In March of last year, Av and I visited Burnt Corn, Alabama when we were on a trip to Monroeville. One of the wonderful things about Burnt Corn (besides the name) is the general store here, which has been in business since 1908 – and was the post office here until 1997, when the USPS closed it. Postal service in Burnt Corn has been going on since 1817, two years before Alabama became a state. All the pictures below are from our trip in March 2006.
This is the store – someone left me a message on my Flickr pic page that the store is closing, so Av and I decided to visit it one last time on our way to the beach:
We talked to the owner, who brought up the time that Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote came in the store together, and we talked about how they grew up together for a time in Monroeville, and all sorts of other things about the two of them. We also talked for a long time with a very nice man who we made friends with, and who gave us instructions to his house nearby so we could visit him the next time we were there.
The store is closing January 15th, so if you’d like to visit a 99-year-old store…
This is the Brantley Store in Burnt Corn – isn’t the Coca-Cola sign *great*!?
This is the old hardware store:
This is the Burnt Corn Methodist Church:
One of the other stops we made on our trip back in March was to see the Old Scotland Church in Old Scotland, Alabama. It’s down a long dirt road – I love this picture because it shows how pretty the soil is here, with the church in the distance:
The church was built in 1837, and the area was settled by Scottish/Irish families who thought the land reminded them of ‘the old country’.