The first evening we attend a family reunion in Colbert County, Alabama—a gathering of descendents of Colonel George Colbert (aka, Tootemastabbe, Chickasaw Chief) my wife’s third great-grandfather. We share a covered dish supper and fascinating conversation with these Chickasaw-Scots and with Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks and Choctaws visiting from Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Alabama and Texas, to name a few, whose ancestors survived or perished on the Trail of Tears.

The next day we drive into the woodlands adjoining the Natchez Trace and here, just above the “Devil’s Backbone,” my wife introduces Wesley and me to Tom Hendrix, descendent of the ancient Native American Yuchi tribe. The three of us sit under the canopy of hardwoods near a meandering stone wall, listening. For a couple of hours we remain entranced by his words—the stories that have traveled across generations are now shared with us and we see why his Yuchi people call him “Stonetalker.” Three decades past, Tom felt an urgent need to find some way to tell the journey story of Te-lah-nay, his Yuchi great-great-grandmother, born in the Shoals. We learn that in the 1830s, 13-year-old Te-lah-nay, having just witnessed the murder of all her family, is forced to walk with thousands of Creek, Chickasaws, Choctaws and Cherokees, the many miles of hardships, sickness and deaths, to the West. Even before reaching Oklahoma Territory she yearns for her home on the “Singing River” in Colbert County so much that she determines to return. Shortly after the group reaches their destination, she manages to escape the Indian Territory West, and travels alone for three years, finally reaching home to hear the music of her beloved “Singing River.”  This lone remnant of the Yuchis marries and produces a daughter who passes this story on to her descendents, eventually reaching the ears of her great-great-grandson, Tom Hendrix.

After much reflection, Tom formulates a plan—a way to keep alive the story of his great-great-grandmother’s long and difficult journey west far from her birthplace, and her valiant trek out of exile, back to Alabama’s Tennessee River. He would build a wall of stone gathered from the nearby shoals, the shoals that sang the songs beckoning Te-lah-nay back home.

He drives down to the river bank, loads his truck with river rocks and begins laying the wall in his woodland front yard. A half-ton of rocks does not make much of a wall, so Tom continues his frequent treks to the river bed. Three decades later, after wearing out three trucks and dozens of pairs of gloves, Tom has laid 9,300,000 pounds of rocks to build the wall honoring Te-lah-nay. But it is not finished. He explains that he personally has laid almost every single stone that forms the wall using no mortar. Only on a few rare occasions has Tom allowed anyone else to place a rock. “Every stone,” he says, “represents a footstep taken by one of the people forced from their home on the westward march.” When Tom learns that our grandson’s blood flows with Chickasaw and Cherokee blood, he invites Wesley to select a rock from his truck and place it on an unfinished section of the wall, a defining moment for us all. The construction continues.

Visitors have come from all over the U. S. and from across the world to leave memorabilia on the Wichapi Wall (meaning “like the stars”). Guided by the wall, they wind through the woods, frequently moved to spontaneously pause for meditation.

It is appropriate that Te-lah-nay’s memorial is near Tuscumbia for two reasons. First, the Shoals area is her birthplace and, second, during that horrendous “Trail of Tears” in the 1830s, the citizens of Tuscumbia noted the conditions of the Indians as they waited to be transported across the Tennessee River and came to their aid. The compassionate Tuscumbians are still remembered for their acts of kindness providing food, clothing and blankets to the starving and ill-clothed native tribes.

One can view this magnificent memorial wall by going to www.ifthelegendsfade.com or better still, arrange a visit by emailing Tom Hendrix at stonetalker@comcast.net. It is a compelling journey into the depths of Alabama history.

For more information on AHF’s “Journey Stories” exhibit, now in Marion through Nov. 10, please visit www.ahf.net/journeystories.

By AHF Board member Bob Whetstone

On this cool September morning, we’re sipping coffee in Cousin Ron’s yard high on a west Duluth hill, watching the fog rise off majestic Lake Superior below. A collector of classic antique cars, Ron is deep into the subject when he pauses. “Ya’ know,” he says in that characteristic Minnesota twang, “I watch the weekend races on TV, but one thing I’d like to do before I kick the bucket is to see a live race at Talladega.”

Before I can react to his bucket list confession, Ron’s wife pipes up, “You betcha’, we’re gonna do just that, Ron. I want you to see that race. It’ll be your birthday present.” I play along with the dream and offer that we’ll have a room ready for them at our house—and we’ll start working on finding finish-line tickets. “You guys will love the races,” Ron adds. I shake my head to make sure I heard the words correctly. Yes, I heard right. It’s just that I have never pictured myself sitting in the stands at the SuperSpeedway.

The Sunday of the big race we rise at dawn and travel our carefully plotted, less-travelled route from Winterboro to the race track. Merging into six-lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, we snail along the last leg and frantically pull in to the first weeded field we see. My wife calls out the checklist: “hat, sunscreen, sunglasses, seat cushions, tissues, earplugs, camera, tickets, coolers. OK, let’s go.” We open the doors of our cool air-conditioned car to be slapped in the face by a wall of 100-degree heat. But we stand steadfast, don our sun hats, clutch our heavy, well-stocked coolers and are caught up in the swell of sweaty bodies that is flowing, we hope, towards the infield tramway tunnel. A long walk later the crowd thins out and we can see the tunnel. Wishing to gain the full flavor of this experience we take a short tram ride and disembark at the infield. Intent on sneaking a closer look at the 38 fire-breathing dragons before they are rolled out of their garages onto the two-and-a-half mile oval track, we determinedly lug our coolers through an aluminum village of motor homes and trailers, flash our infield passes before the security guards at the gate only to be halted and told we need special, i.e., more expensive, tickets to enter the garage area. The heavy coolers stretch our arms as we return to the tram and exit the infield. We’re stopped at the entrance because our coolers do not meet size and material requirements for carriage into the grandstand, so we hide our supply of bottled water, Cokes and ice under a truck, not caring at this point if they’re there when the race is over.

As we enter the ramp to the stadium, Ron points out the long row of colorfully decorated 18-wheelers outside the fence, similar to a carnival midway. He explains the barkers are hawking each driver’s souvenirs and memorabilia. Settling in our finish-line seats, I covertly study these race fanatics. Well, I think we may have the only arms and thighs in this virtual sea of sparsely-clad multi-toned skin not bearing tattoos. No, wait, there is one clear canvas—a small fan sleeping soundly in an infant seat amidst the clamor.

Heads bow in reverence as the pre-race ceremony begins. The invocation, laden with auto racing metaphors, closes  and a slow, drawn-out rendition of the National Anthem rises but is drowned out when a dual-wheel monster truck with a huge American flag waving from its rear barrels down the track competing with the ear-splitting roar of a flyover by two jet bombers. A row of convertibles parades around the track to deliver the drivers to their predetermined starting positions. A well-known football coach takes the mike and announces, “Drivers, start your engines,” and a deafening roar erupts. We hurriedly insert our earplugs before the Aaron 499 race begins. After circling the two-and-a-half mile oval once, the 38 racecars begin to pair off like love bugs at Gulf Shores.

As we mop sweat from our faces and cover our professionally plugged ears with our hands, our race-savvy cousins explain that it is usual for spectators to wander among the army of food and souvenir vendors during the middle third of the race, so we do just that. However, as we stand eating hot dogs and surrounded by the smell of cotton candy, popcorn, and cigarette smoke, we glance toward the track into the grandstand and see the true, die-hard fans in their favorite driver’s caps and T-shirts, eyes glued to the track. They periodically rise to dance and cheer for the lead car or to gape at a crash and then rush to the wire fence to snap a photo. I finally gain courage to return to my seat.

After several hours and 278 laps the final 10 draw everyone to their feet—yes, even these two Alabama race rookies and their Minnesota cousins, to witness the jockeying for position among the lead couplets. The roaring engines, the fumes, the vibrations of the grandstand as dozens of dynamos whiz down the final stretch make me feel as though I am a passenger travelling with them on their journey. The final car crosses the finish line and we are swept up in the rolling tide of race fans as we exit and locate our abandoned coolers. We retrieve icy cold bottles and pause to slake our thirst in preparation for the walk to our car and the final departure from my first and my last race.

My ears still ringing, I think about the drivers, some now celebrating, some mourning. I wonder about that handful of cars, the crushed dreams of the drivers unable to complete the race. For all 38 drivers, today’s long 499-mile journey has ended at the checkered flag where it began.

The first week of the 1933-34 school year their eighth-grade teacher makes an announcement that turns Alton inside out: “During the year each pupil will take a turn giving the morning devotional.” As the days of September move too quickly, John’s turn comes before Alton’s. He confidently delivers a reading from the Bible, makes a brief comment and whispers to Alton as he takes a seat, “You see, nothing to it.” But Alton’s anxiety is not assuaged.

Alton’s day of dread has arrived. The school bell rings, students assemble in their desks—but Alton’s seat in the back of the room remains empty. Just as the tardy bell sounds, Alton slips quietly into the classroom, a guitar slung across his shoulder. A loud buzz punctuated by periodic giggles fills the room, until the teacher silences the sounds with a snap of her fingers and announces, “Alton has decided to sing a hymn as his devotional and you will give him and his message all due respect.” As his sweating fingers strum the opening chords, the harmony bolsters his courage, dissolves his tension, and steadies his shaky voice, “As I travel through this pilgrim land, there is a friend who walks with me. . .” The gospel hymn, “Jesus, Hold My Hand,” seems only too appropriate.

My Uncle Alton played guitar, bass and saxophone in my father’s “hillbilly” band throughout my childhood and entertained us kids with snappy little ditties until he answered Uncle Sam’s call to duty in WWII. However, this self-taught musician never mentioned those unique eighth-grade musical devotionals. In a recent conversation I had with 90-year-old Governor John Patterson, he firmly recalled my uncle’s friendship and music and he related the morning devotional incident with amazing clarity. Gov. Patterson also remembered how the two friends had to say goodbye shortly after eighth grade when John’s father, Albert Patterson, made the fateful decision to move his family to Phenix City and enter Alabama’s political arena.

The official 2011 state theme for Alabama is The Year of Music. The thread that binds together much of this state’s cultural history is its music and stories, like those told by John Patterson, some of which enriched my own personal history with stories of my musically talented, late Uncle Alton Whetstone.

By Bob Whetstone, AHF board member

Not all journeys are measured in miles; some may be short on distance but long on experience as evidenced by the great early 20th century migration of East Alabama dirt farmers from their cotton fields into the towns where cotton mills promised secure wages. This is one journey story that has strangely slipped through the cracks of recorded history. Beleaguered crops suffering from searing droughts, boll weevil infestation and poor soil management, leave the tenant farmers and small landowners no choice. They bundle a few possessions and their families in wagons and move into mill-owned houses. Though the work is demanding, these former farmhands collect regular wages for their dime-an-hour labor.

In the 1920s, my own grandfather packs his wife, nine children and sparse household goods in a wagon and drives his mule the short distance from Cow Pens to a mill village near Alexander City. The following passage from my novel Grave Dancin’ (published by Lulu Press, 2008) describes the family’s bold journey as they emerge from generations of farming and enter the industrial revolution of the New South:

(Obie, the eldest son, narrates what happens the day after his father announces they will all vacate the tenant farm immediately.)

“The next day I fetched the mule from the barn and led it to the wagon shed. Untangling the traces, I looked down at the borrowed house that had sheltered our family for five years, a curiously constructed two-piece shack of weathered pine pieced together with pegs and nails squatting on low pillars of stacked sandstone. It was about as crude a coat of protection against the elements as our family could ever wear. I looked forward to moving into a neatly painted house in town protected by shade trees with a front porch and a swing hanging from a large oak limb. I led the mule down to the wagon, hitched it and called out to everybody to load up. Our new house was waiting and I was in a hurry to get on the road. I laid a board across the sides of the wagon where I could sit and drive the mule. After loading the wagon with sheets, quilts, clothes and a mattress, we lifted the young’uns up to my stepmother, Desser. A few pots and pans were stuffed behind the dry goods along with sacks of canned fruits, vegetables and jelly.

After boosting Annie Bea and Heddie up, I turned to help Christine and Mamie. They backed away, refusing to ride on the wagon. Christine lifted her head high and declared, ‘I’m walking with my head high and eyes open, not that I’m ever coming back here, ever!’

I loosened the reins. The mule strained to pull the wagon up the rise. Christine and Mamie trailed behind singing, but the clatter of the wagon covered their words. Daddy marched in front of the mule like a proud Andrew Jackson leading his battle-scarred troops to glory land.”

My sharecropper grandfather’s decision to embark on that journey altered significantly the paths of his sparsely educated offspring. Unbeknownst to him at the time, this new environment would ultimately lead to more promising futures for his children and grandchildren than they could have ever imagined—steady work, better schools, wholesome leisure activities and an ever-expanding bounty of opportunities.

My family’s experience represents only one of thousands of “Journey Stories” that comprise a tapestry of the colorful, complex history of this great nation. Many similar stories highlight a special traveling exhibit compiled by the Smithsonian Institution and sponsored by the Alabama Humanities Foundation. The Museum on Main Street exhibition “Journey Stories” opens at the Bankhead House and Heritage Center in Jasper, June 25, for six weeks, and then opens in Alexander City on August 10. Visit www.ahf.net for more details.

All proceeds will benefit the Alabama Humanities Foundation and its programs.

Send letter and payment to:
Alabama Humanities Foundation
c/o Paul Lawson
1100 Ireland Way, Ste. 101
Birmingham, AL 35205

About Cotton Mary
“Mary Christine Tarley’s story is typical of many under-educated Southern women who were attracted to jobs in cotton mills in the 1930s, only to find themselves bound to the mill by the same threads they wove into cloth.”
—Bob Whetstone, AHF Board member and author of Cotton Mary, writes in the acknowledgements of his new historical fiction novel

Mr. Whetstone’s new book offers an inside look at the company-owned textile mill villages. The book’s protagonist, Mary, is “lured into dime-an-hour wages in a mill,” away from her family farm, only to find that she must rely on “every ounce of her coping skills to survive.”

It is on a lengthy family trip to northern Minnesota in February 2010 that Daniel has the opportunity to exhibit the full extent of his prowess with geography, maps, navigation, and weather. Armed with his personal hand-held GPS, laptop computer and an array of road maps of a half-dozen states, Daniel plans and advises the two drivers every mile of the way from Birmingham to the Ontario border and back, including the weeklong stay in a remote cabin on a frozen lake. Returning home and back to his fifth-grade class, Daniel preps for the upcoming Geography Bee at his elementary school by poring over atlases after school. It is no surprise to his teachers when he wins first place for his school and subsequently represents the school system in the statewide Geography Bee, capturing third place.

Not satisfied with placing third, this budding meteorologist intensifies his study of geography over summer break, sandwiched between Boy Scouts, piano lessons, and church activities. By mid-winter of sixth grade, his email weather updates are launched with pinpointed detail, matching the accuracy of professional forecasters across Alabama. Now in his first year of middle school, he finds himself up against a more challenging field of competitors. Again, he wins first place for his school and school system. After a sudden-death shoot-out in the statewide Geography Bee at Samford University in April of this year, Daniel is now packing his bag and flexing his memory in preparation for the National Geography Bee in our nation’s capital as Alabama’s 2011 Champion. As soon as his plane touches down at Dulles Airport, we fully expect to receive an email forecasting the weather in Washington, D.C.

“For the first time, I saw my grandfather in a different light. He has actually lived the history I am trying to learn from books,” he goes on. “I would sit for hours listening to him tell the stories behind his clacker collection and viewing the photographs taken when our community was buzzing with coal mining activity.”

This prospective history teacher’s story had a familiar ring. The program he described was an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Humanities Foundation. A colleague in the history department and I collaborated to invite retired miners to the middle school for an hour once a month to speak with the students and engage them in discussions about the history of their community. History came alive for those sixth graders as a result of the project and motivated at least one student to pursue a career teaching the humanities—an investment that returned maximum dividends.

The woman came down from a field of red clay,
And her cohorts were teeming with cotton and hay;
And the gleam in their eyes was like stars in the sky,
To work for a wage was their victorious cry.

(With due respect to Lord Byron’s The Destruction of Sennacherib)

Sixteen-year-old Mary Frances Tapley defies her daddy’s wishes, deserts his scraggly field of cotton that has fought to break through the stubborn, red, Alabama clay. She turns her back on the sparse field of plump white bolls that have victoriously survived and leaves them unpicked to find work at a cotton mill in the nearby town of Alexander City. Though the Great Depression has not quite tightened its tortuous talons around the South, the boll weevil, the searing drought, and poor land management have already ravaged most of the cotton crops in East Alabama leaving most farmers desperate.

Mary is familiar with the hard times now descending again like a tornado on her sharecropper family. Scores of men and women, like Mary, are leaving farms, lured to dime-an-hour wages in a mill which devours bales of cotton that for eight-hour shifts sucks the sweat and dreams from its victims, releasing them only to begin again the next day turning out the finished denim and mattress ticking. The town folk call them “lint-heads” behind their backs but willingly accept their money every two weeks in exchange for just enough supplies to get by, with no hint of remorse. Rick Bragg refers to these share-croppers-turned-mill hands in The Prince of Frogtown, “There is little photographic memory of them and they left few letters or diaries, but look into the faces of the people of the mill villages and you will find them there. Look a little deeper and you will see the ghosts of people who were here before.” Mary soon finds a husband and has three babies by age 21. Aside from boiling diapers in the backyard wash pot and baking hot biscuits daily in a wood-fired stove, beyond conjuring up herbal remedies for sick kids, washing the family’s clothes on a washboard and ironing her husband’s shirts and khakis—she rarely misses one of her six days a week, eight-hour shifts at the cotton mill. A delicate ninety-pound image camouflages the guts of steel within this woman who draws upon every ounce of her coping skills to survive. Yet Mary is able to see beyond all this and doggedly refuses to pass her mill-hand legacy on to her progeny and relentlessly urges them, “You will leave this village, go on and get your education and make a better life for yourself.”

Cotton Mary lived to witness the demise of the cotton mill that had supported her family long enough to set their children on career paths that would not require the stoop labor that had left her bent like the crescent moon. Her sadness at seeing the permanent closing of the mill in the 1980’s was soon overshadowed by her relief in knowing that the “ghosts” of her three kids would never haunt its silent, cavernous rooms.

The next day we drive a few miles north to Hogback Mountain Trading Post/Pawn Shop located in a small nondescript building on the edge of Navajo territory. The shop’s fourth-generation proprietor spends a good deal of time sharing stories behind the displays of native art work, artifacts, handiwork and the artists that created them. The smell of leather draws our attention to a banister surrounding a loft above us hung with rows of saddles. He explains they belong to native cowhands that pawn them after roundups and rodeos for safekeeping over the winter, a virtually free storage service. He narrates the history of handmade rugs and turquoise jewelry on consignment from his fellow tribe members and a collection of not-for-sale arrowheads on display in a glass case.

His most engaging story is about a Navahjo artist/friend who creates the intricate “sand art” that caught our attention the moment we entered the post. Using indigenous sand as a medium, the artist crafts cultural designs and colorful regional landscapes glued on plywood. The shop owner tells us, “I arranged a showing of his work at a well-known gallery in San Francisco. The morning of the exhibit, we loaded several of his ‘paintings’ in my van and headed west. The drive that normally takes four hours lasted twice as long because every time he spotted sand or rocks in colors he could use in his artwork, we had to stop long enough for him to gather the materials. So, we arrived at the gallery with the van loaded down with rocks and sand but too late to arrange his ‘sand art’ works for the evening showing.”

Please tell us about your own encounters with local artists, or artists you’ve met on your own journeys across the U.S. and other countries.

It’s the Saturday before Christmas 1971 and all through the house little creatures are stirring in anticipation of our visit to Eastwood Mall. My three children dance from room to room with elfish enthusiasm, each flashing a crisp $10 bill I gave them to spend on gifts for whomever they please. Once in the station wagon, I tell the kids we need to make a stop to deliver the packages piled in the back—toys and clothes designated for a poor family across town.

Explaining the detour on the way to the mall takes some convincing, but the kids agree to help, just to speed up the process. We head downtown to the tune of three treble voices belting out “Jingle Bells.” Locating the address among the look-alike apartments in the housing project isn’t easy, but I finally locate the target of my Sunday school class’ yuletide generosity. Leaving the kids in the station wagon, I bang on the door several times. Although I hear voices inside no one answers. A neighbor recognizes my plight and assures the occupants it’s safe to unlock the door and let me inside.

A few minutes later, three wide-eyed children tear into the neatly wrapped packages and begin playing with the dolls, trucks, pinball machines and red wagon, tossing aside the pants, shirts and sweaters. Soon my children join the fun in the living room, bare except for a small television adorned with a rabbit ears antenna. Reluctantly, I break into their extended play-time visit and remind the kids we still have some shopping to do.

Driving along, I explain why the children’s mother leaves them alone behind locked doors while she works; why there’s no furniture in the house; why they have no Christmas tree and no toys and why there is no food in the kitchen. Unfortunately, those little children are forced to live in poverty. After a long silence, my 10-year-old suggests we just skip the mall and go on home. To my surprise the two younger ones agree, but only if we stop at McDonald’s on the way. I gave you all my money, so you will need to buy hamburgers out of your 10 dollars, I say.

Then comes the shocker. Upon learning the children behind locked doors had no cookies, no crackers, not even a leftover Pop Tart to eat, my children gave away their Christmas $10 bills. On the way home, the “Jingle Bells” are not ringing in my ears, but we’re not traveling in silence. My children chatter about the fun they had playing Santa for their new destitute friends. As we pull into our driveway, my 10-year-old leans over the driver’s seat and whispers, “Daddy, since we have no money and can’t buy food, does that mean we’ll spend Christmas in poverty?”