Jackie Cooper on the Radio - Sunday April 29th

Jackie Cooper wrote a wonderful book called "The Bookbinder" which the Dew reviewed a few months ago. I would like to invite you to hear more from him on GPB. The details are below, straight from Jackie's mouth.

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Hi -

I will be the guest on "Cover To Cover" Sunday night, April 29 at 8PM. This is the monthly book show hosted by St John Flynn on all Georgia Public Broadcasting radio stations. It airs live and lasts for one hour. The show will then repeat on Sunday morning, May 6 at 10AM.

I will be talking about my latest book THE BOOKBINDER and hope you can call in and discuss it with me.

If you do not live in Georgia and can't tune in, you can listen on line at http://www.gpb.org/public/radio/index.jsp

Don't forget to tune in either with your radio or online.

Thanks!


JACKIE K COOPER
Fridays With Jackie
Georgia Public Broadcasting

www.jackiekcooper.com

Step Back in Time at Tannehill State Park

Just a bit southwest of Birmingham, Alabama sits the remains of what was once a prosperous iron-making center before and during the Civil War. Nestled on over one-thousand acres of land and covering three counties, Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park offers a look into the past and provides many hours of enjoyment to the visitors who enter it's gates.

According to the Bessemer Camber of Commerce website, "The Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park is the birthplace of Birmingham's iron and steel industry. Tannehill is presently one of Alabama's most unique state parks. Built around the ruins of the pre-Civil War Tannehill Ironworks, this state park has become an accurate reflection of life in Alabama during the mid-1800's."

In the early and mid 1800's, Tannehill was discovered by a Pennsylvanian, Daniel Hillman, who built the furnaces and dug the rich ore needed to make iron. A couple of years later, Tannehill was taken over by Ninian Tannehill. During the Civil war years, Tannehill's furnaces produced enough iron to supply the Confederate troops with ammunition, cookware and tools before being destroyed by the Union army in 1865.

In the late 70's, one of the iron-producing furnaces was restored. Tannehill became an industrial historical landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as well as being designated as a Civil War Discovery Trail site.

Today, Tannehill offers much to the history-buff and nature-loving tourist. Along with the restored furnace, a 19th century village was built, offering a look into the past with a working grist mill, dairy barn, and cotton gin where artisans display their works with pride. The old Cane Creek schoolhouse from Warrior, Alabama, was moved to Tannehill in 1981 for preservation purposes. It can be seen along with various cabins such as the Nail cabin (originally located near Mt. Olive, Alabama) in which my maternal grandmother's great-great-great grandmother was born. (Today, visitors can rent it overnight for $80.)

The Iron and Steel Museum of Alabama can be found on the premises as well. It features 19th century iron-making technology and genuine Civil War artifacts. For more information, see the museum's website link above.

March through November (every third weekend) offers the Tannehill Trade Days where hundreds of people come to trade and/or purchase everything from common items to antiques. you can't call this one a simple flea market folks!


Also on the premises you can find a sweet shop, the Furnace Master's restaurant, country store, horseback riding, camping, a train ride, fishing and much more.

Special Events include Civil War re-inactments, fishing tournaments, archery championships, a Moon Pie eating contest, car shows, a dulcimer festival, and plenty of holiday entertainment throughout the year.

There are plenty of educational opportunities at Tannehill as well, such as the Tannehill Learning Center which is coordinated through the University of Alabama. Year-round, "school children not only witness how early Alabama schools operated but are exposed to special interpretive programs dealing with iron production, agriculture, Native Americans, plant and animal life, the natural environment and Alabama history".

Tannehill has a lot going on and offers so much for the local population and tourists alike. For more information, please visit the links below.


Mailing Address:
Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park
12632 Confederate Parkway
McCalla, AL 35111
(Park Phone Number) (205) 477-5711


http://www.bhamwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Tannehill_Furnace
http://www.bessemeral.org/Bess_Info.htm
http://www.tannehill.org/tsptoday.html
http://www.stateparks.com/tannehill.html


© 2007 Dana Sieben
www.southerngalgoesnorth.blogspot.com

Dixiepedia - a PC Free Encyclopedia

Harriette Jacobs sent me this site and I think it might be of interest to all ya'll. It's nicely done.

Thanks Harriette for sharing!

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Dixiepedia

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Burkett Street Revisited

The house still stands as an empty, quiet relic paying homage to former, happier years. The ivy no longer covers the brick. The iris are all gone, paved over for parking. The paint peels around its curtainless windows that stare out at the world as if in shock. The six lively children are all grown and gone. The year 1975 is but a sweet memory...and the old homeplace at 536 Burkett will never, ever be the same.

We are cousins, close-knit and caring. It is here, in the warm, bright summers of our lives that we built dreams in the sand, not knowing that we would live to see the sand disappear. Yet time does not erase the dreams and memories. They remain unthwarted. And the six of us remain loyal to each other and the bond that was formed years and summers ago.

The yard is half its previous size and void of care and life. Still, it brings visions of all those adventures created by churning, whirling, innocent minds. Detectives, musicians, gymnasts, bakers, homemakers, tour guides, and safari hunters filled our days and lives until, one by one we each came to terms with the sad reality: No home is safe from change.

Pretension was a great part of our childhood lives. The yard yielded small wild strawberries that we plucked and prepared and pretended to eat. And whenever we hollered into the iron grating that covered the sewer system, we would pretend to call to some stranger in prison, or we would imagine where the underground tunnels would take us. I wonder just how many items we dropped into that culvert and then realized, too late, that they were irretrievable like our youth. If only we had known in time, we would have grasped the days into the palms of our hands as we did the sand—and molded them into a heavily fortressed castle, never to crumble. No amount of pretending will bring back those days. Thank heaven that reality allows us to look back and fondly remember.

The house itself was common. It was brown brick, two-story, practical, and roomy. And still, even the events of our lives, though commonplace as well, have left golden footprints upon our hearts. Each room holds its unique memories-- loving, warm, comfortable memories.

Her kitchen is bare now. Nothing remains but the checkered flooring and wooden cabinets. The pantry door stands ajar to reveal empty shelves. No more sneaking for a Twinkie. No more standing in the straight-backed chair to help wash the dinner dishes. No more watering of the sweetheart vine in the black painted BandAid box that hung in the window. No more...

Gone is the dining room table where Sunday dinner was eaten, and everyone helped themselves to Granny's fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and lima beans.

The big banana pudding bowl has disappeared. Papa no longer smiles from the head of the table with his lovable toothless grin. Even the sunlight finds it hard to shine upon the bare floors through the dirty windowpanes.

The family is not gathered in the living room to open Christmas gifts. Neither do the what-nots sit ceremoniously on the mantle waiting to be demolished by a boisterous game of Nerf ball. There is no braided oval rug to warm the knees of children dressed in Sunday best frills, kneeling to rip into the festive packages. There are no marble lamps to flip a switch and make it all come true.
Even the den seems larger now with the big overstuffed blue couch gone and the baby's playpen retired. Granny's ferns no longer flourish in the windows. Papa's blue work uniforms no longer grace the closet or doorway. Papa no longer enters and reclines and enjoys his daily lunch break. There are no fading refrains from “As the World Turns.”

Even the bathroom has lost all familiar sights, and it no longer smells of Jean Nate' or Camay or hair tonic or Right Guard. The blue tile has faded. The porcelain is chipped and stained. There are no fresh clean towels nor billowing curtains to shade the window.

All the closets echo with nothingness, even though I can still recount the contents one by one. The bathroom closet no longer contains alcohol and bandages, old rags and shoe polish-- no Mercurochrome to heal these wounds.The front hall where Granny's Sunday coat hung still smells faintly of moth balls, and I reach for the transistor radio on the top shelf. But it is gone. The music's faded. And what has become of her old straw fishin' hat and feather duster? Gone with the tubs and tubs of fabric and buttons and patterns. I see Granny digging through them to find the proper notions to whip us up a new outfit. Oh, where has the time gone, old house?

More than anything else, we loved to go upstairs. We rarely got permission to go, and never just to play. Usually we went to clean the dust bunnies out from under the beds or bring canning jars down from the attic. There were two big bedrooms, another bathroom, and even a second telephone, which was unheard of in those days. But no one tinkers with the old Underwood typewriter anymore. There are no feather mattresses or chenille spreads or four poster beds. Only the dust bunnies remain.

I stand alone now in the front yard amidst the nostalgia of my memories. The flowers have all died. Their keepers have gone. An old maintenance truck is parked where my Granny's Grand Torino should be. Papa's red truck has been sold along with all his tools and mowers. Children no longer bounce tennis balls against the wall of his shop, and the greenhouses have been torn down. All the exotic plants he once nurtured are but a memory. The only remnant that remains is the symbol of our childhood safaris—the bamboo patch. What trivial adventures compared to now they were. Nothing is the same at 536 Burkett. Only the house, the empty shell remains.

Today the cousins gather in a different place minus a few dear faces. Granny still cooks the usual fare, and the call to dinner is still heard. All the love has survived as she, the head of the clan, leads us all blessing the bountiful meal. She seems a bit sad as we bow to pray. Even now as we sit reverently I can hear her voice ringing out in the midst of a July morn, ringing across a plywood gate into a picket fenced yard filled with laughing, lighthearted children, calling... “Y'all come to dinner.”

As family, we remain true to each other today. We realize we have a special heritage—that of loving grandparents who taught us to love God and one another. We realize that though the past will never be again, the future is ours. It is there for our children. And though this may be all that ever remains of a common, two-story, brick home, the beautiful album of memories will always be ours for the asking. Each of us has our own contribution. There are many pages left to fill. We keep those scenes pressed to our hearts and protected, realizing that only there will they remain safe and unchanged—unwarped by time or reality.

Written by: C.H. Green
Beneath the Ivy Wreath

The Perfect Time

Her garden was missing one last elegant touch. No ugly birdbath, no clunky cement frog, the treasure Celeste had in mind was beautifully aged by more than a hundred and fifty years of time with a slight patina of pale green lichen shadowed deep between marble folds.

The stone cherub had stood ever vigilant over little Sophia Friederika Prager since April of 1853, when the fifteen month-old toddler succumbed to a yellow fever epidemic that swept New Orleans. Celeste knew exactly where Sophia's family tomb was located in the cemetery - square 1, lot 115. Over the years, she had visited the Prager mausoleum at least once a week, drawn not only by the sadness of the child's death but more so to the exquisitely carved angel that sat atop the arched edifice of the tomb, clutching a stone nosegay that never wilted.

 

For weeks now the statue had whispered to Celeste, the words too low at first, but soon becoming quite audible: "Stay with me". And stay she would, until the falling gloom of evening drove Celeste back home, leaving the cherub alone once again. After the last yellow and white mums were carefully planted just so in her back courtyard garden, Celeste knew the time was perfect.

When Mr. Prioleau, the caretaker, was finally able to return to his home and job after Katrina's wrath, he was saddened by the condition of several of the graves, though Lafayette No. 1 had escaped most of the severest flooding. The hurricane winds preceding the levee breaks had toppled many old urns and statuary, strewn huge tree limbs into the narrow walkways and crashed them into tomb doorways. Square 1 of the cemetery seemed to have caught the worst of the storm, and the caretaker was appalled to find more than one body had floated from its mouldy slumbering place.

That afternoon he came upon a badly damaged tomb. Numbed by the desolation and the slapping of ever-feeding mosquitoes, Prioleau shook his head and said a quick mumbled prayer under the bandanna tied around his nose and mouth which did little to abate the stench. Fortunately, the obviously recently entombed body was prevented from washing away by heavy pieces of stone that had fallen from a pedestal on the tomb's curved cement roof. Odd, the caretaker did not recall a new burial in this section of the cemetery, but they had been on vacation the week before Katrina; perfect timing he had said to his wife, Tildie, many times over in the preceding month. He hastily pushed the remains back into the vault with gloved hands, then pulled a small spiral writing tablet from his back overall pocket and added "Lot #115" for door re-cementing on his list. Perhaps a stone mason could be found to reconstruct the beautiful little cherub statue and return her to her proper place, so Prioleau neatly stacked the pieces next to the mausoleum, being careful to keep the broken stone petals of a little nosegay together.

With hundreds of monetary donations pouring into New Orleans, it was the perfect time to update the old cemetery with repairs that were much needed even before the hurricane...

 

The Cross

“Hey! Stupid!” I turned and looked where the sound projected above the ringing of cashiers and a low rumbling of people talking.

“What are you doing?” Came from the same voice. I finally found the source, which was six feet from the door that I had just entered. A heavyset man at least six feet in height was directly in the face the short fat boy who was bagging his groceries.

“Don’t put the bread there! You’ll crush it!” The man said, taking the bread from the bag boy and forcing it into a large paper sack. For some reason I moved toward the direction of this commotion. By the time I was half way there, the heavyset man had picked up his bags and left the store. That was when I saw the cross. The sight of the
eight-inch wooden cross-had a magnetic pull on my eyes. I hadn’t seen one of these crosses in three or four years. If the cross that this bag boy had had “LOVE” notched out, it had to be one of the crosses I had manufactured for a special educational group that came to clean our church for four months.

“Hello, my name is Phil.” I paused, trying to get the boys attention. The boy’s head was looking straight down at the floor.

“What was the problem?” I asked the boy.

“He didn’t like me. He didn’t like me asking, how he was? The boy replied.

“What’s your name?”

“Toby Alexander. People call me Toby.”

“Toby. Where did you get that cross?”

“From church. We help them clean the church. They gave us these crosses and told we were full of Love because we helped take care of the church.” Toby paused and started to bag the groceries that were handed down the sloping steel platform. I could see a big smile coming to his face. I stepped back and watched this boy talking in a broken speech to the woman who was paying the cashier. The cashier had an irritated look on her face because the bag boy was ruining her concentration in counting the change. “Do you want me to take them to the car, ma’am?” He asked, turning toward me and smiling more, if he possible could have. I noticed the remnants of paint embedded in the cut out places in the wood. This was one of the crosses on which I had hand painted the LOVE in big capital letters.

“Is there anything wrong?” A voice rang out next to me. Turning I could see a tall lean man in a long white cotton coat.

“Is there anything wrong?” the man said again.

“No.” I said pausing again. “I was talking to Toby about his wooden cross.”

“He’s really touchy about that thing. He doesn’t like anyone to touch it. Toby tells everyone at least one time during the day that he was given that cross because God loves him and makes him full of love.” The man in the white coat spoke while looking around to see if anyone
was listening to him. “Don’t tell anyone, especially Toby—whoever comes in contact with it gets this wonderful feeling.” The man said, looking at his watch.

“Can I tell you something strange.” I paused and I looked around to see if anyone else was looking too.

“I made that cross and painted ‘LOVE’ up and down that cross. They had a contract with this outside firm to have these retarded high school kids come and clean the church. They didn’t know the first thing about cleaning anything. They would take a broom and push it on
the floor, then would pick the broom up and walk three steps and start to sweep again. They would take a dust cloth and just touch the wood here and there. During the whole process I was really upset with the church spending all the money on these kids. Then the pastor comes up
about a month and half before the contract runs out and asks me to make these crosses with Love written every which way and then he wanted them in a week’s time. Luckily I was in between jobs or else he wouldn’t have found a sucker to do them. I bet I cut myself thirty times before I was finished with ten crosses.

“He gave one of the crosses to every teenager. I was there that day for some reason, God only knows why. One teenager came downstairs and bought a cold drink out of our vending machine. The kid was beaming with a smile from ear to ear. I went directly to see the guy who was giving them happy pills or something else. The pastor was pulling each teenager off by themselves and talking to them. This Toby was the teenager I saw him talk to at the time, believe it or not. The kid was dragging and had a frown on that any sad clown would want to
wear. The pastor handed the cross to Toby. I was close enough to overhear the preacher. He told Toby how much God loved him that he sent his own son to die just for him. This was a cross just like the one his son died on but that one didn’t have love written on it. Love
was written on this one to tell everyone, that is, the person wearing this cross was full of love and joy. This Love came from God and his son would give happiness to people around whoever wore this cross.

Toby’s face was transformed into the happiest face that I had seen in years. This was a big contrast to my offensive attitude, resulting from my having been without work for six months and being stuck with these loser kids were not a happy or joyous crowd. But seeing Toby’s
infectious happiness and joy made me feel worth something. From that point on I started to look forward to going to the church to supervise these oddball teenagers. In the end I hated to see them leave.” I stopped speaking and quickly looked at my watch.

“I was just running in here to buy some fruit for my trip to Cartersville this afternoon. I have to run. Can I stop by and see Toby again when I come through here?” I asked.

“Sure.” The man in the white coat said.

I visited with Toby for four years. After the second visit with Toby I looked forward to the last leg of my sales trip. I noticed after I left this boy that I felt more refreshed, and the time on the last leg of my trip appeared to be shorter.

I went into the grocery store one day and Toby wasn't there.

“He’s not here,” the store manager said after I asked where Toby was.

“When will he work again?” I asked.

“Who are you?” the manager asked.

“I’m just passing through and I usually take him out to have a vanilla milkshake.” I paused briefly. I had never met this manager before. “I come through every four months and see him. He’s so full of joy and happiness.

We’ve known each other for a couple of years.” I stopped for the manager to speak. There was a dead silence that I dreaded when I was selling. The move would be the customer’s and I had done everything but sign the order for him.

“Is there something wrong with Toby?” I finally said, looking directly at the manager. The man was quiet for a long time.

“He’s dead,” the man said, in a dry breaking voice.

“It’s been so hot in the past couple of months. Toby never missed a day of work. Heck. He’d come in the afternoon when he was off and help.” The man paused again, trying to catch his composure.

“One day, the beginning of last month, he started complaining about being cold. You know, he never complained. He was always full of joy and trying to make people laugh. You could tell he cared about the person he was talking to.” The man stopped and looked around to see if
anyone could see him. Over the past couple of visits I had finally come to understand what this boy had that I enjoyed sharing with him.

“About three in afternoon, he started to shake like a leaf in the wind. He didn’t want to leave work. I was the one that took him to the emergency room. They had to fight with him to get that old cross off him.

“He never returned.” The man stopped speaking and looked at the floor of the grocery store.

“They told me he had pneumonia. Well, that was it for him.” The man said, looking directly at me. I was speechless.

“Well, his kind don’t last long anyway.” The manager said.

“Where do his folks live?” I said, giving the manager a disgusted look.

“They moved up north somewhere after the funeral.” The manager followed up. .

“Well, thanks for the info,” I replied. “Did they bury the cross with him?”

“I believe that they did. Sally, the woman over there on the cash register, told us Toby held on to that cross to the very end.” The manager said pointing to the brunette at the third register. I smiled.

In my car I opened up my large address book and found the ‘T’ section. I took my black felt pen and made two wide marks on Toby’s name.

One more person with ‘love’ to leave this world. I thought while closing the felt pen and throwing it down on the floorboard.

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Written by: Franklin P. Smith
Oral Renditions of his stories may be found at "Tales from the Smokehouse" http://franklinpsmithstoryteller.com

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