides, it was an engineering wonder. It was curved in the middle and was banked, and it was the first bridge Dad knew of that was designed with rollers in the expansion joints, making it expand and contract with the changes in weather.
Ramps had to be built up to the bridge. The dirt came from Hooker Hill on the Calera side of the viadock, and it had to be hauled over the little red bridge and down Shelby Street when the Montevallo ramp was built. Finally, there was a thirty-foot sheer cliff of red clay where the dirt was mined for the ramps.
That cliff was irresistible to the Shelby Street boys. Several years after the viadock was completed, I began a mining project with my white friends Dudley Pendleton and Alonzo Clay Galloway (whom we called Buddy) and a black friend named Peanut. It is telling that I never inquired about Peanut’s last name. The project was top-secret, and we covered over our entrance to the mine with brush every day after we finished our work.
There was a ledge about ten feet down the cliff, and that is where we began our excavation, eventually digging ten feet in. Dudley was our engineer. When dirt began to fall, he said we had to put up timbers, the way they did in the coal mines. Peanut was the smallest of the four, and we usually made him do the work in close places, which was most of the work. When we had finished our work for the day, we took great delight in seeing who could piss the farthest off the ledge. Eventually, we abandoned the project, as it became clear that the mine served no useful purpose.
The viadock opened up an industrial corridor between Montevallo and Calera. In the forties, Westinghouse was located along Highway 25 between the two towns, and other smaller industries were opened. The biggest effect it had on Shelby Street, however, was that now the coal trucks from Boothton, Marvel, Aldrich, and Dogwood traveled Middle Street instead.
After the viadock was built, what was left of Jeter’s Bottom became the site of an annual carnival. The first ones were run by Lee’s Carnival Company, and they were famil
y oriented. There was no gambling or striptease. But there were fine rides—the tilt-a-whirl and Ferris wheel were my favorites. I loved the bright lights, the motion, and the calliope music resounding from the merry-go-round. People came in from all the outlying communities, and it was the most festive event of the year in Montevallo.
After a few years, Mr. Lee sold his carnival, and things got better, or worse, depending on your point of view. The new carnival had strippers and gambling games, and we boys thought it was wonderful. Joe McGaughy and Beaut Houlditch, so-named because he was so very ugly, would sneak off with me late at night and crawl up to look in the tents where the strippers were. It was there that I copped my first look at a non-maternal boob.
I can also remember grown men standing around outside the tent hoping to see the strippers. Ever so often a barker with a cheerleader’s megaphone would come out and tell you all about what you could see inside. He would always be accompanied by a lady in a night robe, slightly opened, who on the barker’s commands would quickly open and close the robe. Cheers, hoots, vigorous clapping, and whistling erupted from the crowd. The men would slap each other on the back and urge the barker to have the woman flash them again. Unfortunately, we never saw much of all this because the men would block our vision, but we eagerly waited for even a few seconds of visualizing bare skin. We never looked at the men because we neither wanted to see who they were nor let them see us.
My buddies and I pretty much kept on the move. As a kid, I was always an outside person. It took a lot to keep me still. But in the afternoons I would stay inside to listen to my favorite radio shows—The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, and Superman. We were very late getting television. Not only were televisions in almost every house on Highland Avenue—Ed Givhan even had a big outfit with TV, radio, and stereo all in one—but Frog Holler was even ablaze with TV when Dad got Tom Fancher to come and put us up an antenna and install the set. Lots of people didn’t want to miss televised sporting events, but I was never much interested. I preferred The Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Question and followed the Van Doren scandal with keen interest.
The first people in Montevallo who had a television were the Klotzmans. They got their console set with a round screen in the late 1940s. Harry became even more popular as his friends would come over and crowd around the small black and white screen. One day we were told that Joy Holcombe had the first color set in Montevallo, and my friends and I tore up to her house to see it. It was not worth the time because we discovered that all she had was a plastic covering to place over a black and white set. All you could see was bands of colors that did not go with what was on the screen. People had blue faces; trees were red. We laughed and laughed. “Gotcha,” Joy said, laughing louder than we did.
When we got old enough to drive, we broadened our opportunities to have fun and to get in trouble. Of course, Ed Givhan had Papooshka, and we spent many hours cruising in it. Our favorite thing to do was to get a girl to ride around with us and have her sitting between us on the front seat. It quickly became clear to me that when you shifted the car from second to third, the gear shift lever would rest right down between her legs. I’d beg Ed to let me do the shifting even when he was driving, and sometimes he’d let me. But he once complained that I was doing way more shifting than necessary and that it was going to burn out his clutch trying to keep up with me.
One Halloween Ed and I were riding around in Papooshka. In the back seat were Harry Klotzman, Joe McGaughy, and Milton Jeter. We were all more interested in tricking than in treating, and the idea emerged, why I don’t know, to pull down the mailbox of Dr. Mitchell, a dentist who lived out on the Siluria Road. We got us a rope and pulled that box right out of the ground, yipping and laughing and very proud of ourselves.
The next day at school we bragged to our friends about what we had done, and everybody thought it was real cool. But about mid-morning, as I was sitting in math class, a student worker brought the math teacher a note saying that Ed, Harry, Joe, Milton, and I were to report to the principal’s office. “Oh, shit,” I thought, as our gang of five headed down to Mr. Seymour Hurt’s office. When we got there I was more alarmed because sitting next to Mr. Hurt was a strange gentleman wearing a black suit and a very stern look on his face. “Oh, Lord,” I thought.
Mr. Hurt sat at his desk, and directly behind him on the wall was his famous paddle, a clear symbol of where the power lay in any meeting between him and the students in his school. He began speaking slowly, in a voice more serious than I had ever heard him use. “Gentlemen, I want to introduce you to Mr. Montclair. Mr. Montclair is an inspector for the U.S. Postal Service.” The inspector flashed a badge at us, and five grim boys were impressed.
“Now gentlemen,” Mr. Hurt continued, “don’t start lying to me. I know what you did. It was witnessed and reported to me. You all five are guilty of vandalizing government property. You may not know it, but once a mailbox is put in the ground it becomes the property of the federal government. Did you know that?”
We all shook our heads, looked over at the investigator, who was eyeing us gravely, and waited for Mr. Hurt to lower the boom. “Gentlemen,” he said, “Dr. Mitchell has agreed not to press charges if he has a new mailbox in the ground in thirty minutes. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” we shouted in chorus, all sweating like brass plated monkeys.
“Well, consider yourselves lucky. The investigator here tells me there are boys all across America who are incarcerated for lesser infractions. Just get on out of here and get that mailbox up as quick as you can.”
We scrambled out of his office and out into the parking lot. We piled into Papooshka, pooled our money, and went down to Frost’s Hardware and bought a new mailbox. We never learned who witnessed our crime, but we did learn that whoever it was went to Dad and told him. He, in turn, told Mr. Hurt. “Give them hell,” he said. As it happened a salesman was coming through Montevallo High School that day, and Mr. Hurt thought of letting him pose as a postal inspector. We never learned where the badge came from.
One thing we learned through this episode was how fast word travels in a small town. By noon of the day after we pulled the prank it seemed that everyone in town knew about it.
Another caper that got us in trouble occurred when Joe and I found out how to make firecracker cannons out of one-inch galvanized pipe. We asked the electrician Mr. Parker to cut the lengths of pipe for us, which he did for some reason without asking any questions. We borrowed an electric drill from Western Auto, where I was working, put a hole in a one-inch galvanized pipe cap, and screwed it on to the threaded end of the pipe. We then placed a big red firecracker in the pipe, threading the fuse through the hole. Then we placed scraps of metals, nuts, bolts, rocks, acorns, or anything solid in the pipe. Finally, we packed a little bit of newspaper on top of that and placed the pipe on the ground aimed at a target. One of us would then hold the pipe in position with his foot, bend over and light the fuse and bam what a sound. Our projectiles would go half a city block.
At high school there was a teacher, Mrs. Ruth Frederick, who was generally regarded as a real bitch. She had a tin garage, which we thought made an excellent target to fire on. After making our attack, we all scattered, but unfortunately our stunt was witnessed. Mrs. Frederick called the police, and Harry Kendrick was the officer who called all our fathers. At the time, Ed’s dad, Pete, was mayor, and Dad and Joe’s father were on the City Council. Kendrick said that he believed he could calm Mrs. Frederick down if he convinced her that the boys were being disciplined by their fathers. Dad told Kendrick, “You can tell her that Mike, for one, will be punished.”
Dad was rather pissed when he called me in. “Boy,” he said, “sometimes you act like you haven’t got the brains God gave a billy goat. You and those others are lucky you weren’t put under the jail. And I’ll tell you one thing, I wouldn’t have gotten you out.” I acted chastened for Dad’s sake, though I felt rather confident that
Dad would not have let me spend a night in the Montevallo jail. I felt lucky that Dad seemed to think a good talking to was sufficient punishment.
Our group got away with another Halloween prank, in many ways the worst we ever did. Dr. Sharp—he didn’t have a doctorate, but was accorded the title in the same way that druggists were—was in the chemistry department. We didn’t think much of him, though we were fond of Mrs. Sharp, who hosted those classy parties for her daughters and their friends. But that did not stop us from the revolting thing we did.
On Halloween night, about midnight, we got a sack of ashes from the pile behind the barbershop, and each of us, in ceremonial solemnity, pissed into the ashes. We drove over to campus and parked the car, then sauntered over to the Sharp house. They had one of those mail slots next to their front door that allows the mail to be sent directly into the house. We crept up on the porch and delivered our package, emptying the foul smelling ashes through the slot. We hoped very much that we would hear around town about the prank—especially how upset Dr. Sharp was. But Dr. Sharp demonstrated that he was properly named: silence was the best policy. We would have gloated to know that he had been greatly upset by our caper.
With the arrival of puberty, our games became more daring and sensuous. During my senior year I began to play what turned out to be my favorite, a game we called “pass it.” If we were lucky, we got to play it with college girls. These girls were hungry for male companionship, and it didn’t take a lot to lure them out. They were quite susceptible when music, an automobile, and alcohol were a part of the planned activities, and these elements could produce quite a sensuous night. If the weather was warm, we’d go out to Bulldog Bend on the Little Cahaba River, which was about ten miles south of Montevallo. We’d often have two or maybe three carloads of people, and we’d pull off the dirt road at some point, walk down to the river, and build a fire on the sandy shore. We’d take out our blankets and put them down, sometimes sitting and sometimes lying on them. Someone would get out our stash of liquor, which was usually vodka, as we thought no one could smell it on our breaths. At first we mixed the vodka with Seven-Up and felt quite sophisticated drinking our cocktails, but we quickly moved to straight vodka.
