Month: September 2009

One of the things we’ve been trying to do is to visit all the different wineries in Alabama while we’re out. A couple of weekends ago we were close to Talladega so we stopped in at Bryant Vineyards:

I can’t find a working website for them, but they are at 1454 Griffitt Bend Rd, Talladega, 256/268.2638.

I think they also let people come and pick their own muscadines because they had a scale outside and while the boys and I were outside, a small group came up with their own sacks full to weigh.

They make different varieties, and for some of the varieties they bring in grapes from other parts of the country. Since we’re really only interested in wines made with Alabama fruit, Av got these two:

Muscadine, and blueberry. Sounds good!

Across from the Refuge Baptist Church in Lincoln, Alabama is Halls Cemetery. Inside is this monument for Pleasant R. Crump, who lived to the age of 104…

…and was the “last living Confederate soldier in Alabama. Last living soldier that witnessed the surrender at Appomattox, Va.”:

They were investigating how the man who built the home in 1851, Robert D. Smith, went from “traveling on a ship full of captive individuals destined for servitude to owning a luxurious home”. The transcript is here, but here are the interesting excerpts:

Robert Smith was 16 years old when he got off that slave ship. What was life like for a free man of color here in New Orleans then? That’s a question I have for city historian professor Rafael Cassameer, whose family has lived here for more than 200 years. Why would a free person of color have moved from Baltimore to New Orleans back in the 1820S?

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Rafael: No segregation by race, no segregation by class…

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(he set up a grocery business)

Judith: We have the year, 1837. We have the other person involved in the deal. And we have page numbers, so that we can now go to the original document. This is an act of sale from Robert D. Smith, free man of color, to Edward Barnett. He is selling a house, Orange and Camp Street in the American sector, Lower Garden District is what they call it now.

Tukufu: Okay.

Judith: He’s selling it for $4,000. That’s a lot of money.

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Tukufu: And like a true entrepreneur, Robert Smith knew how to make a profit.
Judith: He bought it for $650, so he’s buying bare property.

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Judith: Yeah. Well, let’s see what else we’ve got here. He’s selling a house. He is selling a mortgage. He’s making another mortgage. He’s selling two slaves to two different people.

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Judith: This is a power of attorney to a man in Cincinnati, Ohio, for the purpose of “manumitting, emancipating, and granting freedom to his female slave named Ann McCauley together with her four children, for the express purpose of freeing them.”

Tukufu: Wow! So Robert Smith emancipated Ann McCauley. But why? And what happened to her? It looks like she couldn’t stay in Louisiana. In 1830, Louisiana passed a law that made it impossible for a freed slave to remain in the state. Louisiana slave owners were afraid that freed slaves like Ann would be the wrong example for those still in captivity. So after she was freed, she would have been forced to leave New Orleans. All of this is happening in the space of six weeks. Which is suggestive that he’s not staying in town. He’s selling everything off. He’s leaving town. Why would Smith sell off all his property and leave the city that had brought him success? Natchez is right across the state border, up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. I’m going to check the public records to see when he’s first mentioned.

“You are hereby authorized to celebrate the rights of matrimony between Robert D. Smith,” — our guy — “and Ann McCauley” this is the woman that he purchased in New Orleans. He’s marrying her, here in Natchez, Mississippi. In the 1840S, half of Mississippi’s Free Blacks lived in Natchez. This would have been a place where Smith could marry and live with his wife free. So Robert Smith did travel a slave ship, but not as a slave. He was a free person of color. In New Orleans, he was a successful businessman, but was forced to leave to have freedom for the woman he would marry. And he settled in Natchez, where he prospered in a taxi business, built a house and called it home. My journey ends here, back in the Coys’ house in Natchez.

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Tukufu: And so they ultimately ended up here in Natchez, Mississippi, in this beautiful home.

Coys: This is a love story.

Tukufu: It is a love story. It’s about love and it’s about freedom. In part, he had to escape from Louisiana to find freedom to marry his wife in Natchez, Mississippi. Certainly helps us to understand Robert Smith and his family and why he came to Natchez.

This past weekend was Rosh Hashanah – I put up the banner from last year, some wooden numbers that were spraypainted silver, and a couple of pomegranates on little stands. I also piped 5770 for the new year on a little birthday cake (R/H is the Jewish New Year. It has a lot of religious observance behind it, but since the boys are so little we’re keeping the idea simple that the world is having a birthday).

One traditional food for the holiday is honey cake, and that’s because honey symbolizes something sweet – a sweet new year. This recipe (like all my recipes) is my own, but I want to give credit where credit is due. My recipe is based loosely on a recipe in “What’s Cooking With The Millstein’s” (excuse the misplaced apostrophe, I know.) and it was published in 1960 with recipes from the Millstein family and other Jewish families – and non-Jewish families – in Natchez, Mississippi. Anyway, I based my recipe very loosely on the one in this cookbook that’s on page 23, called “Tante’s Honey Cake” (“Tante” is Yiddish for “Aunt”).

Okay! Where do we start…

Start with a bottle of whiskey because you’re going to need a 1/2 cup of it for the cake.

I like to make these little tomatoes for a summertime appetizer or sometimes lunch with little salads.

On a foil-lined tray, spoon the cheese/mayonnaise mixture onto each tomato slice:

Broil for 3-4 minutes (after the first couple of minutes, watch very closely for it to just brown and begin bubbling around the edges). Plate and top with basil:

These are wonderful!

These structures are all in Mason’s Bend, Alabama.

Some of these houses I don’t know the names of or stories behind, but…

I don’t mean this to sound terrible, but it almost seemed disrespectful for these weeds to be invading something that so many people had invested so much time and love and labor into.

Before he died, Mr. Harris, who owned the Butterfly House, took care of the garden here.

This is the “Butterfly House” and almost half of this house consists of the front porch because the Harris family, who at first were reluctant to accept the new home, basically lived on their front porch (I just have to say here that a lot of this information comes from the very good books Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency and Proceed and Be Bold: Rural Studio After Samuel Mockbee). The roof’s main purpose is for channeling breezes, and some of the heart pine came from a 105-year-old church that was being torn down.

This is Lucy’s House – also known as the carpet house. It was built in 2002 and contains a family room that doubles as a tornado shelter. The walls are made out of 72,000 Flor carpet tiles.

This is the “Hay Bale House” which is also known as the Bryant house. It was finished in 1994 and was the first building completed by the Rural Studio. Before that, the Bryants were living in a shack without heat or plumbing and this house was built next door. The 80-pound hay bales were wrapped in polyurethane, placed in stacks, secured, and coated with stucco. After the house was finished, a student designed and built the smokehouse (out in front) from concrete rubble and discarded road signs.

…from this angle you can see the roadsigns in the ceiling and the bottles embedded in the walls to allow more sunlight in:

Between Sawyerville and Mason’s Bend (or is it Mason Bend? it’s not even on Google’s map), we went down this farm road…

…and over on the right…

Is a house built on top of a silo!