Jerry's Alpacas

On Thursday, April 7, before we went to Doris and Jimmy's for our reunion, we stopped at Cousin Jerry's Alpaca farm.

Here's a video of his story about some previous visitors:

Visit with Cullman Relatives, April 7, 2011

Another family reunion today. We started with a visit to cousin Jerry’s llama farm in Heyden—check back later for a video--and then drove up Highway 31 through Garden City (which doesn’t seem to have changed at all in the last 20 years) and Hanceville, and after a confusion between two different streets named “Park” (two streets with the same name in a town of less than a 1,000 people?), found Jimmy and Doris’s house. There we met Jane and George, Tater and Bonnie, and Mary for a generous potluck lunch of salads (one was a “pretzel salad” which is made of red jello and strawberries with crushed pretzels, among other ingredients—see recipe below) cold cuts, and for dessert. . . coconut cake, turtle pie, white cake with strawberries. . .my stomach hurts just writing down all the names. . . We sat around and talked as we often do at these reunions, agreed to visit one another sooner next time, and headed back to Mt. Olive mid-afternoon.

On the drive back we stopped at Grandad’s old house and the highway bridge there on old Highway 31—very, very sad to see how run down that area has become.

Tonight Laura treated Carla, Diane, Donna Crouch, Donna Marks and me to dinner at one of Frank Stitt’s restaurant, Botega in Birmingham. A lovely way to spend our last evening in Alabama.

We’re on the road tomorrow back to Cincinnati and then I fly out to SFO Saturday morning.

Here’s the recipe for Strawberry Pretzel Salad:

5 oz pretzels, crushed 8 oz cream cheese

1/3 cup butter melted ¼ cup powdered sugar

3 T brown Sugar 1 16 oz package frozen strawberries

1 large and 1 small box strawberry jello 12 oz Cool Whip

1 cup boiling water

Mix pretzels, butter, and brown sugar and press into bottom of 9 x 13 pan. Cook at 350 degrees for 8 minutes and let cool. Mix cream cheese, powdered sugar and Cool Whip and spread over crust. Dissolve jello in boiling water and add strawberries. Pour mixture over cream cheese mixture. Refrigerate until set.

Family Reunion with the Webers in Mt. Olive Wednesday, April 6

Here Donna and I are with our Weber cousins--our first reunion in well over 10 years! From left to right are: Joe, Carla, Robbie, Beth, Tom, Donna, and Jerry.

We just spent a wonderful evening together over a potluck dinner with Jerry telling us incredible stories about past adventures with the rolling store, living in the West End of B'ham and then moving out to Mt. Olive where Uncle Buddy and Uncle Les bought and split 20 acres and 5 cows from a former West End neighbor who became a neighbor and friend in Mt. Olive as well. He also told us about such health care miracles as taking tumeric to avoid Alzheimer's and curing stroke and migraines with a decompression chamber. Jerry can really amaze an audience!

Tomorrow we're going up to Cullman County to visit Jerry and Cathy and their alpaca farm as well as have "dinner" (the midday) meal at Doris and Jimmy's along with Uncle Tater, Mary, and hopefully others.

Our "Literary" Day in Oxford and Jackson, MS

April 5, 2011 Faulkner and Welty home tours

Today was our “literary” day as we toured both William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak house in Oxford where he and his family lived from 1930-1962 (his death) and Eudora Welty’s home in downtown Jackson. Diane Weber joined us for the Faulkner tour.

Rowan Oak is quite near Courthouse Square but located at the end of a lovely stand of cedar trees leading up to the front porch of a white two storey columned Greek revival house. It seems a little shabby as one might imagine Miss Emily Grierson’s house looked in his famous story “A Rose for Emily,” about a necrophiliac old spinster, but inside the furnishings are well preserved and rather formal, giving an aura of a stately bygone era. We spoke with an Ole Miss graduate student in history who showed us photos of the rural area surrounding the Faulkner home during the 1960s—which might as well have been taken decades earlier since the life of cotton picking appeared still very primitive. And we discussed more Faulkner family history revealed by Faulkner’s niece, Dean Faulkner Wells, his last remaining relative who knew him in person, in a new memoir. During our brief stay in Oxford we discovered a really active writers’ and literary community—many writers pass through the town to give homage to its most famous resident and many writers, including Jimmy Buffet, have gotten their start at Dean Faulkner Wells kitchen table.

By mid-day we were on Highway 55 heading south to Jackson. Bright blue skies and bright green woods whizzed by us. All day we saw graceful white and pink dogwoods blooming as well as late azaleas, iris and may other spring flowers. Welty’s home is surrounded by a lovely garden, restored to its appearance during the time Eudora and her mother tended it. We had a private tour—two guides for two of us—through her house, now converted to a museum, which preserves each room just as it was when she lived and wrote there, books literally covering every flat surface. Welty entertained many friends at home throughout her life, but she also traveled widely and collected artifacts and paintings from her trips. Seeing where and how she lived made us want to dip back into her fiction and her autobiography to notice where and how she integrates her sense of place into her writing.

All too soon the literary part of our trip is over, but we’re looking forward to reuniting with family members in Birmingham tomorrow.

Monday, April 4, 2011 Oxford, MS

Named after Oxford, England of course! In Courtyard Square there is a genuine red phone booth from the UK and apparently on weekends double decker buses take tourists around to see the sights. . . This town is the home of the University of Mississippi, also known as "Ole Miss." After a comfortable nightÕs rest in La Quinta motel in Jackson, TN, we headed out for our P.E.O. B & B in Oxford. (P. E. O. is an organization Laura belongs to. It supports women's education.) Greeted in Southern hospitality fashion by Dixie, we were shown our bedroom in her comfortable ranch style house near the downtown square. Dixie pointed out highlights on the Oxford map and indicated where we might park close to the Square--no parking meters in Oxford yet--it's a great expansion opportunity for BCAG, Peter! We drove into town, took some photos and soon the weather began to change into rain. The square is a charming place retaining the character and appearance of olden days.

During lunch at The Downtown Grill, the rain poured down! We also gasped with the lightening strikes but luckily there were no one inch size hail stones and tornado funnels as warned by the Weather Channel. . . Afterwards, we walked under awnings visiting various shops on the Square, drove through the campus of Old Miss, then we were astonished with the nearby Oxford Mall looking like a ghost town. Fewer than 20 cars could be seen the huge parking lots. We returned to our B & B to read, write and wait out the bad weather. Tonight Diane Weber will arrive in time for another dinner out on the Square. She is joining us for a tour of Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home, tomorrow morning.

On the road from Berea, KY to Jackson, TN

April 3, 2011

Last night we arrived at Barbara and Randall's house around 9:30 driving down from the Cincinnati airport. We awoke to a bright sunny morning, a cardinal chasing away finches at the bird feeder outside our window, and the redbud trees frothing in pink everywhere. . .

At noon several friends from my three years at Berea 1990-93 arrived for a lovely goatmilk quiche lunch prepared by Barbara. Friends from the English Department: Dorothy Schnare, Libby Jones, and Jackie Betts; from the bike group: Anrietta and Bill Stolte, and from the women's group Joan Moore. See our group photo above.

We reminisced over old times but not too much because we also had lots of new plans and projects to discuss--Anriette volunteers at a free health clinic in Paint Lick; Dorothy has children, grandchildren and a 90 year old mother nearby to care for; Joan has taken up Qi Gong; Jackie just returned from a month traveling and visiting relatives in California. All are leading interesting and active lives. It was especially wonderful to see Barbara and Randall of course. Randall had just read Born to Run and wanted to know if I ran barefoot when I was a Stanford. . .Barbara is enjoying her first year of retirement doing photography, gardening, continuing her poetry. . . .Both appear happy and fulfilled.

We were on the road by 2:30 and soon knew we wouldn't make it to Oxford, Mississippi tonight. We drove past spring breaking out everywhere even along the highway with new green leaves, more redbud, lovely skies, wind. . . Across Tenneessee is a long haul! We stopped for a terrible dinner at Cracker Barrel, swearing never to go there again and now we're in a La Quinta Inn for a night's rest before we head south in the morning again. . .