We lost one. I’ve been documenting slugburgers / doughburgers / breadburgers / this genre of Depression-era hamburger for years, and the 1926 Willie Burgers in Hartselle, Alabama (originally Johnny’s Burgers) closed this summer. The owner of the building, not the owner of the business, was selling the building.
“I walked in here Friday and all my customers were crying,” she said. “I thought, dang, it’s like I went to my own funeral. And it still is.”
A simple, famliar setup, with a long bar and stools facing the workspace
with more spacious accomodations
keeping it simple
The idea behind these burgers is to combine hamburger meat with filler, like flour, crackermeal, or breadcrumbs. It got started in the Depression as a way to make the meat go further. Here at Willie Burgers, it’s a patty, mustard, ketchup, and onions. They can be customized somewhat but overall, the taste of the patty itself is a love- or hate- thing.
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Richard Dial’s The Comfort and Service My Daddy Brings to our Household at the High, from a 2022 visit
The American Perspectives exhibit at the Portland Museum ended May 7 — and especially love Richard Dial’s (Richard is Thornton Dial’s son) ‘The Comfort of Moses and the Ten Commandments’ — but the virtual walk-through is still available here.
(we were) charmed by the surreal splendor of a place that feels like a high-concept VR experience celebrating the zenith of Enlightenment humanism, all those trees, steeples, museums, pocket gardens, Girl Scouts, SCAD students painting en plein air, an outdoor wedding every few blocks. Too perfect to be real, this beneficent fairy kingdom, all shadow and sunbeam, blossom, and gurgle.
and
Men who would have filleted one another with pruning shears an hour earlier now stood at the borders of their encampments to discuss the rising cost of orthodonture. The lumberjack two spots over now wore a green feather boa.
The original wax version of Degas’ “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” has been attacked at the National Gallery; these activists are going to find a way to ruin museum-going as we know it
The Storytellers: Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, William Faulkner at Pinnacle, Jackson MS, 2015
(regarding the article author’s professor describing the bedrooms upstairs at Rowan Oak): “It was a house divided between two drinkers who despised each other. He drank whiskey, she drank wine. And let me tell you, boys and girls …” Here, Allan leaned forward and paused to look each one of us in the eye. “You can still taste the poison in the air.”
Gentle reminder that among Faulkner’s faults, likely one that in my book gave Estelle good reason to separate herself from him: his disdain for air conditioning, which she had installed in her bedroom the day after his funeral.
Unidentified participant: Sir, some months ago you expressed a fear in the loss of frontiers in American writing. Do you see any new frontiers opening up?
William Faulkner: Well, not exactly a frontier. I think now that we are faced with more of a—of a threat. It could hardly be a frontier to be conquered. It’s—it’s a force to be resisted, the force that is the pressure to make everybody belong to a mass or a group, which, in my opinion, would be the death of the writing and the painting and the music and everything else, that man has got to resist that. It’s difficult to resist because, to a certain extent, he has got to compromise now, simply in order to get along. It’s the—you’ve got to—to be on the alert constantly to know just exactly where to draw the line, which is—is too bad for the artist who should have all his time free to—to fight simpler dragons than that.
stickers on a post outside Franklin Bar-B-Q in Austin, 2021
Aaron Franklin has opened Uptown Sports Club in Austin after having to ‘reposess’ a smoker he’d lent from Franklin Barbecue to — as Texas Monthly puts it — “a museum in New Orleans. Aaron Franklin became unhappy after learning that a nearby establishment was using the smoker for its restaurant dishes” and I think we all know what museum that was, and the restaurant he’s talking about too (owned by someone with a four-letter last name).
Anyway, he’s getting Leidenheimer bread brought in, and Zapp’s, and making a gumbo that takes three days to be ready. Poboys that he’s calling sandwiches on the menu, red beans & rice, crab Louie, oysters obv, and bread pudding. It’s all here.
BTW if you’re ever wondering why we see Gambino’s bread so often in Bham, it’s because — for one reason — anybody can grab it from the chiller at Restaurant Depot on Lakeshore.
FonFon hamburger, 2020
Y’all know FonFon’s hamburger, but how about Bottega’s, served after 8p only, and only Tues-Thurs: with agrodolce onions, gorgonzola, pancetta, arugula, aïoli and served with chips.
from the NYT: Now the Casby portrait is going into another book, to be published for the 100th anniversary of Avedon’s birth. The Casby image is one of 150 Avedon photographs accompanied by brief essays.
It is also in “Avedon 100,” an exhibition at Gagosian, the gallery on West 21st Street, that also features family portraits that Avedon took at the same time — Casby flanked by several generations of descendants. More than a dozen of descendants of those descendants gathered for the opening of “Avedon 100” last week.
Referred to as “English cottages,” architect Carl August Petersen designed the Tudor revival-style brick buildings for Pure Oil in the 1920s, with charming structural details like steep roofs, wide chimneys, and arched doorways. A cottage in Fairport, New York, is now a National Historic Landmark. One in Lexington, Virginia, houses a donut and burger shop called Pure Eats, a nod to its original life as Pure Oil. There are two in Lynchburg—one houses a Japanese restaurant and one a diner called the Texas Inn. In Cape Charles, Virginia, the indie Peach Street Books features a blue tiled roof in the cottage’s original signature shade, with matching shutters and a bay window.
The Clementine Hunter works in the latest Slotin auction were authenticated by Tom Whitehead — more about him and his relationship with Clementine here:
My hometown just had its Strawberry Festival (Cullman is huge on them) and if you’ve ever wondered what planting those can look like, here’s Boyd Farm in Fairview:
Of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, the former home of the late L.V. Hull in Kosciusko, Mississippi. It’s been unoccupied since 2008 and when I went by shortly after, was shocked that the site had all the art removed (it’s all in safekeeping, and now under conservation with Kohler).
Advocates are preparing a National Register nomination and, in conjunction with the Arts Foundation of Kosciusko, planning to create the L.V. Hull Legacy Center comprised of both Hull’s home and four repurposed structures at a large corner lot on her street.
Also in the South:
Pierce Chapel African Cemetery, Midland, Georgia
West Bank of St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana
Holy Aid and Comfort Spiritual Church, New Orleans, Louisiana (aka Perseverance Benevolent and Mutual Aid Society Hall)
Charleston’s Historic Neighborhoods, South Carolina
