Month: March 2011

Last week when we had lunch at Niki’s West (Shug’s favorite food on earth is their rutabagas) we ran into my sweet friend Susanne, who was explaining with her husband about a very, very decorated house not far at all from the restaurant. Well of course, the moment we left we had to find it:

Even the plastic downspout had flowers attached:

Not sure how many studios Charlie Lucas has (he used to have one with a very large outdoor space not far from Sloss) but he has one at the Young & Vann Building in B’ham.  He wasn’t there when I was visiting, but here are some pics:

This large damaged piece was displayed in one of the hallways:

At his home in Pink Lily, AL, Charlie has pieces all around:

We were at the Young & Vann Building in downtown B’ham last week and saw some of the designs of Auburn’s Urban Studio.

Auburn’s College of Architecture, Design, and Construction includes the Rural Studio, which I’ve written about many times before, and this Urban Studio.  Lining the walls of the hallway are its plans for small towns, districts, and neighborhoods:

This was great – plans for design/usage revitalization for so many Alabama small towns:

From their website:

Setzer and Morgan took the Small Town Design Initiative a step further by helping to found YourTownAlabama, an organization that provides leadership training workshops for citizen leaders across the state. To date, YourTownAlabama has held 16 workshops with more than 500 citizen leaders from 100 towns and counties. The organization’s goal is to cultivate leadership that understands the value of planning, knows where and how to find technical assistance and expertise and has the confidence to take action on a local level.

Through these efforts, Urban Studio maintains its ongoing commitment to work with communities to identify those positive assets that can be the basis of a sound master plan for physical and economic vitality – creating distinctive opportunities for building a higher quality of life, broader prospects in the community and a better place to live.

The Your Town Alabama blog right now has posts about our new governor taking measures to cut the state’s tourism budget in half (there’s an op-ed in the M’ry paper about it here), and that $16M from a BP grant will go to boost gulf coast tourism, as the article states that Alabama was hardest hit by last summer’s BP oil catastrophe.

(Last week, our local grocery store was running a promotion on gas cards — $10 off a $50 card, which brings the price per gallon to under $3, a great deal right now — when I went in, the only cards left were BP cards.  The manager was nearby, and I asked if he had any Shell or Chevron/Texaco cards in the back, as I don’t buy BP gas anymore.  He laughed and explained that I’m not the only person that’s asked him about that, and that’s why he thinks the BP cards stay around longest.)

On our way through Moulton, we found this, the old Star Theatre:

There was talk five years ago of the city buying it (at a cost of $12500, down from $80k) but I don’t know if it ever went through.  Either way, it looks as though nothing to little has been done to the facade:

The best part wasn’t even the facade but those great colored bulbs underneath the entrance overhang:

Something I had heard about but not seen yet was at the Lawrence County Courthouse, where of course they have all the monuments you expect to see on a southern courthouse lawn — the Confederate memorial, another for WWI & WWII, Korea, etc…

…but here in Lawrence County, there’s a monument put up by the ‘Friendly Five’ to Union soldiers.

The ‘Friendly Five’ was a local group who approached commissioners about putting this monument up, that one of the leaders had researched Union soldiers from this area.

Here’s part of the article from 2006:

A controversy developed late last year when the Sons of Confederate Veterans received the commission’s approval to erect a monument on the courthouse lawn. The monument contains political language, such as a sentence that praises soldiers who fought against Northern aggression. Hampton’s monument is dedicated to all Union soldiers who fought in the war. Commissioners asked her to limit it to Union soldiers from Lawrence County.

The monument also will say “We exist to help those who cannot help themselves. God Bless America.”

Hampton said The Friendly Five is a community group that helps children in need, such as providing clothing and taking them on cultural trips to places such as civil rights museums.

She said limiting the monument’s dedication to black Union soldiers would have been counterproductive.

“I’m trying to bring unity into Lawrence County because we’re divided,” Hampton said after the meeting. “(Unity) is something that’s very much needed, and for us to grow, we have to get over our black and white issues.”

For whatever reason, the finished monument does not have the wording that the group said it would in this article.  It doesn’t even really seem to allude to a group of people from this area fighting for the Union rather than the CSA.  Wonder what happened.  Anyway.

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This was a strange thing that happened in 2008 at the Cumberland County Courthouse in Tennessee when the lawn was declared a place that people could place items as part of their free speech.  There was everything from a Statue of Liberty replica to a ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’.  That pretty much ended it.

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Here are a handful of some other theater facades I’ve taken pics of that are pretty interesting:

Lipscomb, AL:

Gadsden, AL:

Meridian, MS:

Greenville, AL:

McComb, MS:

Talladega, AL:

Crowley, LA:

Leland, MS:

Sheffield, AL:

Florence, AL:

Columbus, MS:

Aberdeen, MS:

Beaten biscuits have a history here in the South.  When Eugene Walter wrote about them in American Cooking: Southern Style for Time-Life in 1971, he interviewed Mrs. J. Millard Tawes, wife of the former Maryland governor.  He gave her recipe for six dozen biscuits and mentioned that once the dough is made, she puts it on a chopping block and “pounds it with a hammer, flailing away for 20 minutes.”

He also pictured them in the section on Thomas Jefferson, that he “relished such native delicacies as Jerusalem artichokes, grown and pickled at Monticello, and that Southern specialty, beaten biscuits.”

You can buy them online (although not many places offer them for sale, I imagine because they are so arduous to make) — I got these from Broadbent’s in Kentucky because they’re traditional Derby party food.  Many people pair them with ham but beef bacon is quite fine too:

Shug has started to enjoy cooking with me, so we made them this past week from an old recipe that dates back to the 1700s.  I found it in a cookbook that was so old that almost every letter ‘s’ was replaced with an ‘f’:

“Take one quart of flour, lard the size of a hen’s egg, one teafpoonful of salt.  Make into a moderately ftiff dough with fweet milk.  Beat for half an hour…”

How much lard (I used butter) do you think equals a hen’s egg?  I asked some friends on FB and the most popular answer was 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup, which according to this page is right (1/4 c.)!

Rather than beat the dough for a half hour with a hammer, we put it in the Cuisinart and let it do the work for us — about seven minutes later, the dough was smooth and velvety and ‘popped’.  It needed no flour at all when Shug helped me roll it out.  We cut the biscuits out with a jelly glass, then put the customary three rows of three pinpricks (just used a serving fork) on, then into a 400* oven for about 25 minutes:

They were just as good as the ones we got from Broadbent’s and maybe even a little better.  Now, these aren’t gorgeous, fluffy, huge cathead biscuits like I make in a cast iron skillet here at home and make everything smell wonderful, but these are simple, subtle, fair, more cracker-like biscuits.

The boys loved them spread with a little bit of the apple butter we got this past weekend at the Amish community in Mississippi.  

Good news from the Mississippi Arts Commission!

I got a press release that March 20-26 will be declared the “Reverend Herman D. Dennis and Margaret’s Grocery Awareness and Preservation Week” by Governor Barbour.

The Mississippi Arts Commission will also be holding their annual “Day at the Capitol” on Tuesday, March 22 from 1:00p – 3:00p on the first floor rotunda of the New Capitol in downtown Jackson.

The text of the resolution reads:
Senate Concurrent Resolution 625
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION RECOGNIZING MARCH 20-26, 2011, AS THE “REVEREND HERMAN D. ‘PREACHER’ DENNIS AND MARGARET’S GROCERY AWARENESS AND PRESERVATION WEEK” IN VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI.

WHEREAS, Reverend Herman D. “Preacher” Dennis and his late wife, Margaret Rogers Dennis, owned and resided in the establishment on Old Highway 61 North in Vicksburg, Mississippi, known locally and worldwide as “Margaret’s Grocery”; and

WHEREAS, “Miss Margaret” operated Margaret’s Grocery for over 60 years and was a faithful member of Cool Springs Missionary Baptist Church where she taught Sunday School for many years; and

WHEREAS, Preacher was an ordained minister who shared his faith in God, and his belief in equality and respect for all people; and

WHEREAS, Miss Margaret was, and Preacher continues to be, devoted to their community, their country and their faith; and

WHEREAS, Miss Margaret’s Grocery was a neighborhood gathering place where locals shopped and partook in the kinship, friendship and wisdom of Miss Margaret and Preacher Dennis; and

WHEREAS, Preacher promised Miss Margaret that if she would marry him he would build her a castle; and

WHEREAS, true to his promise, Preacher lovingly honored Miss Margaret by transforming the small country grocery into a “Bible Castle to God,” hammering, laying brick, painting and adorning it with bright colors, objects and religious verses; and

WHEREAS, Margaret’s Grocery became a draw for tourists from around the world and became and continues to be the subject of folk art and cultural tourism research, discussion and appreciation; and

WHEREAS, Miss Margaret passed away in 2009 and Preacher retired from the Grocery to reside in a Vicksburg nursing home; and

WHEREAS, citizens of Vicksburg, friends of Miss Margaret and Preacher, and folk art enthusiasts from around the world have expressed interest in maintaining, restoring and preserving Preacher’s folk art as a symbol of Mississippi’s creative spirit and cultural heritage; and

WHEREAS, Preacher will celebrate his 96th birthday on March 25, 2011; and

WHEREAS, March 22, 2011, is the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Arts Advocacy Day at the Mississippi Legislature. The Governor of the State of Mississippi has declared the week of March 20-26, 2011, as the “Reverend Herman D. Dennis and Margaret’s Grocery Awareness and Preservation Week”; and

WHEREAS, it is with great pride that we commend those individuals who have made significant contributions to their community and to the State of Mississippi:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES CONCURRING THEREIN, That we do hereby commend The Reverend Herman D. Dennis for his contributions to the community and the world in creating a unique “Bible Castle” and for sharing his preaching and the gospel with visitors from around the world.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That we honor the memory of the late Margaret Rogers Dennis for being a pioneer African-American businesswoman, teacher and faithful member of the Kings Community and Cool Springs Missionary Baptist Church.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That we recognize that March 20-26, 2011, has been proclaimed as the “Reverend Herman D. ‘Preacher’ Dennis and Margaret’s Grocery Awareness and Preservation Week” in Mississippi, and join the citizens of Vicksburg in honoring this location.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be presented to Reverend Dennis; his daughter, Cora Lee Dennis; Ida Mae Spooner on behalf of Miss Margaret’s family; the Cool Springs Missionary Baptist Church in Vicksburg, Mississippi; forwarded to the Mississippi Arts Commission; and made available to members of the Capitol Press Corps.