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Mellow Valley is the place name given to the area where my mother was born. |
My mother was born in 1907 but she might as well have been born in 1807. She and her brothers and sisters lived in rural Clay County. They had no electricity and no running water. They made their subsistance living share cropping. My grandfather and one of the daughters died in the flu epidemic of 1917. After my grandfather died my grandmother moved the family to Alexander City where she went to work in the local mill. She remarried, had two more sons, and lost her second husband when he abandoned the family. Somehow they survived the great depression and my mother managed to put herself through what was then called business school. She went to work in a bank in Birmingham where she met my father. When World War II broke out, my parents moved to Washington, DC where I was born. Her brothers and sisters took jobs in the mill, married and raised their families in Alexander City. My grandmother died in 1950.
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One of my distant cousins lived in this house. I remember visiting here as a child and eating home made peach ice cream. |
As a boy, I spent many summers in Alex City, as the locals call it. I was the yankee cousin. I used to joke that I thought my first name was damn. My aunt would console me by saying, "just because a cat has kittens in the oven doesn't make them biscuits."I'd stay with my mom's twin sister, Zelma, and her family, or at one of my relatives' cabins on Lake Martin. Back then, Alex City was a mill town. My aunts and uncles worked at the mill except for my mother's twin sister who ran the local recreation center and whose husband was the postmaster. The lake houses were cabins from the company owned mill village that had been moved from town. My grandmother lived with my aunt Ines in one of the mill village houses until she died.
I spent my summers there swimming in the lake, roaming the countryside with my cousins, or tagging along to swim meets and football practice. When I turned sixteen, I got my driver's license, and started working after school and in summers. My visits to Alex City stopped for many years.
Today, Alexander City is no longer a mill town. The mills are mostly closed. The economic engine is Lake Martin and businesses that feed the nearby automotive plants for BMW, Kia, and Hyundai. Shopping is centered on the bypass where the uniculture reigns supreme. The original downtown is struggling. Fortunately, Carlysle Drug still has a soda fountain where you can get a chicken salad sandwich and fresh limeade, and there's now a health club. The lake cabins have mostly been replaced by McMansions.
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One of life's little mysteries. Some unknown person still decorates my grandmother's grave. Joe Dimaggio? |
Yesterday, I went cemetery hopping with my cousin Frances and two friends of hers who are into genealogy. Our route took us through two of the most rural counties in Alabama (and by inference two of the most rural counties in the States). We visited the grave sites of my maternal grandparents, and aunts and uncles. We drove past memories of my childhood and I was struck yet again with the fact that this place where I have never lived is the closest thing to home that I have ever known. I also was reminded that my grandmother's funeral indirectly paid for my college education. When I applied to college, I knew I would need a scholarship. A short story I submitted about my experience of her death won a prize that covered my tuition.
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| Shiloh Baptist Church, Coosa County, AL |
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