My Aunt Opal was my mom's older sister. She lived in a stately brick home a stone's throw from the middle of town. When I was little, the house always seemed like a luxurious two-story mansion. Returning in 1976 revealed it as a very nicely decorated home but about average in size. We always considered my Aunt Opal extremely sophisticated, too. She spoke like a southern Lauren Bacall, and she smoked cigarettes in a way that made it look elegant. She was a very successful Avon representative, winning vacations to Hawaii and Florida. Her husband, Reedie, ran their successful feed mill, plus he was something of a gentleman farmer, I think, or possibly a real estate tycoon of sorts. I always had the impression that they were the richest family in town. 
Their daughter, Reba, was their child with whom I spent the most time. On a vacation when I was about ten, Darlene and I had asked where they had good tacos in Alabama. Reba replied, "Taco? What's a taco?" By the time I returned in 1976, however, Taco Bell and other Mexican food had become established in Alabama's bigger cities.My cousins Reggie and Bobby were about ten years older than me. I can't recall seeing Bobby, but I heard some interesting stories about his adventures in college. Reggie was the more conservative one, and after college, he returned to Eclectic. I think he worked for UPS by the time I returned in 1976, and he was married to a pretty girl named Gay. They were extremely nice to me, as if I had spent lots of time with them growing up. They later divorced, and he re-married. Modern times had arrived in Alabama in more ways than just fast food.
Every year we would have a fish fry, and in 1976 as in most years, we held it at my Aunt Opal's house. A little black kettle filled with oil was heated over a fire behind the house. The catfish usually came from my Uncle Reedie's lake. A few men would hold a big net and walk across the waist-high water scooping up fish swimming in their path. The fish would be cleaned, covered in cornbread batter and thrown in the boiling oil. Plenty of corn meal with onions would be made into balls and fried up as hush puppies. It's said that hush puppies got their name because hound dogs would howl for some of the fish frying, leading the cooks to throw them a cooked ball of dough to get them to hush. The 1976 meal was as terrific as ever, with lots of cooked home-grown vegetables, side dishes and desserts. After dinner, I played my guitar and sang. It was a great night for me, if not for anyone else within earrange of my performance.
My Uncle Edwin's family also settled in Eclectic, and though he always downplayed business and seemed more interested in having fun, he might have been an even more successful businessman than Uncle Reedie. Uncle Edwin fought in Germany during the war, and he credited his time hunting in the woods as a child for surviving when many of his companions died. Like many heroes of war, he didn't like to talk about it, though, and I learned this and a lot of other things about him from my parents. When the war ended and Edwin returned home, he and my dad became buddies. They would go out honky tonking, which my Granddaddy didn't like. I'm sure he felt my dad was a bad influence on his son. My dad had a job in a five and dime store, which was sort of the 99 cent store of its day. He told me he got fed up dealing with the "biddies" who asked him to fetch different items. He quit, but not before introducing my Uncle Edwin to his boss. Edwin took over his job and made a career of it. I'm not sure of the details, but somehow Uncle Edwin ended up owning a five and dime of his own in downtown Eclectic. As a child, I loved walking down to buy a Coca Cola for a dime from the machine in front of his store, and then we would stand around and laugh about different things. He had stickers that said "Souvenir of Eclectic, Alabama," and I recall having a copper horse with that yellow and red sticker on it for most of my childhood.Over the years, the store evolved toward a specialization in fabrics. It became known throughout the south as Strickland's Cloth Barn, famous for having great deals. When my Uncle Edwin started buying fabrics, he would make a run over to Atlanta and other cities to cut deals on close-outs and bulk fabric. Initially, he would scribble down an offer on a brown piece of wrapping paper torn off a roll. As his store grew more successful and his shopping trips became more frequent, he had professional purchase orders printed up. When he returned to Atlanta with his pre-printed purchase orders, suddenly the big city textile manufacturers stopped seeing him as a rube who didn't know what he was doing, and he ceased being able to negotiate great deals. It didn't take him long to throw out those professional purchase orders and go back to his shucking and grinning approach.
My Uncle Edwin suffered a bad heart attack, and as I recall, he was officially flat lining for a while. He said that while he was out, he spoke with God, who asked if he was ready to die. Edwin told Him he had a few things to finish up, and he came back to life. Uncle Edwin was always a great guy, so we were all happy that he stayed around a little longer, but in 1980 at the age of only 56, he passed away. I am glad I was able to spend some more time with him on this trip.
Uncle Edwin was always a funny guy with a childlike spirit. He reminded me of Andy Griffith. One of my fondest memories from childhood was fishing with bamboo poles in my granddaddy's pond. We would throw corn bread out on the water, then put a ball on the hook at the end of a short line on the natural rods that had no reels. It wouldn't take long to get a hit, usually, but one hot summer day, my line got caught in some reeds. My Uncle Edwin took off his pants and waded into the water to unhook my line. That may not sound that funny, but this was an age when men I knew were generally rather formal about wearing long pants.
My Aunt Lorene was very sweet, but she was really overshadowed by Uncle Edwin. She worked in the store with him and definitely was an integral part of their success. I most remember a big breakfast she cooked for us one day when I spent the night. There was ham, bacon, eggs, chicken fried steak, homemade biscuits and lots more. I don't think I ever had a breakfast that big.Their oldest son, Ronald, was about eight years older than me, and my best memory of this big, red-haired guy was riding on a country road in his Volkswagon Beetle when he came home from college. He had his glasses on upside down and was pretending he couldn't see a thing, making the country road into something like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. At the time I returned in 1976, Ronald had graduated from college as an accountant and was working in Atlanta.
My cousin Donald was more of my buddy. On this trip, he took me out on a country road to meet a friend of his who also played the guitar. This country boy looked a lot like Roy Clark, and when he started playing, I could have sworn it was him. He was fantastic. I think maybe Donald was kindly showing me that my musical skills could definitely use honing.
When I returned to Eclectic in 1991 with my wife and three children, Donald was either running for mayor or had recently won that election. Basically, his campaign was prompted by the belief that if a man wanted a chicken coop on his property, it was nobody's business but his own. I guess you'd call him a libertarian. When I mentioned traffic jams, he said they had a traffic jam in Eclectic the other day: two cars were waiting at the one light in town.
