Month: March 2011

Oh the ways I *love* this sign…

Think of a recipe for sweet potato pie, only use great northern/navy beans rather than sweet potato.  If you didn’t tell anyone that the filling was bean, probably 99 times out of 100, they wouldn’t be able to guess.

Was it my favorite pie on earth?  No, but it was different and not bad…a little bit of a curiosity.  My friend Cindy in Oklahoma likes fudge made with beans!  I’ll try her recipe soon…

This is Corinth Baptist Church, also in Winston County (there’s a directional marker for it off Hwy 278), and this building is dated from 1884.

There’s no indoor plumbing — so there’s an outhouse behind the building (blush: a two-seater).  There’s no climate control inside the church either.

So pretty:

…a blanket to keep warm…

Last month, we spent a day in Winston County, Alabama.  This little building used to be a post office, I think, for a community just outside Addison.

There are only four places in Winston County on the National Register of Historic Places, and this isn’t one of them (one of them is in an undisclosed area as it is a prehistoric village site near Haleyville).

And here we have bustling Addison International Airport:

It’s actually called Addison Municipal Airport, has a grass strip, and in 2000 it averaged over 100 flights a month.

In 2006, this is what the historic old Houston jail looked like:

…and after restoration:

What makes this jail so unique is that the walls are studded with nails in the belief that no one would be able to cut through the wood for an escape.  It’s dated 1868:

That monument, bottom-center above, is for John Anthony Winston who was the 15th governor of Alabama and for whom this county was renamed from Hancock County. Part of the plaque reads, “During the Civil War he became a Colonel in the 8th Ala. Inf. Reg. of the Confederate Army.  When told to surrender at the Battle of Seven Pines he shouted, “I didn’t join the army to surrender.”  With horse reins in his teeth, drawing both pistols, he began firing, leading his men from the trap.”

…which…Winston County was named after this gentleman, but it’s very well known as the Free State of Winston because so many of its residents opposed secession.  People can talk forever about the real roots of the war (states’ rights, slavery, taxation…in fact, the NY Times is running an interesting ongoing feature right now about the War, called Disunion) but one of the reasons that Winston County may have wanted to secede  from the State of Alabama — if you can secede from the US, we can secede from you, I imagine they were thinking — is that comparatively they didn’t have many slaves here.  For example, in the 1860 census, Conecuh County had 4882 slaves.  Winston county had 122. 

And here in front of the Winston County courthouse in Double Springs is this monument called ‘Dual Destiny’, which the last paragraph of the plaque reads, “This Civil War soldier, one-half Union and one-half Confederate, symbolizes the war within a war and honors the Winstonians in both armies. Their shiny new swords in 1861 were by 1865 as broken as the spirits of the men who bore them, and their uniforms of blue and gray, once fresh and clean, were now as worn and patched as the bodies and souls they contained. Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, disillusioned by the realities of war, shared dual destinies as pragmatic Americans in a reunited nation.”

Drove on one of the gravel Forest Roads:

gourd tree:

At Fairview Missionary Baptist, their cemetery had many examples of traditional folk customs, with the curbing (outlining the plot), swept (sanded to keep out grass), and mounded:

Leaving the county, we had plans to eat at Slick Lizard Smokehouse where their motto is (seriously) ‘fill your gizzard at Slick Lizard’:

The next time I’m up that way, I’m going back to visit my friend Cheryl at her Simple Life Farm in Arley where she makes her own goat milk soaps, shampoos, lotions…and candles…jellies…

Shug is a great helper at making king cake:

(we used a little bit of the dough in cupcake liners to make baby king cakes!)

The Amistad Murals by Hale Woodruff at Talladega College, commissioned in 1938 and worth about $40 million (this is a pic we took a couple of years ago):

…are being removed now — the removal is even being broadcast — and going to the High Museum in Atlanta for restoration (estimated at about $116,000, being paid for by the High) with the Atlanta Art Conservation Center.  The murals will then go on tour across the country to museums that pay $25,000 directly to Talladega College.  They’ll be returned to Talladega in 2013, and the college president has said that he hopes to have them displayed at that time in a $13 million museum to be built on campus.

The High will have its exhibition of the murals from June 2-September 2, 2012.

Last month when Leslie and I went antiquing up Hwy 11, we stopped for a while in Ashville.  I’ve posted about one of the shops that we stopped at — the one with the gorgeous basket — but there were so many other things to see.

This is the John W. Inzer home, which is now a museum:

We didn’t call beforehand to get a tour (it’s supposed to have some great pieces inside, plus I’d love to see all those fireplaces – there are four on each side) but there were plenty of other things to see…

This pretty house is a quilt shop – it used to be a tea room:

The Masonic Lodge, built in the 1850s:

In the city cemetery is the marker for Howard Hill who is famous in certain circles — if you’ve ever seen the old 1938 movie Robin Hood, he did all the archery shooting.  He’s even still considered the greatest archer of all time (he won 196 straight field archery competitions).  There’s a Howard Hill Archery company too.  And he was a great football player in the ’20s at Auburn.

Now this is something you don’t see in many areas anymore:

People in this area were taking a part in a home wake, a practice that so many people now perform at a funeral home as ‘visitation’.  If you’ve ever been to a home wake, you know that people bring food, tell stories, and someone stays with the body overnight (many times taking turns) before burial takes place.  These signs along the road help even passersby show their respect by slowing.

Probably the most famous photograph of a home wake is by Shelby Lee Adams in Kentucky.

Not far from there was a burned-out mobile home and another house that had all these pieces of artwork all around:

Our last destination before lunch was the John Looney house, built around 1820 and quite possibly the oldest dogtrot house in Alabama.

A two-story double dogtrot:

Lunch was at Shaw’s Barbecue, which was recommended to us.  It had all the hallmarks of a great bbq place — football artwork, the Ten Commandments posted on one wall, good cue and fried pies, a tip jar “please be kind and tip waitress + cook.  We share our tips cause we are a team and work hard 2gether  🙂” and in appreciation for our payment, we received a refrigerator magnet with the upcoming NASCAR races listed.

Pretty good.