Cullman Good Life Magazine - Fall 2015

Cullman County

The ladies at Seven Winds Kitchen can cook more than Bert’s Brittle From the get-go, Cheri and Ronny Apel felt at home in their château Fall 2015 Complimentary

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Welcome

Steve James goes far beyond lethal porcupine quills

This issue starts our third year for Cullman County Good Life Magazine.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every story I’ve written because you folks are both nice and … well, pretty darn interesting.

Steve James is a case in point.

He’s the only person to ever give me a miniature red elephant carved from soapstone and a porcupine quill that looks lethal enough to, in a dire emergency, kill a real elephant.

But what’s more interesting about Steve is the organization he founded: KenyaRelief.org. Many know about it, but you can learn more about the efforts of Steve and the volunteers he’s recruited in the interview starting on page 16.

I have a few stats on KenyaRelief.org that didn’t fit into the story, but I share them here because ... well, they’re pretty darn interesting.

Since 2003: • 1,400 doctors, nurses and pharmacists have served on relief teams to Kenya; • 70,000 patients have been treated with free medicine; • Thousands of surgical procedures have been performed; • 24 40-foot containers filled with 1 million pounds of medical equipment and supplies have been shipped; • Five water wells have been drilled and two large filtration systems have

been installed; • 750,000 nutritious meals have been shipped to Kenya; • A 300-bed community hospital has been designed and is awaiting funding.

This is just the healthcare impact.

They minister, school, house and reach out to human beings with dire needs.

Actually, the porcupine quill Steve gave me is merely interesting. But KenyaRelief.org is amazing.

If you’d like to help or join the effort, visit: www.kenyarelief.org.

Fueling Your Life In Cullman County

...For Jet-Pep

There’s a just down the road from you

Publisher/editor

Contributors If she were not busy running Deb’s Bookstore, Deb Laslie might spend her entire life with her nose in a book ... or pose in a book, as the case might be. But her love of, and voracious appetite for reading, and her willingness to work for nothing make her perfect for writing book reviews in Good Life Magazine.

Patrick Oden is a true photographer. with a professionally trained eye. In this issue you can see nine of the many great shots he took for his story on the Baileyton drag strip.

The assignment required shooting a selfie, and he sent several to the editor. If you see him, ask his about the self-portrait that didn’t run ...

As advertising and art director of Good Life Magazine in Cullman and Marshall counties, Sheila McAnear has managed to stay very busy. That’s been upped a notch since GLM, we’re pleased to say, was asked to produce this year’s Oktoberfest magazine. If you see a short, blonde blur zip past you, that was Sheila.

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AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

Maybe living in New Canaan has something to do with it. But in the 13 years that Steve Maze published “Yesterday’s Memories,” he compiled a vast collection of stories from the past. All are interesting, but some are just off the wall wild. Such is the case with his offering in our fall magazine.

It’s truly amazing how much Alabama Cooperative Extensive Service people know. Cullman Extension coordinator Tony Glover is no exception. In his current article he explains that to measure how much you water your grass, set out a tuna or cat food can. He says he likes tuna better. How can he know that?

Publisher/editor David Moore sometimes hops on a dangerous train of thought. Facing days of busy projects he wants to rush through them, hurry, get them done. That’s bad thinking. Those busy days count just as much as all of the others. And we only have so many days. Don’t rush any of them.

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Inside 11 Good Fun

Farm Y’all and Oktoberfest are just a start

16 Good People

Steve James discusses where his heart is

20 Good Reads

Modern murder and a good ol’ western

22 Good Eats

Thai food at a donut shop? You bet

27 Good Cooking

On the cover: Justin Loyd, Sophia Machem and Ashley Wilson ride mountain bikes on part of the trail that will encompass the Duck River reservoir. This page: a fountain on grounds of Cheri and Ronny Apel’s house shoots a festive 20-foot column of water into the air.

Recipes from Seven Winds Kitchen

32 There’s no place like home

And that goes for the French château that is home to Cheri and Ronny Apel

40 Good ’n’ Green

Make your yard a “Smart Yard”

42 Snake Man

Rufus Mann was known for handling deadly snakes and eating, yep, glass

44 The Duck River trail

Get a look at what the future holds for mountain bikes and a 650-acre lake

52 Drag racing

A visit to the Good Time Drag Strip leads to attempts to revive an old truck

A Noticeably Better Real Estate Service Has Come To Town

59 Antiques

Handy tips for when you go “junking”

62 Out ’n’ About

‘Havin’ Fun’ is more than a boat name

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Sheila T. McAnear Advertising/art Director 256-640-3973 sheila.goodlifemagazine@gmail.com

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Vol. 3 No. 1 Copyright 2015 Published quarterly

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2015

Oktoberfest – a great celebration of Cullman’s German heritage and its love of fun – returns Oct. 7-11

Cullman

The 34th Celebratio Annual nO German H f Our eritage October 7 -11

O

ktoberfest is a most appropriate festival for the city founded by a Col. John Cullmann, a resourceful German refugee who in 1873 founded a German colony alongside the train tracks in north central Alabama.

Today 18.4 percent of the population is German, but many from the other 81.6 percent flock to the annual Oktoberfest the city holds. Whatever your background, the city and the Oktoberfest Board of Directors invites you to the 34th annual celebration, this year on Oct. 7-11.

Cullman’s four-day volkfest – as Oktoberfest is called in Munich, home of the original – will include all of the church- and restaurantsponsored German feasts, a biergarten, bratwurst eating and beer mug holding contests, crazy fun like bed races, lots of good music, and, yes, some people dressed in sennerhuts and lederhosen or dirndls.

Take historic district tours, find deals at retail stores, sample great barbecue at the cook-off and attend the Burgermeister ball. Much of the fun takes place in and around the Cullman Festhalle, including a car show and arts and crafts. Other events are planned across town.

For the official schedule of all Oktoberfest events, see Oktoberfest magazine, which will be available the first week of September.

Here’s where you can get your free Oktoberfest magazine Copies of Oktoberfest magazine can be picked up from any of these fine advertisers and community supporters while their stock lasts: • Apel Machine • Apel Steel • Bill Smith Buick, GMC • Busy Bee Cafe • Carriage Service • Christ Lutheran Church • Cullman County Economic Development Agency • Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry • Cullman Economic Development Agency • Cullman Electric Co-op • Cullman Power Board • Cullman-Jefferson Gas • Cullman Savings Bank 10

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

• Dairy Queen • Deb’s Bookstore • Doyle Real Estate • Dr. Wayne Fuller, Fuller Optical • East Side Barber Shop • Eidson & Associates • Ekenrod Ford • Festhalle Farmers Market Committee • First Community Bank • Freedom Insurance • Friends of Frankweiler • Heritage Pharmacy • Johnny’s Barbecue • Live 95.5 • Luyben & Boike • Mary Carter • McGriff Tires • Mental Healthcare of Cullman • Merchant’s Bank • Mitch Smith Chevrolet • O.F. Richter & Sons • Peoples Bank

Your Co m

plimenta

ry Copy

• Pepsi Cola • REHAU • ReMax BJC • St. John’s Evangelical Church • St. John’s Church • St. John and Associates • St. Paul’s Lutheran • Sacred Heart School • Sacred Heart Alter Society • TP Country Club • Tradition’s Bank • United Way • What a Girl Wants • Wallace State Community College • Werner’s Trading Company Magazines can also be picked up at Cullman Museum, City Hall, Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce and the info table at Oktoberfest. NOTE: Some stores, companies and supporters might have purchased ads in the magazine after this issue of Cullman County Good Life Magazine went to press.

Good Fun

Yep, you know what this means ... now, here are the details F

arm Y’all returns Saturday, Aug. 29, for the Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce’s third successful celebration of the farmto-fork, buy-local-eat-local movements and local agriculture in general.

Y’all know what that means.

It’s how we celebrate our agricultural backbone. After all, we are Alabama’s top producing county, ringing up nearly $1 billion dollars in agriculture sales that provide more than 15,000 jobs.

And we, and the neighboring counties we sell to, do as good a job as anyone in the state in eating what we grow. Farm to fork fresh.

So come on down to the Festhalle and Depot Park between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. as thousands of have done the past two years, and you can …

• See pumpkin, gourd and watermelon contests that draw producers from near and far. In 2014, Fairview’s Trent Boyd set the record for the largest pumpkin grown in the state – 1,092 pounds.

• Hey, y’all, watch this! At 3 p.m. we hoist a humongous pumpkin up on a big crane and drop it. Now that’s funny.

• Farm Y’all is serious about the fun side of cooking, too. So you can see celebrity chefs give cooking demonstrations – and tastings – with farm fresh products in front of the old train depot:

10-10:45 a.m. – Randall Baldwin with Dyron’s Low Country 11 a.m. – Special presentation with Arnold Caylor, director of the North Alabama Horticulture Research Center 11:15 a.m. - noon – to be announced 12:30 - 1:15 p.m. – Carrie’s Kitchen, Huntsville 1:45 - 2:30 p.m. – Matt Heim with All Steak

N

aturally, a bumper crop of fresh fruit and veggies will be for sale. Find herds of ag exhibitors and arts and crafts vendors in the park. Pitch horse shoes, join a sack race, play corn hole, visit the petting zoo or brave a ride on the mechanical bull.

After you ride the bull, you’ll find plenty of food vendors to keep you from starving, and live bands and other entertainment underway at the big tent to keep you smiling.

If you really want to indulge in the best and freshest of what Cullman produces, feast at the Farm-to-Fork Dinner on Aug. 22, prepared by chefs Neville Baay and Brian Somershield, who have spiced up the Birmingham culinary scene. Order tickets and learn more at: farmyall.com. Best hurry. Tickets go fast, y’all.

Fall to-do list: classical piano, catch $10,000 bass, eat wings, see football, see films, go kayaking, go to the county fair ... out of breath yet? Do a reverse triathlon • Now through Sept. 30 The works of 16 southern artists displayed at the Burrow Sculptors Invitational Exhibit can be viewed for free at the Evelyn Burrow Museum at Wallace State Community College.

Participating sculptors are Kenneth Baskin, Aaron Tennessee Benson, Walter Black, Randy Gachet, Georgia Jones Godwin, Nelson Grice, Darius Hill, Mircea Lacatus, April Livingston, Jim Neel, Matthew Patterson, “Warrior,” a self portrait by sculpture Matthew Patterson, is one of the striking sculptures in the invitational exhibit at the Burrow Museum.

Phillip Scarpone, William Squires, Linda Walden, Leslie Wood, and Collin Williams.

Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.

For more info call: 256-352-8457.

• Now through Sept. 30 – National Watercolor Society (NWS) exhibit See the best of the best. The Evelyn Burrow Museum at Wallace State Community College is hosting the traveling selection of 30 top pieces from the NWS 94th International Exhibition, which was drawn from 850 entries from across the U.S., Europe, Africa, China and Southeast Asia.

The pieces reflect the versatility and energy of the rich array of cultural context and content AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

11

The Grand Canyon is a stop on the WSCC Alumni Association December trip.

Learn more on Aug. 18 expressed in contemporary watermedia.

The show, subject to change, will hang in the Burrow Center for Fine and Performing Arts exhibit hall and will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.

Admission is free.

• Aug. 1 – Kayak the Hiawassee Even if you have not taken kayak classes through Cullman Park and Recreation, you can still take its trip Saturday to the Hiawassee River in Tennessee. Cost is only $35, which includes equipment, but you need to call today for info: CP&R, 256-734-9157.

CP&R will hold kayaking classes on

Tuesday nights for six weeks starting in September. Cost is $100 and includes equipment and access to the city pool.

The classes end with a river trip. Call for info.

• Aug. 6 – Dive in with “Pirates” Starting a 6 p.m. this Saturday, the Cullman Wellness and Aquatic Center will open the pool for a family “divein” showing of “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” on its big poolside screen. You can also access the water park, all for only $5 (members admitted free).

• Aug. 18 – Plan a cool trip Pick a trip – Sedona and Arizona desert in December; Costa Rica in

January or April; Pacific Northwest from San Francisco to Portland in June; Civil War trail next September.

If any of those sound cool, you can attend the travel showcase hosted by the Wallace State Community College Alumni Association, which is sponsoring the trips. Participating tour groups will answer all your questions and whet your travel appetite.

Make your down payment at the meeting, $250-$350, and qualify for a drawing to win it back. You don’t have to be an alumni member, but if you are you get a discount on whatever trip (or trips) you take.

The showcase is 5:30-6:30 p.m.,

Tuesday, Aug. 18, on the 12th floor of the WSCC’s James C. Bailey Center.

For more information, contact: LaDonna Allen, 256-352-8071 or ladonna.allen@wallacestate.edu; or Natalie Godwin, 256-352-7808 or natalie.godwin@wallacestate.edu.; or visit events under www.wsccalumni.org.

• Aug. 14 – Midnight Run The race starts at Cullman Civic Center and follows a course through the streets of town.

The 2015 Midnight Run will feature a new black-light themed race with color stations on the course where neon colors that glow under black lights will be thrown at runners. A pre-race and post-race party will take place at the finish line where runners will also receive free glow-in-the-dark goodies.

The race will be professionally timed, and serious runners will have the option to bypass the color stations. The top three runners in each category will receive medals, and overall winners will get cash prizes.

Registration is open through Aug. 14 at the Cullman Civic Center, any location

of EvaBank – the sponsor – or online at www.active.com.

For more information, contact: Waid Harbison, CP&R, at 256-734-9157 or wharbison@cullmanrecreation.org.

• Sept. 5-7 – Sweet Tater Festival Celebrate the extended Labor Day weekend with the 20th Annual Sweet Potato Festival, which returns to Smith Lake Park to accommodate the expected crowd of 5,000 people. Hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Admission is $3, good for the whole weekend. About 100 vendors will sell arts, crafts and food, and there will be fun activities for the whole family.

Entertainment includes: Saturday, Winston Ramblers (10-12), contests and events (12-2) and Derick Aldredge (2-4); Sunday, Ammie Teichmielier (10-12), Union Grove Bluegrass (12-2), Clog Wild (2-3) and Kingsmen Quartet (3-4); Monday, Bama Country (10-12), Branch Boys Band (12-1) and country-bluegrass headliner Ray Sparks of Hartselle (1-4).

There will be sweet taters and T-shirts for sale. Proceeds from these help maintain Dowling Memorial Park in

Crane Hill, where the festival was held until it outgrew the facility.

Aug. 14 is deadline for vendors.

Want to be a part of the festival? For more info call: Denise at Smith Lake Park, 256-739-2916.

• Sept. 19 – Wing Street The former Cluck ‘n’ Brew – now Wing Street – will overflow Depot Park this Saturday as the popular event combines with the annual Celebrate Cullman.

Wing Street is 3-10 p.m. at the park and Festhalle and includes the big wings cook-off and televised football at the game day tent. Admission is free and you can buy cluck ‘n’ brew, too.

Cullman Merchants Association is extending the party from the Warehouse District on through town with free kids rides, games, activities, a craft show and much more. Live music is being lined up and will probably perform near Moe’s BBQ through midnight.

• Sept. 12 – reverse triathlon The Link of Cullman County will hold its second Reverse the Cycle

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the Cullman Civic Center will feature hundreds of creations by gourd artists.

Great for unique Christmas gifts.

Theme for this year is “Alabama the Gourdgeous.” You can also buy raw gourds, and if you’re a kid you can decorate a gourd for free.

Show hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Saturday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday.

Admission is $3; kids under 12 free when accompanied by an adult.

Last year more than 200 racers from seven different states, including 50 kids, participated in the The Link’s first Reverse the Cycle Triathlon.

The event raised almost $20,000 for the non-profit group.

Sprint Triathlon starting at 7:30 a.m.

Saturday at Cullman Wellness and Aquatic Center.

It’s open to anyone 7 or older. The children’s race will consist of a 1-mile run, 2-mile bike ride and 50-yard swim. Adults can race – 2-mile run, 8-mile bike and 200-yard swim – individually or as a relay team.

Preregister by Aug. 13 and entry fees are $30 for kids, $50 for adults and $80 for relay teams; prices increase after that.

The triathlon is sponsored

by Urgent Care Center and Cullman Regional Medical Center Orthopedics and Sports Medicine.

Proceeds support The Link’s efforts in reversing the cycle of poverty through encouragement, education and employability training. For more information about The Link and to register, visit or call: www. linkingcullman.org/events; or 256-7750028.

• Sept. 24- Oct. 3 – Fair time The Cullman County Fair, sponsored by the Cullman Lions Club, will be wide

open at Sportsman’s Park for 10 days featuring the unique sights, sounds, smells, chills and thrills that have made it successful since 1954. There will be nightly pageants or entertainment at 7 p.m., including the The Matt Chapel Band from Tennessee on Sept. 30. Of course there also will be lots of exhibits, prizes and rides on the big midway.

Fairgrounds admission is free for kids 10 and under and “kids” over 55; $7 for all others. Buy individual tickets for rides, or $22 armbands for a day of unlimited rides will be sold at the fair or, through Sept. 26, at Peoples Bank (these also get you in the gate for free).

Gates open at 5 p.m. weeknights and 2 p.m. both Saturdays and Sunday.

Sponsored by Peoples Bank, all students are admitted to the fairground for free, noon-6 p.m. Monday.

Senior citizen day is 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Wednesday.

For more information, call: 256-7340661; or visit: www.cullmanfair.com.

• Oct. 17-18 – Big gourd show The 2014 Alabama Gourd Show at

• Sept. 15 – Kevin Johnson Cullman Community Concert Association kicks off its 66th season Tuesday night with laughs by Kevin Johnson.

Hilariously appreciated by audiences of all ages for his clean comedy, Johnson is billed as an outstanding entertainer and has performed over 9,000 shows at Legoland in California.

He’s a two-time winner of “Best Male Performer” by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions He’s appeared on “Late Night with David Letterman.” “America loves you,” said America’s Got Talent, and Funworld Magazine called Johnson “seriously funny.”

The show starts at 7 p.m. in the Betty Leeth Haynes Theatre at Wallace State. Season tickets, or memberships, are $60 for an adult, $35 for a student.

Tickets at the door are $30. For more information or to order, call: Kathy Scruggs, 256-339-4447 or Lavell Thrasher, 256-590-6637; or visit: www. cullmancommunityconcertassociation. com.

• Sept. 17 – Free film “I Will Dance” kicks off Wallace State Community College’s independent film

season with a free showing at 6 p.m.

Thursday in the recital hall at the Burrow Center for Fine and Performing Arts.

Directed by Joseph East, the documentary is set against the backdrop of segregated institutions and the social ills in Selma, where a group of poor youth are seeking to break the cycles of familial and societal norms, to find their own voice, by joining the Random Acts of Theatre Company.

The film follows them to New York City, where they share their stories through an original show written and choreographed by the participants themselves; in the process, they discover their own voices.

For more info: 256-352-8457.

• Oct. 5 – Svetlana Smolina The Cullman Community Concert Association season continues with a Tuesday night piano performance by Svetlana Smolina.

Her traditional classical programming, backed with international pedigree, offers top-notch concert experience The New York Times calls “mesmerizing.”

Smolina took top honors at Citta di Senigalia International Piano Competition in Italy and has appeared with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall and the Mariinsky Orchestra at Carnegie. Along with appearances in Moscow, Rome and Hollywood Bowl, she records for Decca and Deutche Grammaphone.

The concert starts at 7 p.m. in the

Betty Leeth Haynes Theatre at Wallace State. Tickets are $30 at the door. For more information or to order, call: Kathy Scruggs, 256-339-4447 or Lavell Thrasher, 256-590-6637; or visit: www. cullmancommunityconcertassociation. com.

• Oct. 15 – Free film “1971” continues Wallace State Community College’s independent film season with a free showing at 6 p.m. Thursday in the recital hall at the Burrow Center for Fine and Performing Arts.

Today’s concerns about surveillance of citizens echoes in “1971,” the true story of eight ordinary citizens who broke into an FBI office and took hundreds of secret files.

The FBI’s huge investigation of the break-ins turned up nothing before news reports lead to a congressional investigation of the bureau and laws curtailing surveillance of citizens. The film ends with break-in participants explaining why, after 40 years, they broke their silence.

For more info: 256-352-8457.

• Oct. 3 – Win $10,000 or a bass boat Go fishin’ and festin’ at Smith Lake Park annual Bass Fest.

On the tournament side, online deadline to fish is Sept. 25; registration fee is $125. Best stringer wins $10,000, big fish nets $2,500 and there are payouts to top 40 teams,

top college team and top parent-child team.

Be the first to turn in an exact 3-pound bass and win a new Phoenix 920 XP boat and 250 Merc from Freedom Marine.

On the fun, fest side, entertainment, arts, crafts and food vendors will be at Smith Lake Park from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Meet Bassmaster Elite pro Kevin Hawk.

For tourney registration call: Tony Harris, 256-338-8367. For vendor info, call Denise, 256-739-2916.

• Oct. 27 – Mike Farris Mike Farris brings his exhilarating R&B vocal talents and genredefying style to the Cullman Concert Association’s program Tuesday night.

He performs with five-piece band featuring hit songs from Billboard’s top 100 of 1969.

Formerly with Stevie Ray Vaughn, Farris provides “blue-eyed soul to soothe the spirit,” according to the AP. He was awarded “New and Emerging Artist of the Year” by the Americana Music Association in 2008 and in 2010 won the Dove Award for “Best Traditional Gospel Album.”

The concert starts at 7 p.m. in the Betty Leeth Haynes Theatre at Wallace State. Tickets are $30 at the door. For more information or to order, call: Kathy Scruggs, 256-339-4447 or Lavell Thrasher, 256-590-6637; or visit: www. cullmancommunityconcertassociation. com.

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15

Good People

5questions Story and photo by David Moore

M

igori, Kenya, is 8,018 miles from Cullman, but for Steve James it’s as close as his heart.

About five times a year his work as founder and CEO of KenyaRelief.org takes him to this area of green hills and stark poverty in western Kenya. He’ll spend 10-20 days per trip with medical teams and other volunteers at the nonprofit organization’s 60-acre compound.

It’s an oasis of hope and opportunity in a sea of despair, gripping tribalism and little help from a Kenyan government often prone to corruption.

Steve, a nurse anesthetist by profession, spends two or three months per year fundraising across the country, recruiting and training medical mission teams and accumulating surgical and other supplies.

Headquartered in Cullman, his non-profit, faith-based organization has done – and continues to do – much for the Kenyan people. Steve says that’s because God works through the thousands of individuals, churches, civic groups, hospitals and companies that have caught the heart and vision of KenyaRelief.org.

“Thirty-five hundred people have made Kenya trips from across the country,” Steve says. “We’ve probably had 200 from Cullman County who have gone with us. They have left their mark.”

Their good works, however, grew from a seed of great sorrow.

In September 2001, Steve and Greta James’s middle child, Brittney, 19, was found dead in her apartment in Asheville, N.C., where she attended college.

A caring person, Brittney had gotten a job at age 16 so she could send $24 monthly through the Christian 16

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

Steve James

Wherever he happens to be traveling, you’ll find his heart is in Migori, Kenya Children’s Fund to support a povertystricken child in Kenya named Newton.

“She had wanted to work with children,” says Steve.

Utterly shattered by Brittney’s death, he and Greta visited friends who’d lost a son 10 years earlier.

“We sat in their living room trying to figure out why something like this happens in your life,” he recalls. “They suggested it might be good to do something in her memory. I knew then that I needed to go see Newton.”

S

o Steve began planning a trip to Kenya.

“I wasn’t even sure if Newton was real,” he says.

Steve soon realized he could put his training to good use there, and signed up with a Catholic mission team set to visit the area in a year. Through the internet he learned of a hospital in dire need in Migori and became pen pals with the administrator and his wife, Joseph and Mary, as it turned out.

“He shared his needs,” Steve says.

“I could not believe what he was telling me. I didn’t want to wait a year to go.”

With help from Jay Weatherly, then head of Cullman Regional Medical Center, Steve collected a pallet’s worth of surplus medical equipment from CRMC – which would be state-ofthe-art in Kenya – and followed it to Joseph and Mary’s hospital in March 2002.

Steve found that Newton was real.

While that was heart-warming, nearly everything else he found in Kenya was heart-wrenching. Conditions were more like concentration camps he’d once visited in Germany than a hospital.

“There were 75 patients, 50 of them dying from HIV/AIDS,” he says. “I had a similar feeling from visiting Dachau. The things human beings had to endure …”

In Brittney’s memory, Steve set out to change that, to offer hope to people in Kenya.

1.

There’s a story of an old man on a beach where countless starfish have washed up for miles on end, and he’s tossing them back in the ocean one at time before the sun dries and kills them. A young man questions his efforts, saying so many starfish are dying that the old man can’t hope to make a difference. The old man tosses another one back in the water and says, “It made a difference to that one.”

How do you relate to that story?

If one starfish was on the seashore, if one person was suffering, I would help. Fortunately, I’m not a single person. There are many of us. We’ve made a difference in thousands and thousands of lives, and everybody who gets involved with us increases that number.

Like Brittney said one time, “If you dropped a pebble into the ocean and could measure the impact, it would go a long, long way.”

I spend time in Kenya. I have missionaries and employees there. I hear all the time the impact we have.

If you help one blind person there, you really help the whole family.

When I am over there working with children, I always try to think of them as my own, to think how I would want someone to treat my child.

It’s normal to think the problems are so far away and are so big there is nothing you can do. But that is not true.

The blessing of seeing that kind of lifestyle in Kenya is to begin to understand the discrepancy and disparity in life. I have been given so much so that I can help those who have not.

We do make a difference. It’s

Snapshot: Steve James

Early life: Cullman native moved to Chicago with parents Faye and the late Conrad James. Returned to Vinemont, where his mother still lives, in ninth grade. Graduated Cullman High in 1969.

Education: Attended Calhoun Community College before his Aunt Becky Brown of Guntersville inspired him to become a nurse like her. Earned nursing degree from Wallace State Community College in 1975.

In 1982 graduated as a CRNA (certified registered nurse anesthetist) at Southeast Alabama Medical Center in Dothan.

Early career: 1976, cardiac nurse at Baptist Medical Center Little Rock, Ark. Later was a CRNA 17 years in North Little Rock. Transferred to Cullman Regional Medical Center in 1997 when his father became ill. Worked at Vaughn Regional Medical Center in Selma 2012-2013.

Family: 1973, married Greta Southerland, a nurse in Little Rock. Their daughter Brittney died in 2001; son Mark is a social worker and lives in Los Angeles with granddaughter Zoey; son Joshua of Cullman has art degree.

Other activities: Was top fundraising Relay for Life team leader at CRMC. A former deacon and Sunday school teacher, he attends St. John’s Evangelical Protestant Church and Daystar Church.

reach the same dreams that we have.

We want to give them hope, but there is much This year, 23 despair.

We provide teams of volunteer medical healthcare for all we can, professionals will make 11but some of the people get day trips to western Kenya turned way.

They go home to treat 400-450 patients per and suffer from things that trip, what you’ve called “a are correctable. drop in the bucket.” What They are a Godly people. are the status and needs of They pray for help. And God the KenyaRelief.org’s effort has sent many people – and to establish a full-time, fullparticularly KenyaRelief.org service hospital to serve the – to answer those prayers. two million people in the God uses people.

We are region? faith-based. That is what drives us. But we are not It’s a phased project. We under a particular church. already have $110,000 of We are people who want engineering construction to make a difference in the plans. We own the land. world. We welcome people The Rotary Club out of from all backgrounds to Montgomery provided help us. We treat those who $60,000 to fund two wells participate with us with and water towers. the same respect we do our We are planning ahead. patients.

We already have the That’s really what Africa doctors, the nurses. We have needs.

The problems are warehouses with modern denominations, tribalism and surgical equipment. We have ignorance.

And KenyaRelief. the know-how. org stands strong on those It’s funding we need, and issues. We bring people we need $2 million for the Steve James gives anesthesia for pediatric surgery patient. together by demonstrating first phase of construction, a Photos these two pages provided by KenyaRelief.org. acceptance and diversity and new surgery center. a willingness to focus on the I hope that we can start caring for seven children, only one of things we agree on and not construction in January of which we could take to the orphanage. the things we disagree on.

2016. We could conceivably do that.

The medical trips are deep That’s the biggest battle really.

The $2 million would build a five-bed exposures to life in western Kenya.

Sending X-ray machines and doctors operating room. We would convert our Once they see what it’s like, their is easy.

It’s sticking to the important current building into a patient ward. lives are touched like mine was.

They issues in life that can be hard.

We have multiple fundraisers and find it to be one of the most profound People ask what my favorite part of grants in process with USAID. I am experiences of their life. mission work is. I like to see the blind traveling across the country speaking regain their sight. I like to see orphans and participating in fundraisers. given opportunity.

But my favorite part What is your definition of hope Most of our money comes from is seeing the hand of God work in the in terms of providing for orphans in doctors and nurses, many of whom lives of the teams that go to Kenya.

Kenya? make trips to Kenya. We have a I love to see someone wake up huge following in Kentucky, Florida, and see that the reason we have been Hope is something that every human Chicago and New York. We have six blessed with so much in this country being needs in life. teams – and growing – out of Detroit is so we can give something back to When we go to Kenya we bring with every year. others. us a respect and dignity for the value We now have limited surgery of every human being. It requires us to capacity with teams performing 60-70 listen to them, to find out their needs in The work of KenyaRelief.org operations over three days. On their life – spiritual, physical or economic. has benefitted and saved thousands trips they also go to a church, visit a We want to help them believe in of people in Africa. Can you explain home where orphans came from. Such themselves and to empower them to how this work has benefitted and saved homes might have a grandmother measurable. It’s powerful.

The stories are endless.

2.

3.

4.

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Steve James and perhaps others who have volunteered their time and talents?

Purpose. I see the same thing explode in the lives of those on our teams: an explosion of purpose.

Everybody has to ask what he or she has to give in life. Our education, the traumas we go through … all of these things make a person unique, special.

There are things they can do that no one else can do.

This purpose lives in them. It’s something new and exciting that lives in the people who have been to Kenya.

Thousands and thousands of lives have changed for every person who says, “Here I am Lord. Use me.” It’s amazing. It’s purpose. And everybody is looking for meaning and purpose in life.

5.

Many people in Cullman County have heard about KenyaRelief.org over the years, but they might not know about the meaning behind the organization’s logo. Can you explain the fingerprint on the map of Africa?

Founded in 2002, the organization was initially called Brittney Ann James Newton Child Fund. That was shortened to Brittney James Child Fund. The vision has grown, but it started out to help a little hospital and a little boy.

Our first logo included a photo of hands that represented Newton and Brittney’s hands holding a globe showing Africa. It symbolized the outreach in Africa.

About three years later KenyaRelief. org was born. A market firm had done a study for us and the new logo was part of it.

The thumbprint over the map represents people leaving their mark on Africa. It goes along with what we are really trying to do – not only to help Kenyans but to help the people involved leave their mark on the world.

I wish it were Brittney’s actual thumbprint on the logo. I would change that if I had her print, but I don’t.

Still, really, in a way, it is her mark.

She believed one person could make a difference. Not only is that true, but, collectively, a group can change the world.

Good Life Magazine

Hundreds of people from Cullman have volunteered their services to KenyaRelief. org. Among them are: nurse practitioner and KenyaRelief.org board member Cindy Hawkins, top, smiling with her sponsored child; Dr. Scott Warner, a pulmonologist, assisting a Portuguese surgery team in Kenya; below, gynecologist Dr. Glori Short offering bedside assurance to a surgery patient.

Good Reads

‘Eeny Meeny’: Who will live?

Who will die? It’s a wild ride

Johnstone will delight fans, convert others to westerns

f you enjoy a wild ride of a thriller, a plot full of twists, great characterization and superb writing, you will love “Eeny Meeny,” the debut novel from M.J. Arlidge.

British Detective Inspector Helen Grace has worked her way up through the ranks from constable on patrol.

Rubberneckers … ghouls, She’s smart, thorough, feeding on the misfortune fierce, intimidating, loyal and determined to stop the of others. And yet which killings. of us can say we wouldn’t Two people are look? That we haven’t abducted, imprisoned, and looked, as we crawled past left with a gun. As hunger and thirst set in, only one a motorway pileup or idled walks away alive. This by a police cordon. What happens multiple times. are we looking for? Signs of Interviews with survivors life? Or signs of death? reveal that the abductions are personal; they point back to Helen, making the stakes even higher. The pressure on her and her team is immense.

Written with a steady increase in pace and suspense, I couldn’t put the book down. I was as invested in catching this killer as Helen. Who would live? Who would die? And who would choose?

True evil comes in many forms. Sometimes that evil looks very familiar. “Eeny Meeny.”

– Deb Laslie

he western genre is one hundred percent Americana, and nobody does a western like William W. Johnstone (except, of course, Louis L’Amour). Fans of Johnstone’s Mountain Man series will be delighted to see a new series featuring Smoke Jensen’s long lost twin nephews, Ace and “Hey, Jensens! Better Chance.

“Those Jensen Boys!” come out with empty is another in the tradition hands where I can see of bad guys and good you if you don’t want guys, good women anything to happen to and soiled doves. The characters are strong, this pretty little girl!” The feisty and loyal to a fault, cry of pain from Emily or really, really bad. Ace that followed those words and Chance Jensen will stabbed into Ace and help those two young ladies deliver that mail on turned his blood cold. time, despite a crooked sheriff, a blood-thirsty mine owner and rumor of a train spur heading to the valley.

Western fiction is a pleasure to read. Easy on the eyes and mind, and harkening back to a time when the answers were simpler.

I love a great western. If you haven’t read one in a long time, or you thought the genre was for men only, give a western a try. Give “Those Jensen Boys!” a try.

– Deb Laslie

I

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Good Eats

Jennifer’s yum seafood salad has a nicely spiced dressing over shrimp, crab and calamari.

Donuts and ... Thai food?

Uncommon combo is uncommonly good and comes with an uncommon story to boot

Story and photos by David Moore

C

ullman has a Thai restaurant, its great food cooked-from-scratch. If you love Thai, that’s all you really need to know … well, that and the important but curious fact that the name of the restaurant is Cullman Donuts.

You don’t really have to know that Cambodian co-owner Hun Nary “Jennifer” Sarypang was 13 when Khmer Rouge guerrillas executed members of her extended family, that her parents and siblings were separated, banished into forced labor at collective farms.

You don’t really have to know the sordid tale of Jennifer’s first husband, her 22

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

The shop is located at 1410 U.S. 31 struggles to feed her family after fleeing to the U.S.; or that her second husband – a freedom fighter against the Khmer Rouge – got taken to the cleaners in several failed business ventures in Alabama before buying Cullman Donuts.

You don’t really have to know that

on top of commuting two hours a day Jennifer works 18 hours a day.

You don’t really have to know all of that, but it lends perspective to her love of Cullman, to the gratitude she has for earning enough money to pay her bills and buy food.

Also, knowing her story adds that much more spice to the fresh Thai dishes she cooks … at, of all places, a donut shop.

H

er shy smile might be the first thing one notices about Jennifer. As her story unfolds, it becomes amazing she smiles at all.

It was 1977, in the midst of the Khmer Rouge’s four-year reign that snuffed out two million Cambodians, when terror hit

Hun Nary “Jennifer” Sarypang, above center, got her U.S. citizenship in 2008. “I want citizenship but no time to learn,” says her husband, Bunnath Ouch, left. “Me go to work.” His limited English would also hamper his ability to pass the citizenship test. “He know only “glazed’, ‘chocolate,’ ‘long john’ and ‘bear claw,’” jokes Jennifer, who learned much of her English from TV soap operas. “Maybe,” grins her friend and employee, Bobbie Barfield of Cullman, above right, “he needs to watch more soaps…” At left, Jennifer’s pad Thai chicken, a great dish served in the casual surrounding of a donut shop restaurant.

Jennifer’s family. Guerrillas targeted them because her uncle had been part of the Cambodian government.

Jennifer was working on a farm 100 miles from her family in the city. When she returned, neighbors said her uncle and cousins had been executed. Jennifer herself came under guerrilla scrutiny.

“They question me. I lie,” she says. “I say my father a farmer. Not from the city or government.”

Jennifer had eight brothers and sisters.

Guerrillas tortured her seven-year-old brother.

“They tie his hands and tie his legs,” she says, tearing up. “They put him in the river. In, out.”

Though the family was torn asunder and sent to different parts of Cambodia to labor at the infamous farms established by the Khmer Rouge, they miraculously reunited after the communist government fled the country in 1979.

“I ran to Thailand to see my mother,” Jennifer says.

During the three hard years she lived there, she was able to attend school and learn a little English. Her mother also arranged a disastrous marriage for her in 1983. Jennifer knew her groom only four days before their marriage.

“I could not talk to the man,” she says.

“I cried every day. He fight me. He had a girlfriend.”

T

hey were still married when they and their first son managed to get a sponsor and move to Salt Lake City, Utah, in June 1984. Straddled with educational and lingual disadvantages, Jennifer worked cleaning houses.

Two years later they moved to California, where her in-laws lived. They had three more children before she finally left her husband.

Initially, Jennifer had worked in a

sewing factory, but she had learned to cook from her mother and mother-in-law and was able to get jobs in restaurants, serving tables and cooking. She might sleep as little as two hours a day, toiling the rest of the time to make ends meet while her children were in school.

“When I work,” she says, “I can help my family.”

In 2005 she met Bunnath Ouch, who was cooking Chinese, Thai and American food at a restaurant in the Los Angeles area. A Cambodian forced to flea to Thailand in the ’70s, he had fought in opposition to the Khmer Rouge regime before coming to California.

“I do not like communists,” he says in his very limited English.

Jennifer liked him but was leery of rushing into another marriage.

“I make him wait three years before he marry me,” Jennifer laughs. “I want to see if he was a good man or not a good man.

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

23

If he loved me, he would wait for me.”

Bunnath was a good man. After they married, she worked in restaurants in Anaheim and Long Beach and improved her fledgling English by watching soap operas on TV.

I

n 2011, with two sons in tow, Bunnath and Jennifer moved to Huntsville where he endeavored to go into business with a friend. They had saved every dollar they could and borrowed money from his parents. She says he put all of their money – $60,000 – into a business in his partner’s name and lost it.

She says they later got taken in another failed business venture.

“I cried,” Jennifer says. “It’s very sad.”

Now living in Ardmore, Tenn., just across the state line, they got money from Bunnath’s sister to buy Cullman Donuts Oct. 1, 2012. They lease the shop from Nell and Dr. Michael Graham, a Cullman orthodontist.

“Sweet lady and sweet man,” Jennifer says.

Bunnath and Jennifer, along with her two grown sons here, also bought K-May donut shops in Ardmore and Albertville.

Dad and the boys run those shops, Jennifer handles Cullman.

She quickly came to love the city, but the truth is that it takes a lot of donuts to make a living. The going was tough. The language barrier didn’t help.

The shop’s future was questionable.

“I talk to my husband,” Jennifer says. “He say, ‘You can cook Thai food.’”

So last September Jennifer added a Thai menu.

Donuts for breakfast or lunch. Thai for lunch or supper.

“When I add food, it make us better,” she says. “I make a little on donuts. I make a little on Thai. I have money to eat. I have money to pay bills.”

Bobbie Barfield of Cullman and her son, John O’Brien, an instructor at Triad Martial Arts, are longtime fans of Thai food and used to drive to Huntsville or Birmingham to get it. One day John saw a new banner beneath the Cullman Donuts sign, called his mom and said they no longer had to travel for Thai.

They not only loved the food, but Bobbie began working at the donut shop part time.

S

o Bunnath and Jennifer are working on the American Dream … “working” being the operative word.

She wakes up at 1 a.m. and begins baking donuts. She leaves some at their store in Ardmore, the others she brings to Cullman, where she bakes more and opens at 4:30 a.m. (The weekends are a bit easier, opening at 5:30 a.m.

Saturdays, 6 on Sundays.)

“Better than when I live in Cambodia,” Jennifer laughs. “There I work, work, work. No food!

“When I work, work, work, I smile, dance, sing song, and I am OK. I am happy. I meet a good husband. And I am not in Cambodia. I am very happy living in the U.S.” Even with her fresh ingredients, culinary skills and chipper outlook, the restaurant business is far from booming, at least so far. Bunnath and Jennifer hope that changes.

“They say nobody knows me yet.”

Then Jennifer smiles. “But maybe now they read about me. Maybe lots of people come.”

Good Life Magazine

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Good cooking smells ride on the breeze at

Good Cooking

Seven Winds Kitchen

Story and photos by David Moore

W

hen most people think of Jane Gammon and her cooking at Seven Winds Kitchen, they automatically think of Bert’s Brittle, Pecan Gems, Cheese Hooies and the like. And with good reason.

Since the 1990s, Jane – and for much of that time her sister, Frances Scruggs – has been cooking candies and other goodies to satisfy sweet teeth and Christmas wishes across Cullman County, much of Alabama, as far south as Florida and as far north as Canada.

“I love to cook for people and always have,” Jane says.

As a testament to how much people love her cooking, she and her crew got so many orders for Christmas 2013 that it took them until February 2014 to fill them all.

“People said they didn’t care when they got their candy as long as they got it,” Jane says.

Although she increased production for 2014, from Dec. 4 onward they had to pull candy from the gift shop shelves to fill orders this past Christmas. Not counting all their other goodies, her faithful customers ordered 1,100 sampler quart jars, 1,600 half-gallon jars and more than 1,000 gallon jugs of pecan and peanut brittle alone.

One man, simply too late for brittle, settled for other goodies, then went ahead and placed an order for 120 half-gallons of brittle for this Christmas.

“He called the first of July and said, ‘I’m on your list, aren’t I?’” Jane confirmed he’d get brittle this Christmas. Relieved, he asked for another 30 jars, upping his order to more than $3,000.

J

ane’s mother, the late Berta Gammon, was pretty much the brittle matriarch. She started making candy in 1947 – before Jane was born – at their home in Logan. Berta used a family recipe she’d gotten and perfected the paper-thin candy that encrusted the peanuts and pecans.

Bert’s Brittle, as it was called, became a family tradition, not just for the Gammons, but for families from miles around who trekked to her kitchen to buy the candy.

Jane initially had other ideas. After she returned from The University of Alabama in 1976 with a degree in journalism and public relations, she worked in PR at Cullman County Hospital.

Then she became credit manager for McGriff Wholesale until it was sold in 1996, at which point she found herself an unemployed, worried, single mom.

She’d already been working part time in Bert’s kitchen, first

Jane Gammon and her crew continue the tradition of cooking and selling Bert’s Brittle, left, and Pecan Gems. But that’s not all they cook. packaging the popular brittle, then learning the art to making it in small batches and stretching it to its unique thinness. So Jane decided to make a go of the candy business.

Still, it was a scary step to make, even though Frances, who lives in Tuscaloosa, joined her. To make ends meet, Jane picked up part-time jobs, including driving a Head Start bus.

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

27

It was a time of big change … which raises the interesting story behind her business’s name.

The Cherokees, Jane says, recognize seven sacred directions – north, south, east, west, center, above and below.

“I knew ‘seven’ had to be part of the name,” Jane says. “And ‘wind’ was a natural choice because it’s the symbol of change.”

Jane can’t prove any Native American ancestry, but she holds aspects of Cherokee beliefs to be her own.

“To me it’s a way you treat people, the earth and animals,” she says. “It means taking care of your little piece of the planet. I try to do my best by growing many of the things we cook with and eat.”

J

ane lives in a house her great uncle built in 1906 on County Road 222 in Logan, about half way between Trimble and Crane Hill. It sits on 88 acres she inherited from her late father, W.C. “Clyde” Gammon.

“I have my father’s farm and mother’s recipes, and I am trying to make the most of it,” says Jane.

The gift shop is behind and to the side of the house. The kitchen, another separate building, sits out back.

In her garden Jane grows the cucumbers, garlic and dill used to make her mother’s recipe for pickles. About 20 bushes provide the key ingredient in the

BLUEBERRY CRUNCH Bert Gammon 20 oz. can crushed pineapple, undrained 3 cups fresh blueberries ¾ cup sugar 1 box yellow cake mix 1½ stick butter, melted Topping ¼ cup sugar 1 cup chopped nuts Place pineapple in bottom of 9x13 baking dish; spread with blueberries; sprinkle with sugar then cake mix; cover with melted butter. Mix topping and spread over mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

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AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

MEET THE CREW Jane Gammon has owned Seven Winds Kitchen on her own since her sister left the business two years ago.

Working with Jane are: Josie Sumner, Mae Edgeworth, Jeanette Duke, Anita Looney, Jane Davis, Carol Clay, Susan McClendon, Joan Terry, Felicia Carpenter and Shelly Elrod. blueberry muffins and blueberry cakes you can order. The crew also bakes a dozen other kinds of cakes, a half-dozen kinds of cookies and various sweet rolls and muffins.

Among other delights from Seven Winds Kitchen – all made from family recipes – are pralines, white chocolate, pecan drops, peanut clusters, English toffee and peanut fudge. And did anyone say Cheese Hooies? Baked with pecans, they’re Jane’s wonderful variation on cheese sticks.

Gift baskets, boxes and totes are also sold in the cozily crowded gift shop.

Meeting the seemingly ever-growing demand for brittle and everything else out of her kitchen, Jane’s son, Christopher, has expanded the shop to make more

storage room elsewhere for stocking and packaging.

You’d be surprised, she says, at the amount of work her ladies put into cutting and tying all of those nice cloth skirts around the jar tops of peanut brittle and pecan gems.

J

ane’s all about keeping her loyal and appreciative customers happy. No wonder people think about brittle and all of those other goodies when they think about Jane cooking at Seven Winds Kitchen.

But she and her crew cook other things, too. They cook meals for their families. While at work they cook meals for each other. They learn from each other.

“Everybody cooks for everybody,” says Josie Sumner, who transplanted herself from Texas in 1990 and has worked at Seven Winds for thirteen years.

“We are kind of family.”

“We experiment with recipes,” Jane says. “Sometimes, it’s whatever we have the most of in the garden.”

This season, they had lots of zucchini, so they came up with a recipe for it.

“Of course we eat the broken cookies and Hooies, too,” Jane grins. “There is nothing fancy about us.”

No trade secrets on Bert’s Brittle and the like, but here some of the other recipes for dishes that waft on the breeze at Seven Winds Kitchen …

CLASSICO ZUCCHINI Seven Winds Kitchen 8 cups zucchini, sliced 2 cups onion, chopped 2-3 cloves garlic, sliced 1 Tbsp. olive oil 1 15 oz. jar Classico 1 can Rotel 6 slices of cooked bacon, crumbled Sauté zucchini, onion and garlic in olive oil. Drain off excess liquid. Add Classico and Rotel and simmer 20 minutes.

Crumble bacon and mix. Serve over rice.

OVEN FRIED PARMESAN CHICKEN Seven Winds Kitchen 6 Tbsp. butter, melted 5 Tbsp. dry breadcrumbs (Progresso Italian style) 3 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese, grated 3 Tbsp. cornmeal

¾ tsp. salt ¾ tsp. dried oregano ¼ tsp. garlic powder 8-10 large chicken breast tenders Place butter in shallow bowl.

In another shallow bowl combine

CHARLESTON MUFFINS Carol Clay 8½ oz. all purpose flour 5 oz. cornmeal 2 eggs 1½ cup milk 20 oz. sausage, cooked 6 oz. sharp cheese, grated 1/3 cup oil ¾ tsp. chili powder 1¾ tsp. baking powder ¾ tsp. salt Combine dry ingredients in large bowl; set aside.

Lightly beat eggs; add milk and oil; combine with dry ingredients. Mix in cooked sausage and cheese. Pour into greased muffin tin. Bake at 400 degrees for 18 minutes.

breadcrumbs, Parmesan, cornmeal, salt, oregano and garlic powder. Dip chicken in butter then roll in crumb mixture. Place in greased 9x13 baking dish. Bake uncovered at 375 for 40 minutes or until juices run clear.

MS LEE’S TEA CAKE COOKIES Carol Clay 12½ oz. all purpose flour 2 tsp. baking powder ½ tsp. salt 6 oz. powdered sugar 8 oz. butter 1 tsp. vanilla 1 egg Mix dry ingredients; set aside. Cream butter and add vanilla. Add egg and mix until smooth. Mix in dry ingredients and blend. Scoop onto a greased cookie sheet and press with cookie stamp. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.

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KENTUCKY CORNBREAD Mae Edgeworth 2 cups cornmeal 8 oz. sour cream 1 small bell pepper, chopped ¾ cup grated cheese ½ cup oil 2 eggs 1 can corn, undrained Mix all ingredients together. Pour into a sprayed 11¾ x 7½ pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

GERMAN SAUSAGE CHOWDER Roberta Bush 1 lb. (8 links) fully cooked bratwurst, knockwurst or Polish sausage 2 cups potatoes, peeled and chopped ½ cup onion, chopped 1½ tsp. salt pinch of pepper 2 cups water

1 sm. cabbage, shredded (4 cups) 3 cups milk 3 Tbsp. all purpose flour 1 cup Swiss cheese, shredded (4 oz.)

Snipped parsley Cut sausage into ½ in. pieces and combine in Dutch oven with potatoes, onion, salt and pepper.

Add water and bring soup to boil;

JANE’S DRESSING Jane Davis ½ tsp. Pepper 2 tsp. Sage ½ cup onion, chopped 3 cups chicken broth 1 cup celery, chopped ⅓ cup butter Heat oven to 375.

4 cups cornbread, Grease 13x9 baking dish. crumbled In small skillet sauté onion 4 slices bread, crumbled and celery in butter until (or 2 cups Pepperidge tender. In large bowl, herb stuffing) combine cooked onions, 4 eggs, beaten celery, cornbread, bread, ½ cup milk sage, poultry seasoning, 1 can cream of chicken salt and pepper and mix soup well. Add broth, soups, 1 can cream of celery milk and eggs to mixture; soup mix well. Pour into baking poultry seasoning to taste dish and bake one hour or 2 tsp. Salt until lightly brown.

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reduce heat, cover and simmer 20 minutes or until potatoes are nearly tender. Stir in cabbage.

Cook 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Stir in 2½ cups of the milk. Stir remaining milk into flour and stir into soup.

Cook on low heat (dish will scorch easily) and stir until thickened and bubbly. Stir in cheese until melted. Garnish with parsley.

SALSA BY JANE Jane Davis

10-11 cups Roma tomatoes, chopped 1½ cups onion, chopped ½ cup hot peppers, chopped 1 tsp. garlic powder 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 Tbsp. red pepper, crushed 1 tsp. oregano ¼ cup white vinegar 6 tsp. salt (or to taste) 2 tsp. paprika 2½ tsp. cilantro Boil ingredients; simmer for 2½-3 hours.

Makes 4-6 pints depending on thickness.

Process with an approved canning method.

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Sprawling grounds provide a bucolic countryside setting befitting a proper ch창teau. The use of steel inside and out are appropriate, too, given that Ronny owns Apel Steel in nearby Cullman, which, for instance, fabricated the front fence.

A ch창teau by any other name is still ...

Home to Cheri and Ronny

Story and photos by David Moore

S

The foyer floor is half marble by design. The white tiles are marble, the black ones granite. Black marble, Ronny says, is too soft for flooring.

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ome people call it a castle.

Château might be more appropriate.

Château d’Apel. Cheri and Ronny Apel simply call it home.

By any name or by most any standard, the place is magnificent.

Its 10,000 square feet encompass a large foyer with a staircase curving its way up to a balcony beneath a 24-foot ceiling.

A hall to the right passes a halfbath, a full laundry room and the grandkids’ bedroom – formerly the Christmas tree room – then leads into Cheri and Ronny’s master suite.

In addition to a sitting area with a fireplace, the suite has a spacious, chandeliered bath off to the side and a bank of windows overlooking the backyard with its long green and a fountain in the distance.

Double doors off the foyer lead into a living room with a fireplace befitting a castle and a neck-tilting ceiling hung with a sprawling, iron chandelier. The open-floor living room spills into a cozy sitting area with another fireplace and an enclosed wet bar. Windows wall the entire side of the living room and sitting area offering expansive views of the green and fountain.

The sitting area flows into a polygon kitchen set off by a multisided bar. There’s a walk-in pantry and short passages to the dining room (also accessed through a second hallway off the foyer), an office and a half-bath.

The kitchen flows into a wide hall, lined with storage space and appliances, which leads into a large but cozy den with a fireplace. Doors there lead to a game room and a guest bedroom suite.

An 80-foot veranda, outdoor cooking and dining area and a comfortably covered sitting area rim the back of the house and overlook the formal green, the pool and gardens.

Then there’s upstairs.

Sons Hank and Kurt’s former bedrooms are connected by a “Jack and Jack” bath. Cheri confiscated their old rec room and converted it to a much-used sewing room.

She has another unusual room

Among the myriad unique items in the Apels’ house are two paintings hanging over a hallway table, left. They came to Ronny’s late father, Arthur, a German immigrant who moved to Cullman and fought with the U.S. Army in the Battle of the Bulge. Knowing German, Arthur was a useful interpreter during WWII. Cheri says a German prisoner, with a nod to a pretty stretch of countryside, once told Arthur he longed to paint but had no canvas. Arthur got him scraps of tents. The pleased prisoner gave Arthur the two paintings he did. Heavy, Army-green canvas is visible on the back of one picture. Signed P.W. Wentzel and dated 1945, one of them is notated “Hanau,” a German city near Frankfort known as the birthplace of fairytale spinning Brothers Grimm. Hanau was heavily bombed in March 1945 just before U.S. troops took it. The stone on the fireplace in the living room – viewed above from a balcony – also has a personal touch. Though Cheri is from Troy and Tuscaloosa, she had Cullman connections before marrying Ronny.

Her grandmother Ruth Bradford was a school teacher in Cullman, an uncle, Jack Riley, was a circuit judge, and her grandfather, Ervin Tucker owned the old Parker Bank. The stone on the fireplace came from the bank building, located across from the old Cullman Post Office.

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

35

upstairs – her gifting room, filled with more ribbon than a Hallmark store. There’s also a half-bath upstairs and seemingly endless storage space under the high-pitched roof.

G

The wall covering in the master bedroom, above, is French Toile. The dome over the tub is painted with clouds. Cheri painted the walls of the guest bedroom, bottom, light aqua, watering down the base coat and, dripping it from the crown molding with a large sponge. She doubled the aqua formula and stenciled the walls with fleurs-de-lis.

iven its grand size, one might wonder if the château felt like “home” when the Apels moved in 23 years ago.

Ronny pauses a moment then says, “You know, we worked on it so long, it really felt like home from the beginning.”

The Château de Apel was, indeed, a long time in coming.

Ronny brought Cheri to Cullman in 1970 and they lived in apartments several years before moving into a two-story house with a pool on Demorie Avenue, a dead-end road in Woodland Heights. Hank, born in 1971, and Kurt, born in ’77, pretty much grew up there.

Trips to France and Germany inspired dreams of one day building a grand house in Cullman, and in the late 1980s Cheri and Ronny began looking at property – a process that took several years.

One day they were looking around north of town at Lake George. Many of the waterfront lots had been sold, but they found 14 undeveloped acres that stretched across a knoll between two arms of the lake. It was owned by Edward and Arnice Heitmueller, who kept a garden on three-fourths acre in the corner of the property.

Several people initially told them there was no point in calling about the land, but Cheri figured nothing ventured …

“I called and Mr. Heitmueller said, ‘Nope. Not for sale,’” she recalls.

But it wasn’t a curt call. They found they knew many people in common and chatted for about 45 minutes. Finally, Cheri mentioned the property again.

“I said we would only put one house on it. He said nope, and I said fine. But please call us if you decide to sell.”

They didn’t hear anything for some time until one day, out of the blue, at the end of 1990, Ed showed up at Apel Steel and offered to sell the land.

“He wanted to keep his garden, though,” Ronny says.

Ronny agreed that Edward could do that indefinitely, but that Ronny would have first rights to the garden at the same price as the other land.

Without arguing, Ronny also agreed to the price and that Edward would finance it over ten years at seven-percent interest. Plus, Edward stipulated, Ronny and Cheri could have no four-legged farm animals on the land.

A

s soon as Edward left, Ronny picked up the phone.

“Guess what!” he told Cheri. “We have the

The large kitchen has the feel of a home in the French countryside. To the right of the sink, appliance garages are built under the cabinets. The lazy-Susan is made from the lid of a wine barrel. The plaster walls of the comfortable den, below, are unusual.

Cheri, active in the construction, applied straw to the plaster while it was still wet.

Afterward, the walls were glazed.

The back of the house, above, continues the idea of formal livability.

Cheri and Ronny had seen and liked animal spray fountains at pools in Kaua’i, Hawaii. Cheri had the builder install an elephant spray at their pool as a concession to Ronny, the family’s sole Alabama fan. It’s a good thing the house is big. “I don’t like to watch the Alabama-Auburn game with him,” Cheri grins. “He is … well, pretty expressive.” They watch the first quarter of the games together then retire to separate sidelines for the other three.

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AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

Cheri and Ronny relax under the covered section of their veranda. After growing up in Cullman, Ronny studied industrial engineering at The University of Alabama. Cheri, in high school in Tuscaloosa at the time, was dating a Cullman boy who lived on campus with Ronny. It took some convincing for her to agree to go out with Ronny. “Don’t get me started on that story,” she laughs.

Cheri started studying interior design at Auburn in 1966. Ronny would contrive to make her miss her Sunday ride back to school so he could drive her. Eventually she capitulated to his proposals and, a few months after he graduated, they married May 1968. property for the new house.”

But moving day was still two years away.

Thoughts and talks about the house to be had been ongoing for years. Ideas were kicked around. Likes and dislikes discussed. The likes kept coming back to châteaux they had seen, especially in France’s Loire Valley … terra-cotta floors, castle block on fireplaces, pitched roofs.

“I didn’t want anything modern,” Cheri says.

One day, riding around looking at homes in Montgomery, they spotted a perfect slate roof, so they stopped, knocked on the door and inquired.

They got more than roof information from the owners. They got the name of Montgomery house designer Max Keith Norman.

The Apels spent about a year in consultation with him, going over the details they wanted incorporated in their home. What Norman finally came up with was a château to be built atop the knoll and painted in classic French yellow.

The couple hired the late Docie Smith as contractor.

Cheri, who studied interior design at Auburn, was highly involved with construction details, with the inch-thick floor tiles, with having rocks turned just so on the den fireplace, with the unique use of straw in the wall finishing there.

She actually held end pieces to iron curtain rods while welders at Apel Steel attached them.

“The people who work for Ronny are really smart,” Cheri says.

C

onstruction took a year, but the Apels finally moved into their new home in September 1992.

It was perfect … well, in hindsight, almost.

“One thing I left out,” Ronny grins, “was an elevator.”

Under Cheri’s keen eye, the house has been redecorated once, but her goal remained unchanged.

“I wanted it to be comfortable and livable, and yet have a little bit of formality,” she says. “When people walk in they think it’s going to be very formal, but it’s not.”

Home sweet home.

“It is,” Cheri says. “We tried to make it very livable.”

Good Life Magazine

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

39

The ‘Smart Yard’

Good ‘n’ Green

It will look greener, save you some ‘green’ and be ‘greener’ to boot Story by Tony Glover Photo by David Moore

T

here are smart ways and not-so-smart ways to water and care for your lawn.

You want to do it the smart way, right?

That’s why the Alabama Cooperative Extension System initiated “Smart Yard Landscaping,” which uses common sense principles to make your lawn and gardens more sustainable. And water management is a key component to having a “smart yard.”

Late summer and fall can be among the driest months in Cullman County. Water bills will rise. “Dog days” will stress your grass.

Here are some “Smart Yard” tips to avoid wasting water and money while keeping your yard “good ‘n’ green” …

• Avoid over-watering and over fertilization.

Irrigation systems are great for watering without wrestling a hose for hours, but they can lead to overwatering. The worst situations I see are systems that were programmed to water daily during sod installation but never reprogrammed afterward. This causes gross over watering.

Simply re-programming your system to water a maximum of once or twice a week, applying a total of 1 inch of water weekly. You can set out a few tuna or cat food cans to measure.

Fertilize only according to soil test results and never more than 1 pound of actual nitrogen per 1,000 square feet at any one time.

• Don’t remove grass clippings.

If you mow frequently and use a mulching blade there is no good reason to remove clippings. Clippings decompose and return valuable nutrients and organic matter to the soil.

Healthy soil holds water better and improves root growth, ultimately reducing the need for supplemental irrigation.

• Irrigate in the early morning hours just before sunrise.

Early watering reduces losses from evaporation and does not lengthen the time the foliage is wet since you are watering on top of the dew and not after it’s gone. Reducing the time the foliage is wet can reduce fungal growth.

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Sprinklers do their thing at the Cullman home of Deb and Steve Singleton. Justin Murphree of Down Home Landscapes helps them keep the lawn looking great.

• Stop nitrogen fertilization by the end of August if you have a warm season turfgrass.

Warm season grass (Bermuda, St. Augustine, Centipede or Zoysia) needs to slow its vegetative growth gradually before entering dormancy. This means you should reduce irrigation frequency as summer gives way to fall.

If your grass is weak and stressed, late nitrogen fertilization will exacerbate the problem. Instead, add about 1.5 pounds of muriate of potash (0-0-60) or 5 pounds of “sul-po-mag ((0-0-22) around mid-September and continue watering at the 1-inch rate per week to encourage root regeneration and deep rooting.

• Don’t mow short.

Slightly increase your mowing height toward the end of the growing season to encourage deeper roots and more food

reserves in the runners and root system. But you should still follow the general rule of thumb of never removing more than one third of the grass at one mowing. For instance, if your grass is 3 inches tall, set your mower level to 2 inches.

• Treat for grubs.

Late summer and early fall is a good time to treat for white grubs that feed on your grass roots. Cut a 1-foot square section of sod on 3 sides and roll it back in a few locations. Count the c-shaped small white grubs. If the squares average 15 or more grubs you may want to consider an insecticide treatment.

Remember, healthy roots require less water. This is the time to control these root-destroying pests.

• When to fight the weeds.

Winter weeds and annual bluegrass (Poa annua) can be

prevented by a September application of pre-emergence herbicides, commonly called “crabgrass preventers.”

Do not apply to newly established sod less than one year old; or if you plan to, or have recently over-seeded your lawn.

B

ottom line: conserving water is really about keeping your grass healthy. But also think of conserving water as the responsibility of every citizen.

It doesn’t matter if someone has “more money than they have sense,” they should use our collective public resources in a wise and thoughtful way.

That’s smart.

For more tips visit our Extension store or search for “Alabama Smart Yards” at: https://store.aces.edu.

Good Life Magazine

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

41

Snake Man

his act, so he was always on the lookout for an easy way to make a dollar or two.

He once made a $5 wager with a cotton gin operator that he could lift a 500-pound bale of cotton and walk across the gin platform with the bale still resting on his back. The disbelieving gin operator immediately took him up on the bet.

Rufus placed two cotton hooks behind his head and sank them into the bale of cotton. Crouching and squirming, he managed to ease the bale of cotton up onto his back. Finally, he stood up and walked across the gin platform where he dropped the cotton bale into the back of a wagon.

Rufus then collected a five-dollar bill from the shocked gin operator.

Handling (and being bitten by) rattlers is just part of what made Rufus Mann extraordinary Story by Steve A. Maze Photo provided

O

ne of the most extraordinary people to come out of Cullman County was a part-time carnival worker named Rufus Mann.

He worked the sideshows for traveling carnivals, and was known as the “Snake Man” due to his skill at handling the deadly reptiles. Curious audiences delighted in watching Rufus wrap a rattler around his arm as the venomous viper struck at him.

All of his snake-handling displays,

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nother trick the master showman performed was eating glass after breaking a lamp globe into pieces. Assisted only by a glass of water, he would then “eat” the broken glass with no ill effects.

Rufus was seemingly invincible to pain.

Sometimes he would take a long hatpin and push it into one side of his jaws and out the other. At other times he would take a needle and push it partly into a muscle on his forearm. He would then allow a

however, did not take place at carnivals.

Rufus was accompanying some people up Feemster’s Gap in western Marshall County when they stopped at a creek to water the mules pulling their wagon.

Shortly after, the group heard a rattlesnake buzzing nearby.

Rufus immediately began a search for the serpent. Unable to see the rattler, he began feeling around with his hands near the bushes and rocks where it was last heard. Rufus managed to catch the snake, but not before being struck on the thumb.

The thumb barely swelled, and no serious damage was done. Rufus told

the frightened group of travelers he had enough venom in him from being repeatedly bitten over the years that he was virtually immune to the bites.

Snake handling was only one of the many talents Rufus Mann possessed. He was, in fact, a master showman.

Rufus was extremely strong and his body very flexible. He could contort his frame and intentionally pop his shoulder and other body appendages out of joint. This was how he escaped from straightjackets in an act that he performed in sideshows and local school appearances.

Rufus didn’t make a lot of money doing

bystander to push the needle all the way into his arm. When the needle was pulled out there would be no sign of blood.

Rufus didn’t have a lot of money, but he was a master at finding hidden money in houses. He would allow a person to hide a twenty-dollar bill anywhere in their home, with the agreement that Rufus could keep the money should he find it. He even agreed to be blindfolded before entering the house, but after being led inside, he would promptly find the money.

My dad, Marlon Maze, once described a baffling incident he had with the Houdini-like figure. Rufus was visiting my grandpa and noticed that dad had an Ingram pocket watch. My grandpa had given him the dollar-watch as a birthday gift, and dad was very fond of it.

Dad was only a kid at the time and shrieked when he heard grandpa say that Rufus was going to swallow the watch.

Dad ran outside to save his precious timepiece, but two of his brothers ran him down and took it away from him.

Rufus then swallowed the watch as Dad looked on in horror. After some urging, Dad placed his ear next to Rufus’ stomach and heard the watch ticking.

He had really swallowed it. Dad knew that he would never see his watch again.

“I wonder what time it is,” Rufus remarked after walking around for a few minutes. Then he contorted his shoulders in an odd manner and the watch popped out of his mouth. The watch was rinsed off and it worked as well as it always had.

From then on, dad always hid his watch whenever he saw Rufus walking toward their house.

D

ad was in high school years later when Rufus came to perform one of his shows for the students. After handling a few snakes and eating some glass, Rufus ended his performance by telling all the students to never attempt the stunts they had just witnessed. He knew the “trick” to these feats, and anyone trying to duplicate them would likely be seriously injured.

That was the last time Dad ever saw Rufus. The talented and gifted entertainer died July 29, 1975 at the age of 66.

Buried in Altoona, Rufus’s legacy never died. To this day, people still shake their heads in amazement when reflecting back on the person known as the “Snake Man.”

Good Life Magazine

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AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

43

Bike to the future

Exploring the Duck River rec trail by mountain bike before the coming of the lake

Story and photos by David Moore

T

he 21-mile trail under construction around the future Duck River Reservoir will become a weekend destination for avid mountain bikers from near and far.

That’s the prediction of Preston York, lead designer and construction manager of the Duck River trail and an avid mountain biker to boot.

I, on the other hand, am not a biker, mountain or otherwise.

But after peddling the 3.5-mile section of the trail that’s already open – a total of seven miles in and out – I readily agree with Preston. The trail is already loads of fun. And, as I kept telling myself while peddling that day, once the loop is completed and the 650-acre lake impounded, the Duck River mountain bike trail will be nothing short of awesome, a term I use sparingly.

Justin Loyd gets credit for making our ride happen that hot, muggy day.

We first met two years ago at Werner’s Trading Company where Justin oversees bikes, stand-up paddle boards, beer and other fun stuff. I quickly realized he was born with the adventure gene and figured we’d hook up sooner or later for a fun story.

That came together for the Duck ride.

Justin not only got two friends, Sophia Machen and Ashley Wilson, to go with us, but he outfitted Ashley and me with great mountain bikes from Werner’s. Gear and all, we piled into Justin’s truck and drove to the trailhead on the eastern side of the expansive Duck River project.

Justin turned Sophia onto mountain biking several years ago. She got a bike and enjoys riding. Even if it wasn’t a mountain bike, Ashley at least rode a bike last year in Cullman Park and Recreation’s triathlon, (translate: she’s in shape).

I can’t even remember the last time I rode a bike, but it sure wasn’t a Trek X-Caliber 6 with 29-inch wheels, knobby trail tires and disc brakes that, if applied hard, would hurl you over the handlebars.

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Justin Loyd, Sophia Machen and Ashley Wilson ride mountain bikes on the first 3.5-mile stretch of biking and hiking trail that will loop 21 miles around the future Duck River reservoir. Construction of the dam should be competed this winter and the reservoir filled by fall 2016, says Susan Eller, special projects coordinator at Cullman Economic Development Agency. The trail – which will include two bike and footbridges – was officially named for Tim Scott, who, working for the Cullman County Soil and Water Conservation and Cullman Utilities Board, forged strong links with landowners in the area affected by the dam.

The bike’s 27 gears – I used about five of them – shifted crisply with zero slippage, which I soon learned to appreciate greatly. And the peddling was smooth and surprisingly easy … for a minute or two anyway.

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nd so we set out.

For the most part we – or at least I – concentrated on the immediate present. For one thing it took a little while to get the hang of the bike as the trail whirled past under my spinning wheels.

Five or six miles per hour through the woods felt fast.

Glance away two seconds and you might rip a leg on a hungry briar lurking on the edge of the trail. Glance away three seconds and you’d face-smack a tree for sure.

The land generally sloped toward the river, and the trail was etched into the slope. Peddling near the future lake level meant no mountains to tackle, which was fine by me.

The trail, however, was not flat. It climbed a few feet; I quickly down-shifted and peddled hard, thankful for no wreckcausing gear slippage. The trail leveled; I hit a higher gear

and peddled or maybe coasted. The trail dropped a few feet; I freewheeled for sure; maybe tapped the brakes.

Soon I realized the trail actually undulated. The ups and downs had a rhythm. And with the stifling, muggy heat, I looked forward to downhill coasting.

Where the trail dipped across the troughs of small creeks and wet weather drains, large stones had been inlaid in the ground as protection from erosion and bike tires.

The work had been thoughtfully done, and Justin and Sophia handled these troughs like pros. The novices among us, however, AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

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Ashley Wilson pushes her bike under a tree that had recently fallen across the trail. It was the first mountain bike ride for the 2009 graduate of Good Hope High School who’s a licensed neuromuscular massage therapist at Alabama Therapeutic Massage Cullman.

Ashley, in training to run a triathlon, expected a harder ride. “That’s not to say it was easy, but I was kind of good at it,” she says. When the project’s completed, Ashley adds, “It’s going to be a cool thing for Cullman. I am always looking for something to do outside. I just have to buy a mountain bike now.” For that, she said she’d turn to Justin Loyd, above center, at Werner’s Trading Co. You can buy a great bike there for under $800, much less than the outlay for most outdoor activities, Justin says. Werner’s also rents mountain bikes for $20 opted a few times to dismount and walk our bikes across the stonework.

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ustin didn’t push us hard. I, for one, was green and readily confess to 46

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

tiring legs. And the 90-plus temp and matching humidity took their toll. Within minutes we were all swimming in sweat.

We stopped several times for breathers and drinks on the 3.5 miles in. I invented

several photo stops. No one seemed to mind.

We were drenched when we reached the end of the section at the Duck River bridge on the Holly Pond-Fairview Road,

a day. “I want people to have a chance to try out a nice one,” says the Eagle Scout and 2005 graduate of Vinemont High School. Justin has ridden the trail multiple times and enjoys it, but he’s looking forward to the optional rock obstacles the project’s lead designer, Preston York, is building for avid riders. “You would not believe how much thought and engineering, how much time and effort he’s putting into this trail,” Justin says. Sophia Machen, above right, is a 2007 graduate of Cullman High and a stylist at J. Drake Salon in Cullman. She got her first mountain bike at 18, buying it from Justin at Werner’s. Sophia was pleasantly surprised by the new trail. “I liked it a lot, the scenery. It’s not too difficult. Not too up and down. But I felt like I accomplished something when we finished 7 miles.”

Cullman County 1669. While breaking again Justin mentioned that he’d actually biked the trail several times with buddies.

“We did it once or twice in the dark with lamps on our heads,” he said.

What?

“One time my buddy and I peddled as fast as we could on the way back without stopping.” Justin wasn’t bragging, just stating facts. “We made it back in 11

minutes, maybe 15. I wish I’d written it down.”

I tried to act like I wasn’t winded.

Fortunately the trip back seemed easier. We stopped less and kept a pretty steady pace.

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47

Three bikers, above at upper left, take in a view of the flood zone and the summer-slow Duck River, the prominent visual features along the trail today. The trail and other fun attractions at the future lake will be part of the nationally recognized Cullman Parks and Recreation. Nathan Anderson, director of CP&R, predicts that mountain bike enthusiasts will find the trail to be exceptional. “It will be a game-changer for us, Cullman County and surrounding communities. We believe this will create a great draw for tourism in the area,” he says. “Providing new programming and educational opportunities will be an awesome addition in our efforts to fulfill our motto, ‘Get out and live!’”

We reached Justin’s truck about 45 minutes later. Exhausted but elated, we chugged the rest of our hot drinks and headed back to Werner’s.

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hrough roundabout channels, three weeks later I learned Preston York is building the trail and phoned him.

Not only does he have a couple of engineering degrees, he’s been mountain biking for 10 years. He owns FlowMotion Trailbuilders and in recent years has built mountain bike trails at Guntersville and Chewacla state parks, Noccalula Falls and Cold Water Mountain, the latter a famed 35-mile system in his hometown of Anniston.

Preston was part of a team that built the first 3.5-mile section of trail here. Several more unopened miles had been built south of the current trailhead and another 1.5 miles north of the bridge on 1669 was being opened that day, leaving roughly 13 miles of trail to construct.

Contracted to build eight of those miles, Preston hopes to finish the 48

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49

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section by Christmas. The rest of the trail work should take three months, once the contract is awarded.

Using a specialized track loader, excavator and Bobcat, Preston first clears a section of corridor then excavates into the slope to create the “tread,” or trail surface, always allowing for drainage.

A crew with hand tools follows at a distance finishing the trail. Depending on the terrain, they can complete 300 to 1,000 feet of trail a day.

Preston, I learned, maximized natural land contours so more casual bikers can peddle, coast, peddle, coast. Good bikers can average nine miles an hour and will be able to ride the finished trail in under 2.5 hours.

Skilled bikers with cardio to match, he said, could hammer out 15 miles an hour here.

P

reston did the stonework we marveled at to create “armor” 50

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

for fragile areas with steep slopes susceptible to runoff. Interestingly, he’s doing optional stonework along parts

of the trail, building “an abundance” of obstacles for advanced bikers to tackle.

Therein lies the real beauty of the Duck River trail.

When finished, it will be ranked a beginner-friendly green level of difficulty. But signage will be erected directing those seeking to challenge themselves to blue- and black-level obstacles.

“There is nothing else like it in the South … a trail you can ride about the perimeter of a 650-acre lake and peddle as fast or slow as you want,” Preston said. “This is going to become a destination trail system. People will come to Cullman and stay the weekend and ride here two days in a row.”

The trail, by the way, will be pedestrian friendly.

“But,” Preston noted, “it will be tweaked in 1,000 ways to make it spectacular for mountain bikers.”

And, I might add, some of us wannabes, too.

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51

Let the

Good Times Roll

at Baileyton

... But you better ask Jezebel first

With dusk coming on, two cars launch down the eight-mile track at Baileyton Good Time Drag Strip.

The Camaro on the right, driven by “Butterbean,” won this race, or “pass,” as it’s commonly called.

Story and photos by Patrick Oden

T

feel my heart beating faster every time an engine revved. The longer I lingered the more excited I became.

Suddenly a voice came from the sky. It was the P.A. system letting everyone know practice runs were about to begin.

I made my way to the staging area where I met the man behind the track. A man of few words, Jack Walker leaned on the fence at the starting line, as I can

old girl in fighting shape.

But I should have checked with Jezebel first …

W

he racing bug had found and bitten me once again. From the moment I hen I first saw her two years ago, learned about Baileyton it called to me … she was black and gray and yellow, with a Baileyton Good Time Drag Strip, that is. little blue showing here and there. A 1973 It had been a while since I had done Chevy step-side with fat, albeit bald tires, any legal drag racing so I decided to drive and a ton of attitude. She called out to me. out to the locally fabled track in eastern A potential existed that attracted me, Cullman County one evening in mid-spring and check it out. Since I wasn’t going to be racing, I took my camera.

In operation since 1966, Baileyton Drag Strip lived up to its name: I had a good time, met some great people and even had a pretty good burger.

A cool place in the middle of nowhere, races started late to avoid the heat and ran past midnight. It’s a wellmaintained eighth-mile track that draws racers from all over.

Having never been and not knowing how things ran, I arrived early. The pits were already starting to fill and the air was filled with the essence of Old Spice and racing fuel.

It was both comforting and nostalgic.

The sun was beginning to flirt with the notion of setting as I strolled through the pits where racers were fine-tuning Owner Jack Walker, left, watches racers, vehicles and fans arrive at his track for a “good time.” their motors. The chrome and billet aluminum that adorned the beastly motors glowed imagine he’s done since opening the track an almost blank canvas to work from. A with the amber cast of the sun. nearly a half century ago. Surrounded by chance for me to create a vehicle that got Groups of buddies were turning friends and obviously adored, Jack grinned at the core of my personality. She wasn’t wrenches, guys and their girlfriends were and obliged when I asked if I could shoot perfect and she wasn’t pretty … but I can’t changing tires, and entire families were photos from the staging area. claim those things either. working together, laughing together, as Practice runs continued as the sun set The rat rod culture is something that they readied for the night’s races. and the spectator areas filled. Families speaks to me. Rockabilly music, cuffed The track was familiar territory, but I with blankets and picnic baskets lined the Levis and flat black paint. PBRs and back was an outsider. Or so I thought. hillside next to the track. Young couples yard barbecues, busted knuckles, grease Turns out there really are no outsiders cuddled. The bleachers brimmed. There stained t-shirts. Something about it speaks at Baileyton. A common thread connected was a feeling of community that I’ve never to simpler times. Better times. Honest everyone at the track that night. Drivers experienced at any other track. These were times. and spectators, regulars and newcomers, my people, good people. I knew I would Since I bought her on a whim and the we all shared a love of the races. be back. guy delivered her to me on a trailer in the I was already getting excited when dark, the first thing I needed to do was get walked and chatted and made I learned that an all-truck, street-race to know her. See how she feels, look under pictures. I knew from experience there was shootout kind of thing was scheduled for her hood … she had been around the block a lot to do before the drags got going, so June. Perfect. That gave me time to get my for sure.

I tried not to get in the way. But I could

Camaraderie is evident at Baileyton Good Time Drag Strip. Spectators come early for good seats and wait for the races as children play, above. Below, racer Dillon Stover greets his buddies as they showed up for an evening and night of racing.

I

54

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

55

Track safety personnel, above, help drivers stage their vehicles before each pass. Drivers are allowed to first perform a burnout, heating the tires and laying down rubber to improve traction at the beginning of the pass.

I fell for her hard. I wanted to give her a new life. And for all of the passion and frustration she’s brought me, for the blood, sweat and tears I’ve shed, for all the money she has demanded from me since we met … I named her Jezebel.

Her body, for all its colors, was in good shape. That was about it.

The carburetor was full of mud, the exhaust was welded on, she leaked oil and rear end fluid. The interior consisted of a tachometer and a Mexican blanket for a seat cover.

A beautiful disaster. And she was all mine.

The first thing I needed to do was get her running. A friend offered to rebuild the carburetor and got it working long enough that we realized Jezebel was no damsel in distress. More like a roller derby moll.

Built tough and built for speed … a no nonsense bruiser.

Under the hood I started scraping paint looking for the engine code when I 56

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

To assist with the burnout, lower left, track personnel use mops to spread water onto that part of the track. Below, the sun begins to set over Baileyton Good Time Drag Strip as the first cars roll up to the starting line. realized what I’d gotten hold of. Leaping lizards, Batman, she’s got a Corvette motor in there. Ah! I thought. That explains Corvette rally wheels and bald tires.

That cinched it. I was all in and spent the better part of the summer bringing Jezebel back from the dead.

I

knew there were a couple of little things I would need to finish up before I could take her to Baileyton.

I had fixed the oil leak, but it didn’t hold, and you can’t have fluid leaks on the track. I had rebuilt the carburetor three times. And it just got worse. A leaking axle seal, a five-dollar part and a quick fix, turned into a sheered pin in her rear end that made it impossible to repair the seal.

This was going to be a little more challenging than I had thought. No problem, I got this. I’m going to Baileyton.

I’m going to race.

I should have checked with Jezebel first.

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

57

Are You Looking For

Antiques & Furniture?

Don’t Buy Anything Until You Shop Cullman County

Hamby mill

Flea Market and Antiques Will Patrick Oden ever get into the action at Baileyton one night? Below, he wonders if he should first ask Jezebel.

I began ordering parts, working on what I could.

It was hard admitting to myself that rebuilding a carburetor is an artistic ability I don’t possess, but I did. So I bought a new carb. One item on the list scratched off … now the oil leak.

I knew what the problem was and had wrestled that alligator before. The timing cover needed changing. That meant the motor would need to be raised and the oil pan removed.

I ran her down to Jimmy and she was back in a week. Good Time was on the horizon.

I was killing bears barehanded. I was going to pull it off. I could already see the changing red, yellow, and green lights of the Christmas tree over her glittery Mooneyes steering wheel.

I should have checked with Jezebel first.

Her rear end turned out to be a really big bear, and it wasn’t going quietly. Or quickly.

B

efore I could fix the leaking axle seal the truck shootout at Baileyton came and went.

Jezebel and I missed our first dance 58

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER

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together. I was beaten before I ever got her to the line.

But that’s the nature of these old vehicles. They keep you on your toes. And I love them for it.

Will she and I ever make it to Baileyton? Time will tell. But I wonder. Is she trying to tell me something? I’ll keep after her until I get her rear end back in

shape, but perhaps then I’ll put her back on the street. Maybe that’s where she belongs.

For now I’m left to romanticize the idea: That old girl and I sitting at the starting line at Baileyton, two 40-somethings, three if you count Jack Walker’s track, ready for a good time, ready to run wild, no worse for the wear.

Good Life Magazine

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OVer 25 YeArs In BusIness 256-739-9500 6,500 Sq. Ft. Of Antiques, Vintage, Collectibles, Used Furniture & Glassware 592 Co. Rd. 1170, Cullman - Exit 308 Off I-65, 278W Across From Cullman Flea Market Open Friday, Saturday, Sunday 9AM-5pM, Closed Mon.-Thurs.

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A three-page promotional section of Good Life Magazine

59

Conversation pieces abound at Water Valley Flea Market T

Water Valley Flea Market has 90 vendors in two large buildings, so plan to spend a little time browsing when you visit. Someone will have something that interests you. “I like to find conversation pieces,” says owner Heather York. In fact, most of her house is furnished with conversation pieces she’s brought into her flea market.

he number one rule in antique shopping is to buy what you like.

Heather York has been following that rule since she started dealing in antiques at age 19.

And there’s plenty to like at her store, Water Valley Flea Market, a few miles west of Jones Chapel on U.S. 278.

“It’s a ‘junking high’ when you find something you have been looking for,” she says.

“It’s absolutely fun.”

If she doesn’t have what you want, Heather will try to find it on her buying trips around the country. With her contacts in the business, she also gets advance notice on estate sales.

“We keep a book of things people are looking for,” she says. “If we find it, we call them.”

Heather and her mom, Lorene, interact with their customers. They encourage them to look for quality, to check inside of drawers and backs of furniture to ensure that they’re real wood.

Quality pieces have a feel and heft to them.

Water Valley also sells CeCe Caldwell’s Paints. Before deciding to carry it, Heather researched the popular line of non-toxic, lowodor, chalk and clay-based paints and stains.

They are wonderful, she says, for bringing new life to details in old pieces and customizing them to fit any room.

A corporate accountant by trade, Heather, her late father, Rudolph, and Lorene used to have a booth at Water Valley when it was owned by JoLyn Otto. After Heather graduated from UAB, the family bought the business, then in a single chicken house. Later they added a new and larger building next door.

Heather and Lorene have co-owned the business 17 years.

“We have people who have been coming to us for years,” she says. “They trust us. They know we are honest.

“This is a business where you want to deal with someone who’s passionate about it, who understands a piece of furniture,” she adds. “It’s not something you do because you are going to get rich. It’s something you do because you are passionate about it and enjoy it.”

Last part of a year-long, three-page promotional

Country Village offers a wide variety, from used furniture to fine antiques People can always find good,

handy ways to re-purpose antique and used furniture, says Helen Herron, who has managed Country Village Antiques next to Cullman County Flea Market for five years.

“Antiques are better furniture than you usually find in stores nowadays,” Helen says. “‘They don’t make them like they used to.’”

While antiques are often reasonable in price, some people opt for used furniture because they like newer styles or because it’s cheaper than new or antique pieces, she says.

Country Village Antiques has both, from the low end all the way up to a pair of hand-carved oak chairs that originally came from Germany via Maryland and sell for $1,600.

On the lower end of the dollar scale, beds, sofas, chests and dining room chairs are big movers.

“I can’t keep sofas in,” she laughs.

“I have weekends where people come for furniture and buy whatever I have in their price range.”

Gertis “Willie” Williams is a fixture section of Cullman County Good Life Magazine

at Country Village. One of 19 vendors there, he’s been at the store for much of his 18 years in antiques.

He used to pack the entire rear of the store with armoires. They were highly popular for converting into entertainment centers until large, flatscreen TVs came along.

“People from across the U.S. would hear about us and stop in,” he says.

“One guy from Michigan stopped on the way to Florida and said he might come back. He did and brought a flatbed trailer,” Willie says. “He took 10 wardrobes and two buffets.”

Hoosier cabinets, Willie says, are popular antique items these days.

Their value depends a lot on location.

“You might find one for $450 here, and it might be worth two or three times that elsewhere,” he said.

Some people browse with a specific item in mind, he says, but more people, especially travelers, simply see something they like and buy it spontaneously.

“As long as they buy, it’s fine with me,” he laughs. “They can do whatever they want to do with it.”

You can find bargains on used furniture, such as this sofa, at Country Village Antiques, just off U.S. 278 west of I-65.

Hoosier cabinets, below, are a trend.

Out ’n’ About If you were out ‘n’ about on Smith Lake most anytime recently, chances are good you were not alone on the water. Warm weather always brings out folks who enjoy having fun. For instance, the three lads, inset above, are having a hoot skimming across the water on a tube behind a man and woman having just us much fun in the boat pulling them. Three people, upper right, abandoned their boat for a cool swim against the backdrop of the residence known far and wide as “The Castle.” Near right, Katie Cost stays out of the way on her stand-up paddle board as her parents, Susan and Tommy, get into a goodnatured splash-out. (Tommy started it. Susan finished it.) “Havin’ Fun” is the name of the boat – and the name of the game – for the two youngsters at the far right splashing around dockside. Photos by David Moore.

Mitch

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