Alabama Curiosities

The Batman of Union Springs

2006-11-07T18:23:00.000-05:00

Professional bat remover George Perkins of Union Springs sometimes wears a Batman costume, notes Associated Press reporter Elliott Minor; he also drives a Batmobile (a Prowler) and calls his office the Batcave. Check out the photo.

Perkins' struggle against his current archenemies, the bats infesting the historic district of Americus, Ga., also was covered by National Public Radio -- on Halloween, naturally.

The original fire ants

2006-04-11T22:45:00.000-04:00

In my book Alabama Curiosities, I wrote:

Thirteen-year-old Edward O. Wilson of Mobile was one of those kids who happily spends hours watching living things. A childhood accident had cost him his sight in one eye, and he seemed determined to see as much as possible out of the remaining one. He was especially fascinated by ants, in particular the ants in the vacant lot next to his family's house on Charleston Street, near the docks on the western edge of Mobile Bay.

He didn't know it at the time, but young Wilson had made a breakthrough scientific discovery. That ant colony he studied and documented so carefully in 1942 turned out to be the first recorded colony of the red imported fire ants, Solenopsis invicta, in the United States.

I now read, however, in the April 1-7, 2006, issue of New Scientist, an excerpt from Wilson's new book Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949-2006 (Johns Hopkins University Press). Wilson writes:

In 1942, while exploring the ants of my neighbourhood in Mobile, I discovered a nest of the invader near the port docks and subsequently reported. It was one of the first two observations of the species in the US.

What, I wonder, was the other early observation, and where?

Wilson also writes that at age 16, he decided to quit ants and settle on flies as his life's work, only to be frustrated by a World War II shortage of pins. "So I turned back to ants, which can be preserved and studied in local pharmacy prescription bottles filled with rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol."

Today, as New Scientist points out, Wilson "is the world's leading authority on ants."

The Irish struggle in Alabama

2006-04-11T22:24:00.000-04:00

At the Alabama Bound book festival at the Birmingham Public Library this past weekend, I met Kieran Quinlan, a native of Ireland long resident in Birmingham, Ala., and author of the new book Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South. We got to talking about Charles Stewart Parnell, who considered settling in Alabama in the 1870s alongside his brother, a successful Alabama peach farmer, but opted to go home and lead the fight for Irish independence instead.

This much is recounted in my book Alabama Curiosities, but Kieran told me something I didn't know. Parnell seriously considered investing in the Birmingham, Ala., steel industry, and changed his plans only when the train on which he was a passenger derailed outside the city. The superstitious Parnell took this as an ill omen, and back to Ireland he went.

There's an alternate-history scenario for you: A train outside Birmingham, Ala., fails to derail, so Charles Stewart Parnell settles in the American South, and the history of three nations (Ireland, Great Britain, the United States) is potentially quite different.

Thanks, Kieran!

Happy retirement, Randy "Woody" Randall

2006-04-10T11:59:00.000-04:00

After many years as a fixture in the front lobby, Randy “Woody” Randall, a plastic dummy in a night watchman’s uniform, has been “retired” from Randall-Reilly Publishing in Tuscaloosa.

According to CEO Mike Reilly, the dummy was brought to Tuscaloosa by his predecessor, the late Pettus Randall III, who encountered it at an American Rental Association trade show. An exhibitor had rigged the dummy with a microphone, so that as people walked past, the dummy seemed to greet them by name: “Hi, Pettus!”

Enthralled, Randall bought the dummy for $2,200, hoping to take it on the trade-show circuit as a Randall Publishing attraction. When that didn’t work out, Randall decided to dress the dummy in a night watchman’s uniform and set it in the window as a deterrent to burglars. “Hello, Woody,” Randall would tell the dummy each morning as he walked in.

In a celebrated incident one Halloween, Tim Cooper, then art director of Overdrive magazine, disguised himself as the dummy and sat frozen in the dummy’s position in the lobby until an unsuspecting Mike Reilly walked past, whereupon the “dummy” reached out and goosed him. Excitement ensued.

Randall Publishing honored the dummy’s retirement from the public eye with cake and coffee at its companywide meeting April 10. The first job applicant to sit in Woody’s chair in the lobby is in for a lot of strange looks.

Night Stalkers of Tuscaloosa

2006-04-09T14:45:00.000-04:00

I love business names that inadvertently sound ominous, for example, the Journey's End motel in Greensboro, N.C. Another favorite is the Tuscaloosa, Ala., bar called Night Stalkers. I imagine the nightly conversations:

"Hi. I'm a stalker."

"Really? I'm a stalker, too."

"No kidding! Hey, maybe we could stalk each other sometime."

It also makes me think of the 1970s TV series The Night Stalker, with Darren McGavin as a reporter investigating the supernatural, but that's probably just me.

Night Stalkers is at 2237 Greensboro Ave.; the phone number is (205) 758-9277.

The Magnolia River mail boat

2006-04-08T01:04:00.000-04:00

Does anyone know whether the mail still runs by boat in Magnolia Springs?

For many years Magnolia Springs, Alabama, on U.S. 98 near the Gulf of Mexico, may have been the only town in the United States where the Postal Service delivered mail year-round by boat. Magnolia Springs writer Thomas Crosby Lakeman beautifully described the process in a 2002 posting at his website:

The postman is Huey, a lean and hardboned man who looks like he would not tolerate being called a "postal carrier" by anybody. His official vehicle is a speedboat that looks like it’s spent more time trawling for mullet than hauling Val-Pak coupons; its only mark of admiralty is a banged-up sign reading "U.S. Postal Service" on the starboard bow. In other words, do not hinder him: Huey’s boat is a federal vessel, just like the U.S.S. Nimitz.

Huey does know his work. Even though there’s a local ordinance against speeding on the Magnolia River, he clips that boat through the water like a bass fisherman scouting choice angling spots. He rarely requires more than a few seconds per dock: haul in, open mailbox, stuff, close, bring her about; all in one fluid movement. I wouldn’t call it graceful: A man with tanned forearms and a plug of Red Man in his back pocket is no more graceful than the guy who hauls the invisible wires in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. More likely Huey’s just in a hurry.

The original Black Panthers

2006-04-08T00:12:00.000-04:00

The violent African-American nationalists of the 1960s and 1970s who called themselves the Black Panthers got their name from a group of non-violent Christian activists in Lowndes County, Alabama.

The county had seen a successful, if hard-won, voter registration drive in 1965-66, but many of the newly registered voters quickly became disenchanted with the established political parties in the county and decided to start their own party to promote civil rights, on the order of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Thus was born the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.

At the time, Alabama law required all registered political parties to have a logo that even illiterate voters could recognize. (There were many more illiterate Alabamians then.) The organizers of the new party decided to adopt the mascot of Clark College, a historically black Methodist school in Atlanta: a black panther.

The idea caught on, and other civil-rights groups nationwide began calling themselves Black Panthers, too. In Oakland, California, in 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale decided to call their anti-capitalist militant group the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, to distinguish it from those Black Panthers who weren't armed. (See the Black Panther Party logo here.)

The Oakland group soon became so famous -- or, many would say, infamous -- that the less visible, peaceful Black Panthers, including Alabama's, were forgotten. Besides Brown and Seale, the ranks of the national Black Panthers included still controversial figures such as H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis, but who can recite the names of Lowndes County's original Black Panthers? As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch recently told Don Noble in The Tuscaloosa News, "It was a party of sharecroppers, mostly women in print dresses, risking their lives to vote for the first time." (For much more info, see Branch's excellent new book, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68.)

The Lowndes County Freedom Organization is long gone, but the athletic teams at Clark College, now Clark Atlanta University, are still the Panthers. One wonders whether any alumns ever think of Lowndes County -- or, for that matter, of Oakland -- while singing:

Hail, Roaring Panthers
We sing our praise to thee.
You are our heroes
And will forever be.
RAH, RAH, RAH.
Honor and glory
You bring to old CC.
All hail to thee, O Mighty Panthers
On to victory!

The Walrus was ... Alan Wood?

2006-04-07T22:36:00.000-04:00

First National Bank of Central Alabama is running ads that spoof the famous album photo of the Beatles walking single file across London's Abbey Road. Instead of four Beatles, we get four bank officers walking across the street.

In the lead, we get not John Lennon but Tracy Waldrop, assistant branch manager. Like John, she wears a white suit, but she's jauntily swinging her arms, whereas John, in a characteristic funk, has his hands in his pockets. Tracy's hair is shorter than John's, and she does not have a beard.

Second, we get not Ringo Starr but Bryan Robinson, assistant vice president. Like Ringo, he's wearing a black suit and black dress shoes.

Third, we get not Paul McCartney but Alan Wood, president. Like Paul, he's barefoot and wearing a black suit, but unlike Paul, he's not holding a cigarette. So far, we've heard no rumors that Alan is dead, maybe because the red-herring Volkswagen isn't visible.

Fourth, we get not George Harrison but Sam Parks, executive vice president. Like George, he's in denim and sneakers. He lacks a beard, but otherwise he's worthy of honor as the officer whose stride and arm position best match those of his corresponding Beatle.

The headline on the ad in the Feb. 26 Tuscaloosa News is:

COME TOGETHER
RIGHT NOW

Over me? Over which one, I wonder?

I initially thought the four locals merely had been Photoshopped onto the actual Abbey Road photo, but on closer inspection I see many differences between the bank shot and the Beatles shot. The bank shot lacks not only the Volkswagen but many of the other cars; also in the bank shot, the lane striping down the middle of the street, leading to the horizon, is jagged, not straight.

How disappointing to visit the bank's website and find no trace of this ad campaign anywhere! So you'll just have to take my word for it.

The tax radicals of Mobile Bay

2006-04-07T17:23:00.000-04:00

Today Fairhope, Alabama, is known for its shops and restaurants, its parks and pier, its beautiful shaded houses overlooking Mobile Bay. A century ago, however, Fairhope was known as an experiment in radical government.

Fairhope was founded by transplanted Iowans in 1894 as “a model community or colony, free from all forms of private monopoly,” according to the original charter. The founders were disciples of reformer Henry George, a Philadelphia native who never lived in Alabama. Beginning in the 1870s, George told anyone who would listen, and many who wouldn’t, that land was the source of all monopoly privilege, and should be taxed accordingly.

In fact, George argued that the land tax should be the only tax -- no income taxes, business taxes or sales taxes, just a single land tax, an annual rent paid by the land “owner” to the community for the privilege of using a plot of land for another year.

(Henry George had a lot of wacky notions. For example, he was one of the first Americans to call for the secret ballot, having the audacity to argue that whom you voted for was no one else’s business. Because George pointed to how well the secret ballot worked in Australia, his critics derided the secret ballot as “kangaroo voting.” Resistance was such that the secret ballot didn’t become law in all states until 1950, more than 50 years after George’s death.)

By creating the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation, the founders implemented George’s tax ideals as best they could. They felt they had a “fair hope” of success, hence the town’s name. They had no control, however, over all those other taxes that the county, state and federal governments still wanted someone to pay. The founders also couldn’t prevent outsiders from buying adjacent land and doing as they pleased with it.

So the Fairhope experiment never caught on, as its founders had fairly hoped. In fact, Alabama thumbs its nose at Henry George by taxing just about everything except land. (Timberland, for example, accounts for 71 percent of Alabama’s real estate but less than 2 percent of its property tax revenue.)

But the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation is still around, and it still owns 4,500 acres of land in and around Fairhope, issuing 99-year leases and occasionally donating tracts to the town for parks and such. The corporation’s office, which includes some historical exhibits, is at 336 Fairhope Ave., a few blocks west of U.S. 98, and is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Phone: (334) 928-8162.

The origins of nutria

2006-04-07T16:53:00.000-04:00

Readers of the book Alabama Curiosities know about the annual Nutria Rodeo once held in Mobile County. In writing about that, I briefly covered the U.S. origins of these swamp-dwelling rodents:

"Nutria do breed like rats, though. So you begin to see the problem caused by E.A. 'Mr. Ned' McIlhenny, heir to the Tabasco-sauce fortune, who imported the nutria to Louisiana from Argentina in 1938. He hoped to market their fur, but have you ever heard of a nutria-fur coat?

"Mr. Ned planned to confine his nutria to Avery Island, Louisiana, but the 1941 hurricane spread them around a bit, and in their new quarters they happily set about doing that thing that nutria do so well. By the 1960s nutria had overrun the Gulf Coast and were literally devouring thousands of acres of marshland."

Now I learn that I may have been a bit hard on Mr. Ned. In the April 3, 2006, Tuscaloosa News, photographer Michael E. Palmer has a fine photo of a nutria sunning itself in Moody Swamp and a short article that reads, in part:

"The South abounds with tales that just won't go away, like the one about E.A. McIlhenny being solely responsible for introducing large swamp rats known as nutria into the South. ... The sad truth is that McIlhenny simply turned them loose of his own volition, but he did not import them himself. He acquired his nutria from a local who was also attempting to farm them. ... Genetic research on modern nutria suggests that McIlhenny can't be solely responsible for the rodents' introduction to U.S. soil."

I am delighted to know this. Thanks, Michael!

Another view of the Bondsmobile

2006-02-23T00:30:00.000-05:00

This front view of the Bondsmobile in Tuscaloosa shows the reversed "Ambulance"-style type that reads "Jail Busters" in a rear-view mirror.

That's clearly a vintage Cadillac logo above the grille, with the pearl-topped crown that Cadillac recently scrapped, alas. But judging from this obsessive Ghostbusters fan's website, the Bondsmobile is not the same make as the 1959 Miller Meteor driven in the movie by Venkman, Stantz, Spengler and Zeddmore. The Ectomobile had limo-style windows all the way down the side, whereas the Bondsmobile has a landau-style design, with no side windows in the back -- more typical of a hearse than an ambulance. The Ectomobile also had more pronounced, upswept tail fins.

The Bondsmobile

2006-02-23T00:18:00.000-05:00

Jail Busters Bail Bonds on 15th Street in Tuscaloosa advertises itself with this vintage Cadillac ambulance, painted to suggest the Ectomobile in Ghostbusters. The Jail Busters logo replaces the startled spook in the famous "no-ghosts" logo with a sorrowful guy peering through the bars of a jail cell. On his left side is the number 24, on his right side the number 7, indicating that Jail Busters is always ready to take your call. "Who do ya' call ... When ya' take a fall? Our number's on the wall! We-Bust-U-Out."

The former Lloyd Noland Parkway

2006-02-10T09:01:00.000-05:00

I never heard of the great Alabama doctor Lloyd Noland until I stumbled across a bit of trivia on the Internet Movie Database: Supposedly, the late actor Lloyd Nolan, who often played doctors (in the movie Peyton Place and the TV sitcom Julia, for example), bore a strong resemblance to an actual Alabama doctor named Lloyd Noland, causing confusion through the years.

So I went looking for information on Lloyd Noland and was initially disappointed to find that he really didn’t look much like Lloyd Nolan. Certainly his name frequently was misspelled as Nolan through the years, even in legal documents -- just as Nolan’s name frequently was misspelled Noland through the years, even in movie reference books.

But it wasn’t an entirely false lead, because it led me to a fascinating story and to an ongoing Alabama curiosity.

An iron and coal company brought Noland to Jefferson County in 1917. He had been chief surgeon of a 600-bed hospital in Panama, working under George Crawford Gorgas during the Panama Canal project, and upon arrival in Alabama he set to work ridding Birmingham of the same endemic diseases the public-health pioneers had been fighting in Panama: smallpox, typhoid, dysentery, malaria.

The persuasive Noland talked his employers into building a $750,000 hospital – a remarkable achievement, considering that sum was larger than the entire public-health budget of the state of Alabama. He also was a pioneer in establishing an anesthesiology program and a residency program for the training of young doctors.

For many years, Lloyd Noland Hospital in Fairfield, a southwest Birmingham suburb, was the leading hospital in Jefferson County; for decades, it served thousands of elderly and low-income people.

In the 1990s, the aging hospital was bought by HealthSouth and renamed HealthSouth Metro West. Lloyd Noland Parkway, the street leading to the hospital, was renamed Richard M. Scrushy Parkway, after HealthSouth’s flamboyant CEO.

Soon after, HealthSouth became mired in a colossal corporate scandal. Fifteen executives, including every finance chief in HealthSouth’s 20-year history, pleaded guilty in a $2.7 billion accounting fraud; Scrushy himself was controversially acquitted, though he’s still the target of lawsuits.

The old Lloyd Noland Hospital was closed.

Exit signs on I-20/59, near Miles College, still beckon travelers onto Richard M. Scrushy Parkway, while the name of the man who rid Birmingham of its Third World plagues less than a century ago is mostly forgotten.

Noland’s name survives, however, via the non-profit Noland Health Services, based in Fairfield, which operates long-term hospitals and retirement communities across the state. Its website, www.nolandhealth.com, still lists its address as Lloyd Noland Parkway.

==

An anonymous reader comments April 7, 2006:

"Having been an employee of Lloyd Noland Hospital for many years, I think it is important to also identify that the hospital was initially sold to Tenet (which owns Brookwood Medical Center [in Birmingham]) before the HealthSouth acquisition. ... The legacy that was Dr. Lloyd Noland continues to live on in the hearts and minds of those who knew him, worked with him, and followed his example. His vision of health care was a bright point of light in the vast desolation and a remarkable touchstone for the medical machine that continues to grow here in Birmingham and surrounding areas."

Well said, and thanks for the Tenet info.

Turned on, tuned in, kicked out

2006-02-10T08:58:00.000-05:00

The late counterculture guru and LSD advocate Timothy Leary, famed for his 1960s motto “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” was an undergraduate in the 1940s at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Leary was most familiar at the time with the traditional undergraduate drug, alcohol. By the time the Massachusetts native came to Tuscaloosa, he already had been kicked out of West Point for a liquor bust. But his interest in harder drugs seems to have come much later, after he left Alabama for good.

The head of the UA psychology department told Leary that he needed intelligent students, and this much impressed the young man. Leary later recalled: “This was the first time in my life that I had heard anyone imply intelligence was a desirable trait. Up to this moment being smart had always got me in trouble. Conformity was the virtue I was used to hearing about.”

Leary got into trouble on the Tuscaloosa campus not for alcohol but for another time-honored reason: spending the night with a girlfriend in her dormitory. (Which dorm, I wonder?)

He was kicked out of school again, an act with serious consequences in the middle of World War II. Leary lost his draft deferment and was sent to artillery training at Fort Eustis, Va.

But the Army needed psychologists as well as artillerymen, and the former head of the UA psychology department was now chief psychologist at an Army hospital in Pennsylvania. Leary was allowed to complete his UA degree in the Army in 1943 and transfer to his mentor’s hospital, which is where his medical career began.

Leary’s interest in hallucinogens apparently dates from 1957, after his wife’s suicide, when as a researcher at the Kaiser Foundation he read an article about them in Life magazine.

It’s interesting that the two most influential LSD researchers of the 20th century both spent years in Tuscaloosa: Leary as a UA undergrad in the 1940s and (as I wrote about in the book Alabama Curiosities) Humphry Osmond on staff at Bryce Hospital from 1971 to 1992. Could it be something in the water?

Klaatu lands in Dothan

2006-02-10T08:51:00.000-05:00

The late British actor Michael Rennie is best remembered today as the dignified alien Klaatu in Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). As a result, the first words of The Rocky Horror Picture Show are: “Michael Rennie was ill / The day the Earth stood still …”

Without citing any source whatsoever, the Internet Movie Database tells an interesting Rennie anecdote set in, of all places, Dothan, Ala.

Rennie already had played small roles in a number of movies when he joined the Royal Air Force. With other RAF pilots he was sent to the United States for flight training and wound up at Napier Field in Dothan.

When his fellow pilots in Dothan asked him what he did for a living, he replied, truthfully enough, that he was a movie actor, and they all burst into disbelieving laughter.

A few nights later, they all went into town to take in a movie. It turned out to be Ships With Wings, a British war movie that starred John Clements, Leslie Banks … and, in a small role as Lt. Maxwell, none other than Michael Rennie, who presumably got the last laugh. (One wonders how Rennie steered his friends to that particular movie theater!)

This certainly could have happened, as thousands of military personnel, including once and future celebrities, trained in Alabama during the war, and Ships With Wings was released in the United States in 1942 by United Artists.

I’d like to see some independent confirmation of the tale, though, that isn’t just parroting the IMDB.

Ancient footprints are everywhere

2006-02-02T23:46:00.000-05:00

In 1999, an Oneonta High School science teacher named Ashley Allen discovered a paleontological marvel in an abandoned surface coal mine near Jasper in Walker County: fossilized tracks marking the progress of a host of creatures as they walked, slithered, flopped and crawled through a tidal flat 310 million years ago.

Between 2000 and 2004, Steven C. Minkin and the other members of the Alabama Paleontological Society (or APS) painstakingly retrieved from the old Union Chapel Mine more than 2,000 specimens -- invaluable evidence of ancient fish, amphibians, shellfish, worms, insects (even insect larvae) and, yes, maybe reptiles, too. The specimens contain the earliest evidence, anywhere in the world, of group behavior in fish and amphibians.

The site of this treasure trove was at risk, interestingly enough, because of federal conservation law that requires abandoned mines to be restored to their natural state. In this case, that would have meant reburying the fossils and planting a forest over them. With the help of Congressman Bob Aderholt, the Geological Survey of Alabama and other groups, the APS managed to save the property, which was acquired by the state in 2004. It's now open only to scientists and school groups.

The Alabama Department of Conservation has designated it the "Steven C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site," in honor of the amateur geologist who worked tirelessly to preserve it but died in an accident before the March 2005 dedication.

Photographs of the fossils abound at this online database compiled by Ronald J. "Ron" Buta. An illustrated book on the site is Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama,, edited by Buta, Andrew K. Rindsberg and David C. Kopaska-Merkel. It's $49 (plus $4 shipping) from the Alabama Paleontological Society.

(Thanks to David Kopaska-Merkel and Andy Rindsberg for telling me about this.)

The Batman of Birmingham

2006-02-02T23:29:00.000-05:00

Lou Anders writes:

"Do you know the story of the Batman of Birmingham? I remember him, but I don't remember his name, and I am fuzzy on the details.

"He was a guy who spent all he had on a souped-up car (a Corvette?) that was tricked out with all kinds of radios, police band receivers, CBs, etc. ... and covered in lights and fins. He wore a cape and a helmet (which looked nothing like Batman; the choice of name was strange) and would ride around helping motorists in distress.

"I met him once when I was like 12 years old. He wasn't very sophisticated, but he was a true hero.

"He died one day when his garage door closed while he was working under his car, and he was asphyxiated.

"He's the only real-life superhero I ever met, and I still think of him from time to time."

Thanks to Lou for this tantalizing recollection.

Thanks, too, to Phillip Jordan of the Birmingham Weekly, who tells me the Batman's car is on display at the entrance to the flea market held the first full weekend of each month at the Alabama State Fairgrounds in Birmingham. The hours are 3-9 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. I'll get over there at the next opportunity and take a photo for the blog. (If Lou's memory of the Batman's demise is correct, I guess this was also the poor guy's death car. Yikes!)

Phillip can tell me nothing more about the Batman himself, however. Does anyone else remember the Batman of Birmingham, and any details about him?

Bad vibrations

2006-02-02T22:49:00.000-05:00

No recent Alabama law has excited more nationwide indignation (and comedy) than the 1998 act that outlawed the sale of dildos and vibrators.

Typical was the comment by the Libertarian Party of the United States, which announced in 1999, "This law is giving us bad vibrations."

Specifically, the law "makes it unlawful to produce, distribute or otherwise sell sexual devices that are marketed primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." The offense is subject to a $10,000 fine and a year in prison.

Soon a group of women filed suit, but in February 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the case of Williams v. Pryor, so the law stands. A few other states have similar laws.

The Alabama law, incidentally, was proposed by a Democrat and signed into law by a Republican. Yes, both were men.

Rachel Maines' 1999 book The Technology of Orgasm looks at the history of the vibrator, which was invented in the Victorian era by a (male) British physician. At the time, inducing orgasm was an accepted treatment for "female hysteria," and the vibrator was intended as a labor-saving "therapeutic device" for physicians: Automating the orgasm enabled the doctor to treat more patients in a given day. Soon, however, giant steam-powered vibrators were replaced by portable electric models, and patients no longer had to go to the doctor's office to use their therapeutic "massagers." (No, I'm not making this up. Maines provides some engineering diagrams here, along with a 1910 ad for the White Cross Electric Vibrator.)

In her Salon article on all this, Janelle Brown calls the vibrator "quite possibly the most potent symbol there is of women's sexual agency." She adds: "Of course, vibrators are still often wrapped in ambiguous terminology -- you can still find ads featuring women gingerly holding pink plastic vibrators to their cheeks, apparently marketing some kind of dubious facial relaxation."

Capitalizing on this ambiguity, the Hitachi Magic Wand is sold openly in Alabama -- as a muscle massager.

Te-lah-nay's wall

2006-02-02T22:18:00.000-05:00

On his land along the old Natchez Trace in Lauderdale County, in the northwest corner of the state, Tom Hendrix has been building, for the past 15 years, an unmortared stone wall to honor his great-great-grandmother, Te-lah-nay, a Yuchi tribeswoman who survived the 19th-century genocide known as the "Trail of Tears."

At its highest points, the irregular wall is 4 feet high; at its widest points, it's 10 feet wide. It's 2.5 miles long and may be the largest monument to a woman in the United States. Hendrix told the Florence Times Daily in 2003 that the wall contained stones from every U.S. state and 126 stones from foreign lands.

After her family was killed by U.S. troops, Te-lah-nay selected stones from the riverbank and placed them around the burial mounds to honor her ancestors. And so Hendrix continues to place stones today, to honor the brave woman who walked home from Oklahoma, determined to live in her own land and not a reservation.

"She did not make an ordinary journey," Hendrix told the Times Daily. "I did not build an ordinary wall."

Hendrix's book about Te-lah-nay is titled If the Legends Fade.

The wall is near the intersection of the Natchez Trace Parkway and Lauderdale County Highway 8, just off Alabama Highway 20 near Threet's Crossroads.

(Thanks to Serena Blount and Stuart McGregor for telling me about this.)

Alabamians invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs

2006-01-27T23:08:00.000-05:00

For many years, the corpse of an Alabamian named Pete Ray was on display in a Havana morgue, the most bizarre trophy in Fidel Castro's collection.

Today, Ray's body rests in his hometown of Birmingham, in Forest Hills Cemetery overlooking the airport. An Alabama Air National Guard pilot, Ray was shot down by Cuban forces April 19, 1961, during the disastrous CIA-backed invasion of Cuba at la Bahia de Cochina -- the Bay of Pigs.

Ray was one of 60 Alabama guardsmen, both pilots and technicians, sent to Guatemala and Nicaragua by the CIA to train the Cuban exiles who were to carry out the invasion. Why Alabama? Because the Alabama Air Guard was the last military unit in the country still flying the obsolete B-26, which the Cuban Air Force also flew. Sending in B-26's to provide air support during the invasion was intended as a psychological tactic; the CIA wanted to make the Cubans think their own Air Force had turned against them.

The Alabamians were supposed to be strictly support personnel, staying behind at the base in Nicaragua while Cuban exiles piloted the planes. But the invasion bogged down, and the Cuban pilots exhausted themselves flying back and forth between base and battlefield. Eight Alabamians eventually volunteered to fly the planes themselves -- knowing that if they were killed or captured, the U.S. government would deny any knowledge of their existence.

Of the eight, only four survived. One who didn't was Pete Ray; his plane was shot down, and though he survived the crash, he was executed by Fidel Castro's troops.

Ray's body was kept on ice in Havana for 18 years, as Castro's prime evidence that U.S. troops were indeed involved in the botched invasion. Dignitaries were trooped in to admire Ray's body and make sport of it.

Not until 1977 did the CIA admit the Alabamians' involvement and award posthumous medals to the four dead men. Not until 1979 did Castro return Ray's body to the United States for burial.

Many of the Alabamians who were part of the Bay of Pigs invasion are still alive. They may be the state's least known, least honored and, in some circles, most controversial veterans.

Their story is well told by Warren Trest and Don Dodd in the winter 2005 issue of Alabama Heritage magazine -- to which everyone interested in Alabamiana should subscribe -- and in the book Wings of Denial: The Alabama Air National Guard's Covert Role at the Bay of Pigs (New South Books, 2001).

O Subway chicken, where art thou?

2006-01-27T22:52:00.000-05:00

In summer 2005, just about every Alabama newspaper ran a story about a pet chicken in Clanton that successfully auditioned for a Subway TV commercial. Annabel, owned by a teenager named Amber Burns, would appear in the ad dressed as Napoleon to promote the chain's new chicken cordon bleu sandwich. Burns was paid $250 for Annabel's services.

The ads supposedly started running in some markets in 2005, presumably areas where Subway franchises actually had chicken cordon bleu on the menu. But I've never seen the ad, myself. Has it actually aired? Has anyone seen it? I need closure.

This epitaph is D.O.A.

2006-01-27T22:13:00.000-05:00

Dozens of websites devoted to "humorous epitaphs" feature this purported "actual epitaph of Elizabeth Rich, Eufaula, Alabama":

Honey you don't know what you did for me,
Always playing the lottery.
The numbers you picked came in to play,
Two days after you passed away.
For this, a huge monument I do erect,
For now I get a yearly check.
How I wish you were alive,
For now we are worth 8.5.

Some websites include the purported winning numbers "36-33-01-24-17" as the first line of the epitaph. Some websites give the location as "Eufaula Historical Cemetery" (there's no such place). Some websites misspell "Eufaula" as "Eufala."

But no website provides any corroborating details of who "Elizabeth Rich" was, what her widower's name was, or when and where he supposedly won this $8.5 million jackpot. Presumably it would have been in the Georgia Lottery; Eufaula is on the Georgia line, and Alabama has no lottery. The Georgia Lottery opened for business in 1993, so this "actual epitaph" would have to have been written fairly recently. And if any Eufaula resident had won $8.5 million in the Georgia Lottery only days after his wife's death, then erected a "huge monument" to thank her in the form of a humorous poem, this odd set of circumstances certainly would have been widely covered by the press. In fact, no online news archive says anything about a posthumously lucky "Elizabeth Rich" or the jokey monument erected in her honor.

The endlessly repeated phrase "actual epitaph," the complete lack of verifiable information, the utter silence of online news archives, and the rather-too-pat coincidence of the surname "Rich" all lead me to classify this one as a made-up piece of Internet humor with a spurious name and location attached.

And it's not a good poem, either!

They don't faint; they just seize up

2006-01-26T22:20:00.000-05:00

Alan and Sharon Reeves of Mobile run R Fainting Farm, where they raise fainting goats, a.k.a. "myotonic goats," "wooden leg goats" and "stiff leg" goats.

These rare goats, native to the United States, don't really faint, but they do tend to painlessly fall over when excited, because of a muscle condition called myotonia congenita -- hence "myotonic goats."

How this muscle condition works is explained by Dr. D. Phillip Sponenberg at the website of the International Fainting Goat Association.

There are fewer than 10,000 fainting goats in the world, but Alabama has its share. The Fainting Goat Directory at GoatFinder.com -- yes, you can find everything online -- lists among breeders not only the Reeveses but also Douglas Helms of Louisville, Ala.

If you know of other fainting goat breeders in the state, let us know. Maybe one day they'll become so numerous they won't even count as a curiosity anymore.

A Solomonic solution in Eutaw

2006-01-26T22:09:00.000-05:00

Tommy Stevenson's March 5, 2005, Tuscaloosa News article on Alabama's Confederate monuments includes this fine anecdote, which I reprint verbatim, as Stevenson wrote it:

Like most of the other Confederate monuments, the one in Eutaw was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederancy. But the young-looking, beardless stone soldier in the Mesopotamia Cemetery did not mount his pedestal until the late 1960s, said second generation Alabama Supreme Court Justice Bernard Harwood.

“My father [Robert B. Harwood Sr.] was from Eutaw and was on the Supreme Court when the UDC dedicated the monument,” Harwood said. “But when he got to the cemetery, there were a whole lot of the ladies all up in arms and saying there couldn’t be a ceremony and the statue had to come down.”

It seems the statue of a soldier holding his rifle at rest in front of him was facing south, rather than north, and some of the women were outraged that he was not looking in the direction of the enemy.

Harwood said his father, who was accompanied by another Supreme Court justice, quickly huddled with some of the cooler heads in attendance and reached a compromise.

“They said this was a statue of a soldier headed home, and that when he finally gets home, he will turn and face the north,” Harwood said. “My father said that seemed to satisfy everyone, and they went on with the dedication.”

Tonya Butler, we get a kick out of you

2006-01-26T21:16:00.000-05:00

The leading scorer for the University of West Alabama football team in 2003 was a woman: place kicker Tonya Butler, the first woman in NCAA history to successfully kick a field goal.

Butler's career record at West Alabama: 48 of 53 extra-point attempts. Her all-male teammates twice elected her special teams captain.

Tommy Deas in The Tuscaloosa News reports today that Butler's jersey (No. 37) and cleats are on display for the next six months in the NCAA Hall of Champions in Indianapolis, as part of the NCAA's celebration of 25 years of women's championships.

Before coming to West Alabama, Butler was an All-State star of the football team at Class AAA Riverdale High School in Georgia. From there she got a two-year athletic scholarship to Middle Georgia Junior College in Cochran. Her hopes for a Division I scholarship didn't pan out, but when the Middle Georgia coach moved to West Alabama, he told his former place kicker: "Hey, you have eligibility left. Are you looking for a free master's?"

The Tuscaloosa News reports that Butler graduated from West Alabama in 2005 with her master's in psychology and counseling, but doesn't say what she's doing now. If anyone knows, please pass the info along.

Castles in the air

2006-01-25T22:38:00.000-05:00

Palatial new suburban houses in upscale subdivisions have been nicknamed "McMansions." Some suburbanites do even better, and build McCastles.

An Aug. 20, 2005, article in the Montgomery Advertiser focuses on the 7,000-square-foot castle built by Richard and Anna Moxley in Autauga County, near Montgomery. It's loaded with faux-medieval trappings: fleurs-de-lis, suits of armor, turrets, stone archways, stuffed boar's heads, banquet tables. The Moxleys plan to add a moat and threaten to stock it with bass and bream. (Thanks to Julie Arrington for telling me about this.)

Near Fort Payne is Excalibur Castle, a four-turret edifice originally built by Jeff Cook of the country-music group Alabama.

Not all Alabama castles are private homes, though. Open to the public is Castle San Miguel in Hanceville, built by Catholic TV host Mother Angelica, founder of the Eternal Word Television Network. This castle houses the gift shop of the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery.

On land 15 miles southeast of Talladega, a group of investors hopes to build Tirion Castle, named for an Elvish city in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion. The plan -- in the works for more than 10 years -- is to run a bed-and-breakfast at the castle, plus rent it out to Renaissance fairs, weddings, Society for Creative Anachronism events, etc.

The oldest and best-known castle in Alabama, which I included in the book Alabama Curiosities, is Quinlan Castle in Birmingham, a 1920s apartment house that has been, alas, vacant and neglected for years.

Eastwood Texaco sues OPEC

2006-01-25T01:08:00.000-05:00

Eastwood Texaco, at the intersection of Montclair Road and Oporto Madrid Boulevard in Birmingham, Ala., south of I-20 near Irondale, is no ordinary gas station. Its owners took OPEC to court.

Carl and Debbie Prewitt sued the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in April 2000, charging in federal court that OPEC indulges in illegal price-fixing. The name of the case: Prewitt Enterprises Inc. et al. v. OPEC.

Now, everyone agrees the international oil cartel does engage in price-fixing; OPEC happily admits that on its own website. Moreover, everyone agrees that OPEC price-fixing, if done in the United States, would be illegal under federal antitrust law. After all, Standard Oil, the behemoth founded by John D. Rockefeller, was dismantled by the federal government for just such infractions.

But does the United States have any jurisdiction over OPEC? Though the cartel’s actions have an incalculable impact on the American economy, OPEC is based not in the United States but in Austria -- so any price-fixing, like any other OPEC action, presumably takes place far from U.S. soil.

The Prewitts’ lawyer argued, with plenty of recent examples, that U.S. law enforcement extends all over the world, wherever criminals working against U.S. interests are to be found. In the 1990s, he pointed out, the U.S. Justice Department went after various international cartels, including a vitamin cartel, on behalf of wronged U.S. companies. Companies paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, and executives went to prison. The U.S. Justice Department ought to go after OPEC the same way, the Prewitts argued.

In rebuttal, OPEC argued that being served with court papers at its Austrian offices was illegal according to Austrian law. That’s true. Believe it or not, Austrian law specifically says no one can serve OPEC with papers without OPEC’s consent. Clearly, OPEC has good lobbyists in Vienna. But should Austrian law trump U.S. law in a U.S. courtroom?

The Prewitts enjoyed an early victory in April 2001, when U.S. District Judge Charles R. Weiner ordered OPEC to stop all price-fixing activities. That injunction quickly was thrown out, however, and the case began anew before another judge, who ultimately agreed with OPEC, ruling there was no possible way to serve OPEC with court papers. The Prewitts’ suit was thrown out in March 2003.

The Prewitts appealed twice but got nowhere, and the case ended in October 2004, when the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed it without comment.

There was very little news coverage of the case, but Timothy Noah’s “Chatterbox” column in Slate provided good, snarky commentary as the case dragged on, with links. Noah was on the Prewitts' side, but let's face it: What fun would OPEC's side be?

Alabama's not-so-big Bigfoot

2006-01-21T23:33:00.000-05:00

Bigfoot stories are as common in Alabama as they are in other rural states. Here's one example of many.

In fall 1960, several people reported seeing apelike creatures in the woods around Clanton, Ala., in the middle of the state between Birmingham and Montgomery. Most of the sightings were in the Walnut Creek area, where I-65 and U.S. 31 intersect south of town.

According to a July 8, 2004, article in The Clanton Advertiser, Clanton County Sheriff T.J. Lockhart made a concrete mold of some alleged footprints, "about the size of a person's foot but looking more like a hand." The sheriff's office kept the mold around for decades but eventually -- alas for science -- threw it away.

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman believes the Clanton sightings were of Bigfoot's smaller Southeastern cousins, often called "swamp apes" or "skunk apes" or "monkey men" or "the little red men of the woods" or, most vividly, "boogers": chimpanzee-like creatures that have been fitfully spotted for 250 years but never (yet) proven to exist.

James M. Smith's Bigfoot Sightings of East Central Alabama details 14 sightings in only four counties: Chambers, Lee, Randolph and Tallapoosa. (To order Smith's book, send $10 to James M. Smith, P.O. Box 6, Wadley, Alabama, 36276-0006.)

Other books on the subject include Sasquatch: Alabama Bigfoot Sightings, again by James M. Smith, and UFO and Bigfoot Sightings in Alabama by Wyatt Cox, which is available on Amazon.

The website of the Alabama Bigfoot Seekers Research Group -- alas again for science -- seems to be defunct, but the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization has picked up the torch.

We begin with an epitaph

2006-01-20T08:36:00.000-05:00

When I was signing books at the Riverfest celebration in Wetumpka, Ala., in 2005, a visitor asked me whether I had heard the famous epitaph from the cemetery in Auburn. I told her I hadn't, and she recited from memory:

As you are now
So once was I
As I am now
You soon will be
So prepare for death
And follow me.

To this, she went on to say, some wag once added graffiti:

I would be content
If I but knew
Which way you went.

I was delighted by this, of course, but some version of this epitaph (and, inevitably, some version of the graffiti) can be found in more Alabama cemeteries than Auburn's. This is one of the most common epitaphs in the English-speaking world, found in cemeteries far and wide.

A list of common variations can be found here.

One documented occurrence in southeast Alabama, though not in Auburn, is the epitaph of Lonie A. Glover (1869-1962) in the Jellico Community Cemetery in Houston County, across the road from Winslette Chapel Methodist Church.

Judith Fowler records Glover's epitaph here, at the invaluable site www.interment.net, where you can browse thousands of cemetery records from around the world.

I'd like to hear about any sightings of this famous epitaph in Alabama, with the specific cemetery information, in Auburn or elsewhere. Where do the lines originate, I wonder?