Month: January 2010

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.

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.

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!

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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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.

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:

(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.

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.”