Chattanooga Fence

Love this house we found in Chattanooga with the old bicycles used as fencing!

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We Flipped!

Leslie and I heard that Richard Blais, one of our favorite finalists on a previous season of Top Chef (Richard was best known for doing molecular gastronomy-type (think Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 techniques/food) like sous-vide and utilizing liquid nitrogen etc etc etc) was opening a restaurant in B'ham, so we had to give it a try. It was wonderful.

Wonderful-wonderful.

It's called Flip Burger Boutique. The idea is a...well...it looks like someone in 1990 asked Karim Rashid what the hamburger restaurant of the future would look like and he came up with this. In 2010, it looks perfectly current and a little trying-too-hard all at the same time. But in a really terrific, fun way. That's the interior.

What they serve is the important part. And it is crazy good.

Well! This is what we tried:

The Southern burger (chicken fried beef patty, house-made pimento cheese, b&b pickles, sausage gravy):

and the Korean BBQ burger (American Waygu beef patty, braised short rib, kimchee ketchup, pickled veg, crispy tempura onion, Napa cabbage):

Seriously beyond delicious. Both of them.

We had tempura sweet potato fries with chocolate salt for a side (could only eat a couple of these but they were *so* good):

...and it's hard to leave without a liquid nitrogen milkshake - in the back of the bar here, they are fixing a couple:

Milkshakes come in Smores, Krispy Kreme, Pumpkin Pie, Pistachio and White Truffle, and Foie Gras flavors. We got FG (on the left) and pistachio (on the right):

...but that was dessert and by that time we couldn't eat more than a tiny bit. Good, though. Not *wow* good, but good. I think that something about the N2 made the pistachios weirdly soft which was...well, again, weird, and after our server mentioned the peanut butter flavor in the foie gras shake, guess what? It did taste like peanut butter, not foie.

Well, we are definitely going again for the hamburgers - these are some I'd love to try a bite of:

A5 (grade A5 imported Japanese Kobe, seared foie gras, caramelized onions, truffle oil, b&b pickles, red wine syrup) but that was $39 so...

Steak Tartare (hanger steak, garlic, chili, capers, worcestershire, pickled onion, frisee salad, smoked mayo, sous-vide egg yolk)

Wild Turkey (Benton's bacon, smoked gouda, Wild Turkey glaze, smoked mayo, cranberry scallion relish, micro greens)

Oh! And instead of tea to drink, they had fun Cokes - I had a Grape Nehi and Leslie had a Cheerwine! Yum. Oh, and the silver was Knork. Fun.

Can't wait to go again!

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Wow! Got a bunch of emails asking where Flip is (I should have posted it in the first place!). It's at the Summit in B'ham, in the new section, just up from Cheesecake Factory.

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Laissez Le Bon Crochet Rouler, And More Dream Rocket

Just look at this invitation! It's for Clare Crespo (warning: her website is a little loud but here it is), who did those great fun food books like Hey There, Cupcake! and The Secret Life of Food. Beginning this weekend, she has a show at the Heath Ceramics Studio & Store in Los Angeles called...

Laissez Le Bon Crochet Rouler

How cute is that!? She has all kinds of knit/crocheted pieces celebrating New Orleans and Mardi Gras, like oysters on the half shell, catfish po boys, gumbo, beignets, soft shell crabs, and king cake. The only way it could get better would be if she were at the Contemporary Arts Center on Camp Street, not waaay out in California. But how much fun...

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Remember the Dream Rocket project in Huntsville, to cover the Saturn V rocket at the US Space and Rocket Center in fiber art submitted from individuals and groups from all over the world?

(Thanks to Jennifer Marsh for use of this graphic above)

Jennifer Marsh, a visiting art professor at UAH and developer of the project, announced that besides the Dream Theme panels, 2 feet x 2 feet ($100) and Visionary panels, 4 x 4 ($400), she has created a *new* category so that becoming part of it is more accessible to everyone.

You can now make 1 foot x 1 foot panels for $25 each, and the deadline for sending it/them in is now March 15, 2010.

The fee goes toward costs associated with things like sewing all the panels together and applying the whole thing to the rocket.

In her speech last year, announcing the project, Jennifer said:

...And when I learned the history of the Saturn V – how the odds makers put 1000-1 odds against putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade – how it was considered an “impossible dream’….

Well… that’s where the idea of Big Dreams and the Saturn V came together.
In reading about the history of the space program, I am struck by how many of the key players were inspired when they were 12 or 13. They had this dream of space flight and they made it happen.

If we can get people to dream big dreams again – who knows what we may accomplish in the future?

The Spirit of the Saturn V teaches us that when people collaborate on an important goal and put aside their differences, nothing is impossible! Anything can be accomplished.

So whether your dream is:
* Going to Mars,
* Curing cancer,
* Being the first in your family to go to college, or
* Finally getting clean water for your village
Whatever your dream is – if you work hard at it and collaborate with others – truly, anything is possible.

The completed project will be on display later this year.

All the details are at the Dream Rocket website.

Cake From A Box. A Wooden Box.

Lucinda lives in West Virginia now, but she grew up in Sweet Home Alabama - and don't you know...we have so many things in common. Why, I checked just now and she even put up a post about sweet Eugene Walter last week! And how can you not like a person who has a blog called Cookbook of the Day. Seriously. A week or two ago she did a whole series of cookbooks from Alabama chefs. Lately? She's been on Ina Garten cookbooks.

And this I totally agree with her about. You know you need that wallpaper.

Well, Lucinda is a multi-tasker and she even makes and sells her own cake boxes. My cake pans are the boring non-stock ones from Williams-Sonoma (or maybe Target?). They're all the same. But Lucinda took a childhood memory:

When I was a little girl in Alabama …

my great aunts baked a cake nearly every day. They always saved some batter to make a little cake for me. Once Aunt Ruth found an old wood cheese box with three compartments. She lined it with an old grocery sack and poured in the extra batter for my little cake, three cakes this time. They were almost too beautiful to eat!

Years later I found a piece of that old box and looked for a replacement. I found the same Cloverleaf cheese box. When I baked in it, my cake was as beautiful as the ones I remembered. I started baking in any wood box I could find.

Friends loved the boxes and asked me where to get their own. So Lucinda’s Wood Cake Boxes was born. I hope you love baking in them as much as I do.

and here it is!:

So of course I had to try it. Thing is, you can't bake in the box above 300* so any recipe will have to have its time increased (which is not a bad thing - when you cook at 300*, if you have anything like chocolate chips in the batter, they are a lot better about retaining their shape rather than just completely melting into nothingness. It's a preference thing, but fun to play with.).

The box is a really nice size so I took the Devil's Food Cake recipe that was in the latest issue of Bon Appetit (although! I didn't like the sour cream fudge icing that they suggested in the magazine and made my own) and was able to bake the cake as one layer.

It came out so good. As in, you couldn't decide if it was a brownie with icing or a little-little sheet cake. It was perfect, and somehow it even tasted better. Was it just me, or was it the box? Not sure. But it disappeared so fast that I don't even have an 'after' shot to put here.

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We're in the middle of Mardi Gras season, so later this week I'll be making a king cake (and will post here). If you're interested in making the super-traditional/historical king cake, this is the link to my Galette des Rois recipe.

Greens

The Southern Foodway Alliance publishes a newsletter called 'Gravy' - and the latest issue has an essay from the late, great (loved him forever) Eugene Walter of Mobile. The people of Mobile even loved Eugene so much that they had him buried at the Church Street cemetery, which has been closed for years & years & years except to a *very* select few and put him right in front by Joe Cain. Wish I could find my pic of his monument there right now, but in part, it read:

Born in the land of lizard fever,

in sweet lunacy's county seat,

this Untidy Pilgrim of the world

lived by the credo

When All Else Fails, Throw A Party

This has been said about him before, but he really was a Renaissance Man.

Thankfully before he passed away I had collected most all of his books, cookbooks, and booklets, some of which are *very* hard to find, as well as some of his drawings, which are in a fanciful style done with inkpen. Anyway, the piece by Eugene in the Gravy newsletter is terrific, and it goes to a subject that a friend and I were talking about just the other day. She's preparing a travel itenerary for a tourism agency and we were discussing the differences between when people say "soul food" and "home cooking". I think sometimes people get hung up trying to differentiate styles of cooking according to shorthanded ways of looking at others.

When I read this essay by Eugene, I think he agreed.

Greens! A humble and constant presence. Not many collect 'fencecorner greens' any more, save in truly rural Alabama: dandelions,wild sorrel, pokeweed, all that. But in the everlasting returning cycles of life, dandelion greens have begun to turn up in the snobbiest salads at yuppie, with it, and trendsetting tables. But turnip, collard, and mustard, along with cabbage, go on forever.

Nothing irritates me more than the phrase 'soul food,' a catchall label for simpler and more traditional Southern dishes. ...Later, some smartaleck or other, with imprecise reasoning, decided to split Southern food into rural, po' folks (mostly black) cooking and fancy, citified (mostly white) cooking. All wrong! There are as many social classes and degrees of culinary sophistication among blacks as among whites in the Deep South...

(at a hunting party in Mt. Vernon, Alabama) ...served up a grand repast on a table covered with comic sections from the Sunday paper. The food had been cooked in the fireplace, whether in pots hanging from hooks or sitting in the embers. The steaming mixed greens (mostly turnip and mustard) were flavored with cubes of lean bacon, onions, and one or two not so hot red peppers. They were delicate, not at all greasy, and infinitely satisfying. They had simmered on the hearth all morning and were tender but had not disintegrated.

Years later I was invited by the Conrad Aikens to a private club in Savannah where a silver tureen of turnip greens was served in triumph. This time, with bits of ham and ham fat. The dish, most delicate, could have been brought forth at a Paris table with Tabasco on the side...

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...and then Eugene goes on to give recipes for Wednesday and Sunday greens, both including bacon or fatback.

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The Denver Public Schools got a lot of attention a couple of weeks ago over serving collards and fried chicken for the holiday. Ohmygracious! We had those food choices multiple times a *week* at my school! That's just Southern food (if we were celebrating someone from Maine, we'd have lobster rolls and whoopie pies, right!?) for Southern people. Goodness, they were upset about it up there. If anyone ever celebrates Ginger Day, y'all please serve a selection: cheese straws, pimento cheese sandwiches (crusts removed, naturally), fried catfish, charbroiled oysters, watermelon rind pickles, aspic, fried okra, collards with plenty of pot likker for cornbread dipping, rutabagas, fried green tomatoes, and banana pudding served from Mason jars for dessert. And do invite me. We'll all be too busy licking our fingers to get upset about anything. Remember what Eugene said:

When all else fails, throw a party

Saw It Loved It

Tonight in Baton Rouge, "God's Architects" is being screened at the Manship Theatre, Shaw Center for the Arts at 7:30p. It's also been screened at the New Orleans, Indie Memphis, Sidewalk, Lone Star, and Southern Circuit film festivals, and the director received the Louisiana filmmaker of the year award.

They describe it this way:

God's Architects is a documentary that tells the stories of five divinely inspired artist-architects and their enigmatic creations.The film details how and why these oft-marginalized creators, with neither funding nor blueprints, construct their self-made environments.

GOD'S ARCHITECTS trailer from Zack Godshall on Vimeo.

Leonard Knight works on Salvation Mountain in the desert of southern California. In 1984, Leonard Knight's homemade hot air balloon crashed in the desert. When he couldn't repair it, he resolved to fulfill his promise to God to spread the message 'God is Love' by painting the side of a nearby mountain. Since then, Leonard has painted and constructed a mountainside 'environment' depicting his vision of God's love, which includes a three-story igloo-like structure made of adobe covered hay bales and peaceful visions of birds, waterfalls, and wheels within wheels.

In the Ozark Mountains, Shelby Ravellette builds the Lacey Michele Castle to honor the memory of his deceased daughter. Six months after the death of his daughter, Lacey Michele, the girl visited him in a dream to remind him of his promise to build a castle for her. Shelby, who is a master stonemason, a Freemason, and Templar Knight, has been at it for nearly twenty years, and he says he's got twenty more years of work before he's finished.

Floyd Banks Jr, (aka Junior) builds his castle in the hill country of east Tennessee. Junior has been building the castle out of found, donated, and homemade brick since 1992 when his brother passed away. For ten years Junior worked on the perimeter wall of a castle without knowing why. Then in 2002, it was revealed to him that his work was of a divine importance.

Kenny Hill built a sculpture garden and lighthouse overlooking a bayou in south Louisiana. Hill spent nearly a decade building what some know as "the story of salvation", an environment of more than a hundred concrete angels, statues, and structures, including a forty-five foot lighthouse. In the late nineties, Hill left the property and disappeared, not to be heard from again. While the property is owned and maintained by Nicholls State University, Hill's former neighbor and confident Julius Neil serves as the local expert regarding the sculptures and their enigmatic symbols.

Reverend H.D. Dennis built additions to Margaret's Grocery along historic Highway 61 in rural Mississippi. Reverend Dennis, a 92-year old veteran of WWII who was raised by his grandmother, herself a former slave, promised his wife Margaret that he would make a castle out of her grocery store if she married him. She agreed, and so Dennis spent the consequent 23 years creating towers, archways, and signs to distract people off the highway so he could preach the gospel to whomever stopped. The highlight of his creations is a small school bust that the's converted to a chapel.

Can't recommend this movie highly enough - it's really, really wonderful. If you can't make it to a screening, the dvd for "God's Architects" has been released and is available here at their website.

River Rocks

Another project I freelance worked with Lowe's Creative Ideas team on is in the latest issue of the magazine! It's called 'stone bath mat' and the directions are right here.

I thought they did a great job with it when it came to executing it for the magazine feature. When I developed it, I did it with a rubberized mat as the base rather than the shelf liner they used (but there may be a good reason why they changed it). This shoot shows it as a bath mat, but it's also great as a welcome mat by the front door.

Oh and it's today's featured project at the Lowe's magazine website! Yay!

Signs At The Curb Market

I've shown this pic before of a sign at one of my favorite vendors at the Montgomery Curb Market:

When I visited again last month, she had changed things up!

Slugburgers In Corinth

Last month when we were in Corinth, we had lunch at Borroum's Drug Store - it's thought of as *the* place for a slugburger there. Ah, really I love it because it first opened in 1865 and is Mississippi's oldest drugstore and soda fountain!

The boys - all of them - really enjoyed it too!

Their menu explained slugburgers:

"Slugburgers are a mixture of ground pork, soy flour, and spices. The mixture is flattened into a patty and deep fried in vegetable fat. The patty is placed on a hamburger bun with garnish of mustard, pickle, and onion.

Developed during the Depression when money was scarce and so was meat, slugburgers were made with a mixture of beef and pork, potato flour as an extender, and spices, then fried in animal fat. Mrs. Weeks, credited with creating one of the first, found the 'burgers' were a way to make meat go a little farther at the family hamburger stand.

Selling for a nickel, sometimes called a slug, the imitation hamburgers became known as slugburgers."

...and since it's a soda fountain, I got a *real* cherry Coke! I even let Shug have a little sip - he's never had any kind of soft drink (and won't again for ages) but since 95% of everything both babies eat at home is organic/antibiotic-free/pesticide-free/no added growth hormones/etc etc etc (thank you Whole Foods), I figure one sip of cherry Coke now that he's 2-1/2 years old will not undo all the good we've done...

...and that was a good cherry Coke!

The boys split a sandwich and Av and I both had - of course - the house specialty, slugburger:

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The University of Alabama Press will be publishing a new book in the next year or so called 'Savoring Alabama: History and Culture through Nine Food Traditions'. The Mobile paper has a short piece about the author and her current research in Mobile. I can think of ten things that could make great stories off the top of my head:

white barbecue sauce (N. Alabama)

slugburgers/breadburgers (N. Alabama)

gumbo (S. Alabama)

Greek food / John's slaw & sauce (B'ham)

Ribs (start with Archibald's and Dreamland in Tuscaloosa and work from there...)

Peanuts (Wiregrass)

Catfish, plus now fresh water shrimp (Black Belt)

Lane cake, layer cakes (all over)

Grits, especially gristmilled and now organic at McEwen (all over)

Meat & Threes (all over)

It's An Institution

There's an article in the Decatur Daily that C.F. Penn Hamburgers might close at the end of this month. This place is one of the restaurants that still serves breadburgers / slugburgers (hamburger meat plus a filling to make the ingredients go further). An institution.

Here's a bit from the article:

In 1927, C.F. Penn began frying hamburgers, with a secret ingredient, in Morgan County.

Eighty-two years later, C.F. Penn Hamburgers is still frying hamburgers with a secret ingredient at its 121 E. Moulton St. location in Decatur, but it may not make it to year 83.

Co-owner Franklin Penn told his employees he would make a final decision Jan. 31.

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Penn’s is barely changed from its days in the 1920s, when hamburgers sold for 10 cents each or three for 25 cents.

In its early Decatur days an “all-the-way” burger included mustard and onions. That’s still the case for today’s $1.30 burger, but Franklin Penn dwells on the grudging inclusion of optional catsup as a milestone in the restaurant’s history.

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C.F. Penn, who ran the restaurant until his death in 1958, did it on a cash basis. He paid for hamburger and other supplies daily.

He paid wages daily, before the employees left.

“He always said, ‘If I have to go out of business tonight, I don’t owe anybody anything,’ ” Franklin Penn recalled. “I wish I could say that.”

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The nation’s obsession with healthy food, suspects Franklin Penn, has been unfair to his restaurant.

Unlike the early days when C.F. Penn fried the burgers in lard, the restaurant has for years used high-grade vegetable oil. Customers know this, because they watch longtime employees submerge a spatula into four inches of oil, fishing up the elusive patties. Franklin Penn’s theory is the vegetable oil makes them healthier than other hamburgers.

“Nobody would believe it, though,” he lamented. “People still refer to our high-priced cooking oil as grease.”

And while the family will not divulge the secret ingredient that seems to absorb so much grease, Franklin Penn insists it increases the healthy qualities of the burger by decreasing the meat content.

“Adding something to it makes it more healthy, not less healthy. If you analyzed it,” Franklin Penn posits, “it would have less fat content than McDonald’s or Burger King or anyplace else.”

This was one of the comments left at the paper's site. *Love* this:

On 1/17/10 at 08:34 AM, mythbuster from wrote:
i was in there thursday, the place was packed, i saw libs, pubs, independents, locals, yankees, church people, no church people, people that had color, people that were blanks, people that were layed off, people that were "laid up", people with jobs. there was even a couple of those lying lawyers. there was a suv full of people from atlanta, who grew up in decatur and just had to come back for one last burger. the "girls" had not had a break since monday, and they were loving it. if business stays like this they will be here for another fifty years. i for one am glad, i love those things.

Again, Seriously!?

(this pic I took this past summer, at the Davis Farm complex looking across to the stone mound)

Yesterday, the Anniston Star ran two interesting stories about Indian mounds and development. The stories were also reported on the local news last night.

At first, I was thinking: we already know about the mound (remember the whole thing about the stone mound at the top of the hill pictured in the background of this pic above? How the city was using dirt from the hill as fill for the development of a new shopping center?) so what's the news?

It's a *whole different mound* that...just...isn't there anymore. Since this past summer. On land the city of Oxford is developing. Oh, and there's this too:

"UA called, said they found a body, said it was Native American, said it was reburied and the site is being avoided," Hathorn said.

There isn't anyone that didn't know that this land had mounds and artifacts on it. The mound that's been absolutely flattened was at the Davis Farm. The Davis Farm has been well-documented about what's there; the 1850s house was even built on a mound...so...

From this January 20, 2010 article at the Anniston Star:

Alabama's state archeologist confirmed Thursday that crews building Oxford's multi-million-dollar sports complex uncovered human remains at site.

Stacye Hathorn, the state archeologist who works for the Alabama Historical Commission, said officials with the University of Alabama Office of Archeology, contacted her around Jan. 8 with their findings.

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Earlier this week, Jacksonville State Univerity professor of archaeology and anthropology Harry Holstein said the site at the historic Davis Farm property in Oxford contained remnants of an American Indian village and the 3-foot-high base of a once 30-foot-high temple mound. He says the mound may have contained human remains.

Holstein said the 3-foot mound has vanished, but the city claims it is still intact and hasn't been disturbed. A reporter visited the site this week and found no evidence of the mound.

and another January 20, 2010 article at the Anniston Star:

When Holstein visited the site last summer, it was still intact.

But when he returned to the area Monday, he could find no sign of the mound or the village remnants.

The land is now flat, with tire tread marks clearly visible in the dirt.

"It's been flattened like a pancake," Holstein said. "There is just grass over it now."

Holstein believes the temple mound and village are related to a stone mound on a hill behind the Oxford Exchange. Last year workers hired by the city of Oxford attempted to destroy that mound and use the dirt below it as fill for a Sam's Club. Following protests from local residents and activists, the contractor hired by the city's Commercial Development Authority apparently stopped work there, and a private landowner says he is now providing fill dirt from his property.

The city is constructing its new sports complex on land near the former Davis Farm property on the other side of Leon Smith Parkway. The area near the location of the temple mound on the Davis Farm site is slated to become ball parks.

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Before construction began, Holstein and other JSU researchers prepared a report for the city. The report said the Davis Farm property contained some of the most significant archaeological sites in northeast Alabama. It recommended the city leave the sites alone.

City officials agreed to the recommendation and told the Alabama Historical Commission the site would be left alone, Denney said.

Stacye Hathorn, Alabama Historical Commission state archaeologist, confirmed Tuesday the city agreed not to disturb the sites.

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"There was a big noticeable hump … maybe somebody stole it at night," Holstein said, jokingly. "(It) has been here since the 12th century and now it's gone. It was there when the city bought the property."

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Mayor Leon Smith said Tuesday there should be archaeologists at the site, but did not know if they found anything. Smith said he was not familiar with the city's agreement to avoid disturbing the Davis Farm site.

"Fred Denney knows more about that than I do," he said. "If there is anything wrong out there, I don't know anything about it."

Holstein said he never came into contact with any Alabama archaeologists during his examination of the area.

According to the JSU report, which noted 12 separate excavations conducted by researchers, all of the sites on the Davis Farm property yielded hundreds of artifacts, indicating the area was occupied for thousands of years by prehistoric American Indian populations. The artifacts included gaming stones, greenstone tool fragments, and large amounts of ceramics and house wall fragments.

Records indicate much of the temple mound was bulldozed by farmers in the 1950s, Holstein said. He said the apparent loss of the village and mound was significant.

"History is important," he said. "There was a high probability there were human remains under that mound. It would be like tearing down Abe Lincoln's cabin."

To Holstein, the sites could have been restored and turned into an attraction similar to Moundville, near Tuscaloosa.

"I'm not against development," Holstein said. "But you can work with the natural and cultural resources."

I'm sure there will be more at the Anniston Star today.

Friday

Back on Friday!

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Honk 4 Love!

My favorite issue of Mississippi Magazine each year is the annual wedding issue. It's here! Some years are 'better' than others in terms of how people personalize their wedding...this year is a little bit of an 'off' year (maybe the economy? who knows...) but there are still some good ones:

...(the groom's cake) a large white baseball cake sat on top, complete with red icing stitching and accented with the letters MSU in maroon. White chocolate dipped strawberries with red icing stitching were placed at the corners of the cake, which sat on a table accented with deer antlers and a string of lights made from shotgun shells.

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To represent his outdoor hobbies...another cake designed as a pistol in an open carrying case.

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The late-night "Chicken-on-a-Stick" from McPhail's Chevron topped off the evening. (this is the second or third year that people have mentioned serving guests c-o-a-s from McPhail's)

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...their getaway vehicle, a 1987 Chevy Silverado adorned with the proclamations "Honk 4 Love!" and "We in Love, Y'all!"

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The groom's cake depicted a picnic table with crawfish, potatoes, and corn, which was a tribute to his Louisiana roots...

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...the couple's first dance, a mix of Journey's "Faithfully" and "Pop, Lock, and Drop It"

The last two years' announcements were even better. Here are posts from the 2008 and 2009 issues.

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Some Walker County Graveshelters

Wow! I got some of the greatest emails last week after the first post about graveshelters (so I'm thankfully not alone about thinking how interesting these are!).

I want to give credit where credit is due: doing research months ago when I decided to start documenting and mapping the ones I knew of, I came upon this website, run by a couple who are also interested in them, who listed some that were completely new to me. So while I've done my research and found several, these people are also a great resource that I'd encourage you to visit if you're interested in taking a field trip.

Here are some I found in Walker County, Alabama.

At the Corinth Church of Christ:

carport style, dirt surface.

At Little Vine Primitive Baptist Church (they also hold an annual Sacred Harp singing at this church):

carport style, green painted concrete surface.

Sardis Cemetery:

"open house" type with tin roof, dirt/sand surface.

also at Sardis Cemetery:

"open house" type with shingle roof, sand surface.

a couple of stacked stone monuments called 'rock cairn', covered in resurrection fern:

these are called 'comb graves' - monuments in which two slabs are positioned together to make a triangular, gable shape:

...and here it's done with what look like fence sections:

Fairview Church Cemetery - and see the hand-lettered sign there on the left? It makes me wonder if the gentleman who paints all these similar signs all over...well, particularly west-central Alabama - attends church here. I'd love to meet him.

carport-style with chain link fencing and grass carpet. Highly decorated.

...and this is another cemetery with several folk custom sites. This one is 'swept' - that is, they covered it with sand to try to keep grass from growing - and has curbing to outline the plot:

Later this week I'll post more from South Alabama.