Notasulga: July, 1976

It's not Bethlehem or Mecca, but we made a pilgrimage to Notasulga, Alabama, almost every summer when I was growing up.

My wonderful grandparents still lived in the same house in which my mother was literally born, a pre-Antebellum farmhouse off a dirt road in a farm community.

The house had no indoor plumbing unless you count a handpump in the kitchen which, like the one on the back porch, tapped the sweet water well.

There was an outhouse and a little pot if the urge struck you in the middle of the night.

By the way, that's the same kind of pot they refer to in one of the earliest jokes of its kind: "We were so poor that we didn't have a pot to pee in." Jeff Foxworthy made a career of changing that to "You may be a redneck if..."

The old house in which  my mother was born even in the 1960's had only rudimentary electricity comprised of a few strands of wire added around the turn of the century.

There was a kitchen with a wood burning stove that required very early morning fires to warm the house and cook breakfast in the kitchen, an adjoing pantry that led into the family room, which doubled as a master bedroom.

Two other rooms had been added on: a parlor where my cousins and I would play a card game called Rook, and another bedroom which my grandmother used for her handmade crafts, which she loved to make but also sold to help make ends meet.

Most of her customers that I saw come by while visiting were African-American families, all of whom loved my grandmother and her carefully made stuffed animals and dolls.

Granddaddy was a trader of sorts, buying and selling cows, guns and cars, and he shared many of the same clients.

Of course, he was also a farmer.

In his younger days, he had been the mailman and school bus driver too, but by the time I was old enough to remember, he had retired into a lifestyle that still had him on the go from before sun-up until sundown, but with no government jobs.

One of my favorite parts of my 1976 visit was when Granddaddy took me to the Hotel Talisi in the big city of Tallassee to enjoy a great dinner together.

They had fantastic home cooked food using local ingredients, just like the much touted Slow Food Movement that has caught fire among chic restaurateurs today.

My beloved grandmother had passed away five years earlier, or she undoubtedly would have hosted a meal similar to this after church on Sunday, like she always did when we visited.

Granddaddy, who truly loved grandmother, was lonely after she died, and he had re-married, but that just wasn't the same.

At 76 years old, Granddaddy was still active trading cattle, and I also went along with him in his truck with the cattle fence that he used for transporting cows. Everybody knew Granddaddy, and they would all wave if he passed in the car or, when in towns, greet him with great respect by name. His respect was earned not because he was wealthy but because he was a truly good man.

On many previous visits, my cousins and I would pile in the back of a similar truck and ride along bumpy country roads, throwing each other bouncing around this cattle truck.

In this age when seat belts are required, that sounds foolish, but this was a different time

For me, the memories of Notasulga flood in with so many thoughts that I really don't have time to record them all.

While I have many more cousins, I mainly relate this time to the ones who were close to my age.

Steve was my best buddy, a year younger and always with similar interests.

When I would return, we would pick up as best friends where we had left off. He would come over and spend the night with me at Granddaddy's, and we would go out to shoot guns, play in the shade under the house or go across the road to the Treadwell's house.

When we went to his house in Montgomery, my Uncle Roy had an old jalopy in the back yard that we would sit in and pretend we were Todd and Buzz, cruising down Route 66 like in the TV show named after that highway.

On this visit, we were immediately best friends again, but I'll get to more on that in another post.

Another cousin was Reba, who has red hair like Reba McEntire.

I think she is a year older than me, and she was my sister Darlene's buddy.

The wild card was cousin Donald, who is three or four years older than me.

He always seemed big and intimidating, and he would sometimes tease us mercilessly, but he did it with love.

He almost became a minister, but after college instead decided to go into his dad's business, which I will also get to later.

There's only so much I can fit into one post.

Across the road from my Granddaddy lived the Treadwells, who for all intents and purposes were also like cousins.

When Roger Treadwell was in the Navy, he used to stay with us on weekends sometimes in California.

One of them (James?), who always had a crush on Darlene, bought my Granddaddy's farm later and built a geodesic dome on it (I saw this in my 1991 visit).

Michael was Steve's age, and when I wasn't around, he was Steve's best friend on visits to Granddaddy's house.

It's funny how much fun you can have without a lot of fancy toys and expensive video games.

We would walk around on stilts made out of fresh cut wood, tie June bugs to strings, tell each other spooky stories while walking through the nearby graveyard, play baseball in a field covered in holes from cattle walking on wet ground, and laugh doing countless other activities.

It's a tragedy that so many people never leave the city to learn what rural life can be like.