Watershed

I am awed looking over the albums that I listened to in 1971 listed on the sidebar. It is hard to place the branching and broadening of musical creativity (and with it the art and artistic consciousness that accompanied everything musical back then) in context with the daily images of death and destruction coming from Vietnam via the news. The mainstream mindset had not yet given up on the idea that to oppose the war was analagous to being a traitor. So finding myself in the outcast role, I did not think about having a career, owning a home, driving a nice car, or even having a television set. There did not seem to be much of a future to imagine. Even Lennon's song was an ideal set way up on the mountaintop. The imaginists were dead, never made it out of their 20s.

What we did have was very much in the moment. We had all read Be Here Now by Ram Dass, and we did have the means to intensify and deepen the experience of the moment. There was an awakening of sorts going on, and awakenings are not always pleasant. Reality was shocking, like the Manson killings, or the Weather Underground bombings. The feeling was something like a runaway roller coaster- exhilarating and scary- and with too much momentum to stop.

As James Brown sang- Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved- Something had to give, something had to change.

1971-72

I have lingered long over memories of 1970. I guess I can now move on, but reserve the right to remember something else and backtrack if necessary. In an earlier episode I described going to Auburn and getting married. So I am picking up the story line again back in Birmingham in the fall of 1971. Things were beginning to break down on the Southside. I had some friends who I found had unhappily wandered off into areas that repelled me. I did not find their "adventures" appealing, adventurous as I was. The whole scene was already devolving, and I was getting older (ripe old age of 19).

One day we got the bright idea to move to the country. I think the whole youth nation had the same idea- it was probably a survival instinct, and it was highly romanticized by our culture heros. "Goin up the Country" by Canned Heat played at the beginning of Woodstock, and Woodstock itself was a celebration of country life- mud, outdoors, camping out, living off the land, free and easy spirits and all that. People were heading for communes and retreats with the idea that dropping out was the only way to keep your head and your heart intact. Things were very tribal.

We decided to go to a very very rural area of the state. Nicky would teach school and I would go to nursing school. We found a house outside of town- a very small town- and set up housekeeping. I rode a schoolbus to the nearest larger town which was Dothan, and went to school at George Wallace Jr. College at no cost to me. I loved it. My teachers were rather puzzled by my appearance but eventually accepted me and actually gave me a great nursing education. I was a straight A student but I had only one outfit- my same embroidered jeans, now well patched, and a pair of red and blue tennis shoes that I bought for 50 cents. I did have a couple of t-shirts. Birmingham was about 10 years behind the scene, but Dothan was even further behind.

I had no peer group, but that was ok, because I was now married and "settled down". I rode the bus back home each evening, and will never forget the guy who was a Vietnam vet who rode the bus along with about 25 of us. He had a glass eye with a Playboy bunny in the center of it. Gives you an idea of what I mean. One time we invited another young couple over for dinner. When I said something about Bob Dylan the woman said "isn't that the new store over in ....? What can you say?

That year we had the best time with the openess and quiet of the Alabama countryside. We were also 5 miles from the Florida line so we could drive to the state line and eat oysters at a roadside open air oyster bar or head on down to the Gulf. That was nice. We also joined the Columbia Records record club, and got albums in the mail like Aqualung by Jethro Tull and Meddle by Pink Floyd. We got a puppy and named him Shamus for a line in the Pink Floyd album. As I said before, sidetrips from Southside saved my life!

So as the year changed to 1972 and the school year came to an end, so did the country life experiment end. We decided to move back to Birmingham that summer, and went right back to the Southside scene which was now in full tilt boogie mode.

Laughs

I can't imagine how my developing personhood would have turned out had it not been for the Firesign Theatre. Beginning in the late 60's and up until 1976, I could look forward to each new album and each new experience with this surreal craziness. To listen to Firesign Theatre was like undergoing a mental housecleaning, reality check and realignment all at the same time. It was hilarious and challenging. There was nothing passive about hanging out with the characters. Story lines were weird and compelling, interwoven with new and creative forms of funny stuff. They invented themselves and kept us guessing.

Others like Cheech and Chong were funny, but their humor was more predictable. And they were always just two druggies.

These are the albums that I have and treasure. It's all cheap shots but no cheap shots. This is an art form that should be evolving!!

Southside Life

At the age of 18 on the Southside in Birmingham I spent a lot of time in Caldwell and Rhodes Park, and walking around Highland Avenue.

I want to take a memory tour around the area.

The heart of Southside is 5 Points South. The intersection now famously has a fountain with metal sculptures by Frank Fleming. The sculptures depict a storyteller who is a goat, reading to other animal characters. It is perfect for 5 Points.

Behind the fountain on one side is the beautiful Highlands Methodist Church. It is a huge place with a spanish tile roof- very impressive but not imposing. As the name 5 Points suggests, roads lead away in 5 directions. Down Magnoia Avenue was Magnolia Park where we held some sort of candlelight vigil- I can't remember for what.

Highland Avenue starts at the corner where the Cadillac Cafe was, and above it was a huge Barber's milk neon sign. Further down Highland you pass the Town House, the first of two Presbyterian Churches, the Jewish Temple, the Western supermarket, and then it continued to wind around Caldwell and Rhodes Park, huge old homes, apartment buildings, Unity Church, past a small Lutheran church, and another huge Presbyterian Church. The famous Sheraton was there, and the Sheraton grocery, the Highland Market, and there used to be a large Catholic high school, John Carroll, right there in the middle of it all. At the end of Highland was the Highland Golf Course. The Sheraton was famous because it was where we could buy beer!

Going in the other direction on Highland (called 12th Ave, then 11th Ave) are other shops including the Golden Temple, the area's first health food store.Across from it is the very large and imposing white marble Southside Baptist Church. Going north and south from 5 Points is 20th Street South. The drive into the intersection from the South gives you a full view of the city and you pass right under the torch of the Vulcan, the gigantic god that sits atop Red Mountain. If you want to get a feel for this from the view inside a car (it is a little unnerving the first time you take the curve and see over the edge while maneuvering in 4 lanes of traffic at the same time)it was filmed just at this time period in the movie "Stay Hungry"- a weird weird film with Sally Field, Jeff Bridges and Arnold Schwartzenegger who plays a body builder.

Continuing on north headed into Birmingham on 2oth Street takes you to the campus of the University of Alabama in Birmingham, University Hospital and then dividing the south streets from the north streets the cobblestoned Morris Avenue, which was Birmingham's attempt at imitating Underground Atlanta. I do remember the Crazy Horse club was there. It is also home to the Peanut Depot.

Side trips could take you over to Glen Iris, George Ward Park or to Clarimont Avenue and Forest Park. Phelan Park across from Dreamland Barbecue did not look like it does today. There was no Dreamland, and we called it "needle park" for obvious reasons.

Mostly it was a joy to either drive all the curvy roads or walk around up and down on the Southside. I could visit my friends who lived in houses and apartments up the side of Red Mountain so views were plentiful. I think my favorite place was Letchworth. It had the best most close up view of the city and the building had all the style and character of the 1920's.
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Two Steps Backward? or

Ok, so I had to go back to Auburn again, after I first took a trip to the Gulf Coast in December, 1970. It was so beautiful at the beach that year in December.

I went with my true soul mate Curtis. I knew we were soul mates because we even had the same birthday, January 4. He was one year older. We met by happenstance on Southside a few months earlier. I went to a party one night with someone I can't remember that I knew from high school. I met another guy there who was more fun, and left with him. His roommate was Curtis. Curtis was a prominent businessman on the Southside. Anyone remember gold microdot?

Curtis was from Santa Rosa. Back then the Santa Rosa and Grayton Beach area was almost uninhabited. One of the good things about Birmingham is that it is between the Smoky Mountains and the Gulf Coast. It was easy to go either direction and be in beautiful surroundings in a few hours.

So naturally we went to Florida for a little trip, and went to the beach and stayed all day amongst the sand dunes at Grayton State Park.

That is how I lost my car. I was still only 18 years old, and parents giveth but also taketh away. They also decided that Southside was a little too much for me, and didn't I want to go back to Auburn?

So I went back to school, and that was the end of Curtis and me.

Auburn was not really much better than Southside as far as being safe from wild goings on. Although I must say, I got a creative education inventing fun things to do. I went with a fellow student up to Ashville, NC to see the snow and mountains, and we went to see Rod Stewart in Knoxville. Rod Stewart was great- especially the band- I guess it was the Faces with Ron Wood. Knockout! Also the dam slides were good for hours of fun when the weather got warmer that spring.

Soon thereafter I met a guy named Nicky who was about to graduate with a degree in Math. He certainly was a prominent businessman in Auburn at the time. So of course, all the action was around him and his friends. I went to a few classes but was pretty bored by school. I started reading Dostoyevsky, Hesse, Sartre, Vonnegut- all the usual suspects.

By April, we decided to just get married for the heck of it. I borrowed a "Mexican wedding dress" from a friend. We went to the courthouse in Opelika and got married. Just like that. I did not even have any shoes on, nor did I have any kind of ID. We told them we were students and they married us! He graduated in May, and we moved back to Birmingham.

You know, come to think of it, if I had stayed continuously on the Southside during those heady days, I might have lost my head entirely. I think the side trips extended my life. To be continued.....

In Stitches

I started embroidering in 1970.
I started with the only article of clothing I owned which was a pair of already worn out bell bottom blue jeans. I was at a friends apartment one day, and a woman there showed me how to chain stitch. Someone drew a picture of a Capricorn goat for me and I copied it on the leg of the jeans. I used some thread that was fuzzy. I think it was cross-stitch thread. I wore those jeans for several years by patching them over and over. The jeans also had a red and white patterned border about 2 inches wide along the bottom of the cuff. I lost them along the way.

After that project, I started collecting cotton DMC threads and began embroidering for anyone that inspired an idea. Most of what I have done was given away, and is now either trashed or put away in someone's closet or storage bin. There were some that were just spectacular. I particularly miss the two headed dragon I did for a guy named Steve that used to live with the Doobie Brothers. He introduced me to them when they played in Atlanta with Loggins and Messina. I got to go backstage to meet them, and then got to stand on the side of the stage when they played. I also miss the full jacket back Harley Davidson embroidery that I did for some dude in Macon, Georgia.

So here are some examples that have survived.
The photography is by In A Flash.

Early Influences in Birmingham

Childhood was for the most part pretty nifty in Birmingham. We had the zoo with this cool train to ride.

Up on Shades Mountain stood the Temple. You could see it from Shades Valley or from Red Mountain looking south. What a site. I believe it was the spiritual counterbalance to Vulcan.

It was torn down by the Vestavia Baptist Church people who built their church there. One day I hope someone rebuilds the Temple.

When I was very little, drive-ins had swingsets where we could play in the warm summer night, then fall asleep in the car while our parents watched the movie. As teenagers, we went to the drive-in to watch past first run movies cheap. We would fall asleep and have to be waked up by the drive-in staff telling us "time to go home". Innocence.

Kiddieland was the best place ever. Bumper cars, the Twister, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Octopus, the Mad Mouse, the Swings.

Fair Park

Life was good.

Beautiful surroundings, family friendly places like Kiddieland, and --what happened?

My family was returning from 5 Points West one Sunday after eating out at a restaurant in the area. There were few places to eat "over the mountain" back then. Out of nowhere someone was throwing bricks, and it was pretty clear that something big had happened. There was a riot going on, and we got out of there in a hurry. That moment was when the reality of Birmingham broke through. I found out that four little girls had been killed by a bomb while they were at church that Sunday morning.

That morning remains one of the most compelling events of my life. I was the same age as the girls who were killed. I had not yet contemplated human mortality, but I understood my own mortality in a very personal and visceral way that day.

All this to say that although I grew up in Birmingham, and lived through the entire civil rights movment, most of it was unknown to me as a young child and teen. Television and newspapers were careful to air only what was permissible. If a national broadcast or movie was objectionable, it was not shown in Birmingham.

I was lucky that my mother and father were not particularly racist. My father sold homes to middle class blacks families and had good relationships with all sorts of people. However, no one could escape the pervasive atmosphere of fear that enveloped Birmingham. So much hatred. So much paranoia. Our high school band could not go to the Macy's Day Parade that we were invited to due to racism and stupidity.

I tried to forge ahead and be a liberated woman and all that.

When the women's liberation movement hit me I was going to college at Auburn University. I had been politicized by the anti-war movement, and even made the front page of the Auburn-Opelika newspaper carrying a protest sign. I got a shock of reality when I tried to get fellow female students at Auburn to sign a petition to stop the school from keeping us locked up in the dorms. No one was interested.

I was a free spirit, so I threw myself into the mix of the happenings of the day looking for salvation and inspiration. Politics became art form in the food coop and organic foods movement, the anti-nuke movement, black power, consciousness raising groups, underground newspapers, the downward mobility movement, the back to nature movement, native American awareness and spirituality, and of course through music and performance. We had street theatre back in the day. More blogs later on all this stuff!

I know now that a wonderful Alabama photographer named Spider Martin was present to the events that were hidden from me during the Civil Rights era. He took many memorable photos that have become iconic images. I remember seeing his studio in 5 Points South at Cobb Lane. I was not a part of that art scene, but I would like to know more about what was happening then.

It helps to grasp the things that have shaped me, and to expose the not so pretty past. I want release from those binding traumas, and as a citizen of Birmingham, Alabama, freedom from unnecessary anxieties and learned ashamedness about this place. That is a large part of what this blog is about for me.