Month: July 2011

Wednesday I spent the day in Huntsville — had lunch with a couple of girlfriends, then was off with Wade Wharton and another friend on an incredible tour…maybe we should call it a wonderfully informal ‘open house’ with two of his artist friends (oh I cannot *wait* to show you all that next week!), and then finally we visited Wade’s newest exhibit, at the main branch of the Huntsville Public Library:

He had his gourdwork there, this metalwork, his paintings, his sculptures, his assemblages, wood carvings, you name it…and had the very nicest comments from the public in a notebook that had been provided there at the atrium art gallery.

The exhibit is up through July 31.  This is how the the exhibit is described:

We are thrilled to display the work of innovative Huntsville artist Wade Wharton. His artwork is currently on display in the atrium of the Main branch of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library until the end of July.


Wharton “recycles” found objects into artwork. A shovel scoop becomes a flower petal. A transmission flywheel becomes the face of a flower blossom. A Volkswagon fender becomes a man’s leg. Since 1990, he has been transforming the house- interior and surrounding yard- into a showcase for his whimsical artwork: stained glass, paintings, wood carvings, metal works and sculpture made from discarded materials. The 122’ x 112’ yard is a jungle of foliage and art, featuring flowers fashioned from scrap iron and a Japanese-inspired bridge made from trampoline parts.


Wharton points to an accident that severed nerves in his right hand and, he feels, impairs its dexterity. His graceful wood sculpture belies any disability. Wharton began whittling after the accident and now skillfully creates wood carvings and 3-dimensional sculptures, a number of which have mechanical moving parts.


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Wade loves company, and encourages people to come see his art environment around his home there in Huntsville.  If you’re interested, email me and I’ll be happy to share his contact information.

Nice.  The neon goodness of the Mayflower Cafe in Jackson:

Home of some of the best comeback sauce in Jackson, too.

Today, Mound Bayou is celebrating its 124th anniversary.  Whenever we are in the Delta and visit McCarty Pottery in Merigold, we try stop in Mound Bayou, the home of Peter’s Pottery (if you see a strong resemblance in the two styles of pottery, the Woods brothers began as apprentices of Lee and Pup McCarty).

One of the most interesting things about the town, though, is that it was built by ex-slaves of Joe Davis, the brother of Jeff Davis, and calls itself the oldest all-black municipality in the US.

The founders were Isaiah T. Montgomery and his cousin Benjamin T. Green. Isaiah’s father was Joseph Davis’ assistant and plantation business manager, helping work on the new model of day-to-day operations at Hurricane Plantation. The reforms included a slave hospital, slave court (w/ slave jury), etc.

..and here’s a view of slave quarters at one of the brothers’ plantation.  Library of Congress, thank you:

Library of Congress #: LC-DIG-ppmsca-10971

Isaiah moved from Hurricane Plantation to another formerly Davis-owned plantation Brierfield (they were incredibly successful there after the war), to Vicksburg, when he and his cousin picked out some land in Bolivar County in 1887 that was owned by a railroad. He wrote to Jeff Davis asking that he request the railroad sell them 840 acres. Not only did that happen, but by 1902, the Mound Bayou Corporation had 20,000 acres in its name.

Mound Bayou was founded as a cooperative community of freed slaves – it was Isaiah Montgomery’s dream to found the “largest Negro U.S. town” (the 2000 census put the percentage of Blacks living there at 98.43%).

This was Isaiah T. Montgomery’s home:

The elementary school is named for him, and the high school is named after John F. Kennedy.

Mosque:

…and this, at city hall:

Disgusting.

There have been some developments with the story regarding the destruction at the Davis farm site and the stone Indian mound in Oxford.  A few pics to get started:

Almost a year ago, the antebellum home at the Davis farm in Oxford was burned to the ground by an arsonist.  This is how it used to appear, on top of a mound:

In the 1500s the space where the Davis farm sits was called Ulabahali and was one of the sites where DeSoto was believed to have visited.

This is how the site appears today now that the house is gone:

Looking across the field, you can see Signal Mound, the stone mound on top of this hill:

You have to cross “Leon Smith Parkway” to get there.  If you’ve followed this story for a while, that fact may make you bristle.

The top of the mound:

Trucks and tractors went up on the hill that the stone mound is atop to get fill-dirt for what the city of Oxford hoped would one day be a Sam’s Club.  Many of us wrote to their corporate (here are the answers I got from them after my inquiry).  Due to public outcry, or the economy, or whatever…there’s no Sam’s Club there today.

Back across the road is the part of the Davis farm that the city of Oxford wants to convert to a recreational complex.  Their work has been stopped for some time now — the Army Corps of Engineers stepped up when they found out that they had not been notified that ancient remains had been found there.

It’s cost the city a small fortune now.  Maybe it could have been foreseen that an area with 24 archaeological sites including a temple mound and village areas (according to an expert) wasn’t going to lend itself easily to development.  But anyway.

Here’s the latest:
Mayor Leon Smith has signed an agreement with the Muscogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Alabama Historic Preservation Office to restart the development.

In a move that seems odd to me, the Muscogees stipulated “that the city take stones atop a hill behind the Oxford Exchange on Interstate 20 and use them to build a new mound near the sports complex construction site.“

So the city is going to move historically and culturally significant stones (which were placed there in a very intentional, very important pattern) across the road and that the city then build a new mound (the thought of the city of Oxford building a ‘new’ mound…ugh…).

The city is to also apply with the National Park Service to have the National Registry of Historic Places place what was the Davis farm it on its listing.  That should have been done long ago.

Once the stones are removed from the stone mound, the city can do what it wants with the hill.

Here’s the whole thing.

Today we went to Atlanta and visited IKEA (of course).

Favorite part — always the kitchens:

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I wonder if the Atlanta store will be doing the whole-roof solar array idea, like the SF store just did.

The annual Slugburger Festival is this weekend in Corinth.  They’re even having a Slug Idol.  It’s too bad they don’t have a pageant, or there’d be a Miss Slug.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that!  When I was little, pageants were my *thing* — I didn’t play a sport, I did pageants.  In our library, we have all my trophies, including my tallest one, this 7-foot one I won in Atlanta:

For all the rhinestone-encrusted crowns, one of my favorite, though, was this paper-and-glitter number that I wore in the ’80s when I represented my 5th grade at homecoming.  Oh those blessed hair wings!  Farrah-la-la:

I have a friend who wears a tiara whenever she cooks supper or vacuums.

Now, the Louisiana Association of Fairs and Festivals has pictures of most of the state queens on their website.  Whereas I’ve been a Little Miss Cotton and Miss Snowflake and so on — one year when I won an Easter-themed pageant, besides my trophy I got a real live bunny (!!) — I wish I could have gone on to have the title of some of these queens: Miss Zwolle Tamale, Miss Natchitoches Meat Pie, Miss Shrimp and Petroleum, Miss Cajun Hot Sauce, Miss Creole Gumbo…the list goes on.  And those crowns and scepters!  The Creole Gumbo festival organizers did themselves proud.

I would really aspire to be — even though they don’t have a pageant — Miss RC and Moon Pie.  That’s a great festival.

Well, maybe next year there will be a Miss Slug, or Miss Slugburger.

Their menu explains 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.”

The house specialty, slugburger:

Av and I have actually tried to do our own un-scientific but yummy Slugburger research, including an unfinished Slugburger Trail.  Here’s my friend Amy interviewing a restaurant in Decatur about them for the Southern Foodways Alliance: