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 the 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.
“Why in the world would you run off without telling us, Mike?” Tootsie yelled. “You could have been kidnapped or anything.”
All I could do was bring forth a weak “Sorry,” but I wasn’t really sorry for having done what I did. I crawled in the back seat next to Mother, who looked relieved and hugged me tightly. All she said was that I should have told them what I was doing, and my wonderful mother never ever mentioned the incident again.
Another memorable trip occurred closer to home when I was in high school. It was spring vacation of my junior year, and Ed Givhan and I were feeling the call of the open road. The weather at home was spring-like, and we thought it was the perfect time for an adventure. Ed’s car, Papooshka, had just had some work done on it so it was in top-notch shape, and after thinking it over we decided to go to Gatlinburg, a town in the Great Smoky Mountains that was a favorite vacation spot for Montevallo people. Since Papooshka could comfortably carry four, we decided that we would ask two others. Our first choice was Harry Klotzman, who lived across the street from Ed, and on a whim we decided that we would also ask a younger member of the Highland Avenue group, James Elbert Mahaffey, who was called Teeny. Teeny was four years younger than Ed and me, but he was very mature for his age. I guess we thought that this excursion would be a learning experience for him.
Milton “Weed” Jeter, a Frog Holler rebel, standing on the running board of Ed Givhan’s 1939 Dodge lovingly called Papooshka. The Baptist Church and Plaza Grill are in the background. The magnolia tree to the right of the church was later cut down, for a church addition, over the long and loud objections of many town citizens.
Harry immediately agreed to go, but Teeny was a bit more reluctant. His mother and father were at work that Friday morning, and he would be unable to get their permission. His older sister, Mary Charles, said he could go, and Teeny apparently decided that would suffice. Ed, Harry, and I had amassed maybe thirty or forty dollars, and Mary Charles advanced Teeny ten or fifteen dollars. With gas being only eighteen to twenty cents a gallon at the time, we had enough money to go about anywhere. Ed and I got out some maps and plotted our route. We filled up Papooshka’s gas tank at Buddy Allen’s Shell Station, picked up some blankets, and gathered up bread, peanut butter, mayonnaise, bologna, chips, Vienna sausage, beans—anything we could find in our parents’ kitchens. We each brought along one change of light clothes, but nothing warm because the March temperatures were perfect. We were ready to hit the road for the mountains.
Of course Ed was our number one driver. Harry rode shotgun, and Teeny and I started out in the huge back seat. We drove all day on two-lane roads, beginning to get into the mountains around Gatlinburg late in the afternoon. The higher Papooshka climbed, the lower the temperatures dropped. A few miles outside of Gatlinburg, a heavy snow suddenly began to fall. By this time we were several thousand feet above sea level, and the temperature was in the teens. Papooshka’s heater was hard at work, but she could not produce enough BTUs to match the outside temperature. Snow began sticking to the blacktop pavement, making it slick and barely visible.
Our original plan was to camp Friday and Saturday night at a campground in Gatlinburg that we had seen on the map, but we really had no idea where the campgrounds were. Ed, you could see, was getting tense, his hands holding the steering wheel tightly. “Holy shit,” he said. “I can’t see a blasted thing. What do y’all think we should do?”
For some reason, everybody seemed to be looking at me for an answer. “Well, I don’t know about you fellows, but I think we better get our asses off this road. I mean we could get killed in these conditions.”
“But where will we stay?” Teeny asked.
I thought a minute and suddenly had an idea that was powerful in its inevitability. “We’ll stay in the car,” I answered. “We’ll find a place to park, and then we’ll wrap up in our blankets and let the heater run. We can spend the night in Papooshka. Tomorrow may be better.”
The guys agreed there was nothing else to do, and Ed found what looked like an abandoned parking lot and drove to the far side of it. We grabbed our blankets.
“I’m hungry,” Teeny said.
“Let me get something out of the trunk,” Ed said, opening his door and going out into the whirling snow. He returned with a large sack of food, and we all set to making peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches.
“What a hell of a time to have a damn picnic,” Harry said.
We all laughed grimly.
Now we were ready to get some rest so we all wrapped up in our blankets. Harry and Ed kept their places in the front, I stretched out on the back seat, and Teeny—who was appropriately nicknamed—lay in the floor space between the front and back seats. But nobody could think of sleeping, as the car seemed to be getting more frigid by the minute. Papooshka’s heater was putting out all it could, but it just wasn’t up to the job. We tried to keep our spirits up by telling jokes, but by midnight no one had slept a wink.
“All right boys,” Ed said decisively, “this is just not going to cut it. I’d rather slide off the side of the mountain than to freeze to death in a parked car. There is nothing for us to do but turn around and head south to a lower altitude.”
We had already thought of returning to Montevallo by way of Stone Mountain, Georgia to see the great stone carvings of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis, so we all agreed that we should head in that direction and hope we could escape the snow with our lives.
Ed took the wheel and down the mountain we started, curve after curve after curve, the snow still falling, the six-volt battery powering the headlights wavering. But miraculously Papooshka came through for us. We never saw Gatlinburg, despite its being the purpose of our trip, but we were quite relieved to make our escape. We knew, however, that we were definitely not out of the woods. The snow was still coming down hard, and we were low on fuel. Papooshka was getting thirsty. We had no idea where we could purchase gas at this time of night, but like magic we found an all-night filling station and we were able to breathe new life into our endearing lady.
Harry and I offered to spell Ed at the wheel, but he insisted on driving, so the rest of us went soundly asleep. Luckily, Ed managed to stay awake, and we arrived at the Stone Mountain entrance early in the morning. There was no sign of life—no guards or ticket sellers—so we just drove past the entrance booth and parked in the lot next to it. We decided to walk down into the woods and make ourselves a fire. Our teeth were chattering, and Teeny was shaking so bad he looked like he had the Saint Vitus dance. Luckily, we were all Boy Scouts and knew the proper technique for making a fire. As we huddled around the open fire, we opened two cans of Vienna sausages, which we ate with light bread. “This is the best Vienna sausage I ever ate,” Teeny said, and none of us disagreed.
Probably no one understood my thirst to roam better than my dad, pictured here with my friend Harry Klotzman, who accompanied me on some of these trips.
Afterwards, we stumbled back to the car and fell asleep. When we woke up around noon, things had warmed up a bit, much to our satisfaction, and we walked over to the viewing area and marveled at the great stone images of the Confederate heroes. After five minutes, we were ready to hit the road.
“Where next,” Teeny said, perhaps a little dispirited.
I must say I was thinking of my comfortable bed on Shelby Street, and I think the others were having similar thoughts. “You know,” I said, “Teeny’s mother is probably worried about him, so I move that we head back to Montevallo.”
“I’ll second that,” said Teeny.
The others agreed, and Ed cranked Papooshka and we headed for Highway 78, which would take us south toward home. There was mainly silence as we drove along, and we arrived late on Saturday evening. Ed dropped me off, and I walked to the kitchen and raided the refrigerator. Mother and Dad seemed glad to see me.
“And how was the trip?” Mother asked, rubbing my back.
“Just wonderful,” I said. “Just wonderful.”
The trip to Gatlinburg might not have run as smoothly as many of my travels, but it took its place alongside all my other adventures as something I found essential in my life. I was always pleased to return to Shelby Street, but early on I knew that I possessed a wanderlust that would take me far and wide.