Thursday, May 28, 2020

Surprising history

At Coffee Klatch this week, we discussed weird and surprising Birmingham (though we occasionally branched out) history/facts.  It was such a fun conversation, I believe it deserves to be shared!

These four numbered items were from a recent BhamNow article, "Fact or Fiction: 4 Birmingham Legends that May or May Not Be True."

1. Birmingham’s Underground River — False

Have you heard of the 300ft-wide, underground river that runs below Birmingham for miles? According to legend, a massive river runs below Birmingham’s streets and flows all the way to the Gulf of Mexico!
Although there are several underground springs and water sources around town, this story is FICTION. A tall-tale-teller by the name of Joseph Mulhatton entertained himself by penning fictional stories and sending them to gullible news organizations. On August 28, 1884, the Birmingham Iron-Age published Mulhatton’s report, titled “Underneath Us“, which spoke of the great (fictional) river. However, no one has ever seen the river!
https://www.alabamapioneers.com/is-birmingham-alabama-sitting-above-an-underground-river/

2. Birmingham’s Batmobile — True

https://youtu.be/7bGkWWoqJVI
A local man driving around town in a 1971 Thunderbird decked out in gadgets and antennas, rescuing stranded motorists sounds too strange to be true, doesn’t it? Well, buckle your seatbelts because that’s exactly what Willie Perry, the “Birmingham Batman” did in the 1980s.

Perry lived by the motto, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” So, he would drive around Birmingham with gas, jumper cables and other tools to help people with broken down cars. Additionally, he would give rides to folks who had too much to drink, drive the elderly to doctor’s appointments and much more.

Unfortunately, Perry died of carbon monoxide poisoning while working on his car in 1985. Since 1982, August 3rd has been recognized as “Willie Perry Day”, thanks to Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr.

3. Jack Daniel’s Birmingham Branch — True

The Motlow’s Corn Whisky sign still exists! 

In the early 1900s Lemuel and Frank “Spoon” Motlow, nephews of the Jack Daniel of Jack Daniel’s distillery in Tennessee, opened their own distillery here in Birmingham. Although they had to deal with Jefferson County’s own prohibition laws from 1908 to 1911, they reopened as the Jack Daniel Distilling Company that year. In fact, they produced the No. 7 Lincoln County Whisky while the original Jack Daniel’s dealt with Tennessee’s prohibition. Eventually, the distillery had to shut down due to nationwide prohibition in 1918.

More info on Prohibition in Birmingham on Bhamwiki https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Prohibition

Book: Vintage Birmingham Signs by Tim Hollis

4. Miss Fancy, the Alcohol-Drinking Elephant — True

Miss Fancy, a large and gentle Indian elephant, was the main attraction of Birmingham’s first public zoo—the Avondale Zoo. After Miss Fancy was rescued from a circus in 1913, she became a favorite of schoolchildren who visited the Zoo. In fact, she became an informal mascot for Howard College (now Samford University) and even led the students on a parade to Legion Field for a game against Birmingham-Southern!

When Miss Fancy felt under the weather, her veterinarian would mix “elephant medicine” with a quart of liquor and several gallons of water. Since Alabama had statewide prohibition at the time, she would drink confiscated liquor. On one occasion, Miss Fancy and her trainer—both under the influence—went for a walk in Avondale. The police soon found it impossible to arrest a drunk elephant, so they sent Miss Fancy and her trainer back to the zoo to sleep it off.

https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Avondale_Zoo

One local resident recalled waking from a nap and Miss Fancy was staring at her through her window.
  • Ram-Headed Southern Storyteller
    Some folks look at Frank Fleming's "The Storyteller" sculpture and only see a human body with the head of a goat. To be fair, you don't normally find something like "ram-man" (as he's known) on public art in the Deep South -- unless you're looking at one of Fleming's other sculptures.

    Is it godless New York liberal culture in Birmingham? Is it an after-midnight rendezvous for red-eyed pagans? Are the five frogs listening to goat-guy really arranged at the points of a satanic pentagram?

    Well, no. Fleming (1940-2018) was an Alabama native. He sculpted animals because of Southern and older storytelling traditions employing smarty-pants creatures (think Br'er Rabbit), and because he wanted to convey the idea of storytelling as a "peaceable kingdom." He also wanted the sculpture to interest children.

    The Storyteller sits on a stump, reading to his animal pals from an open book, holding a tall staff topped with an owl. The audience animals sit on circular platforms, a hare rides on the back of a tortoise. Five frogs spit water arcs crisscrossing the fountain.

    It's in front of a Methodist church, where we'd expect a Christ counseling his flock rather than Ram-Man. But the sculpture's satanic connection is an urban legend. The only hellish thing we noticed is its location -- in the heart of Birmingham's busy Five Points district, which meant we had to park several blocks away in order to walk to see the sculpture.
  • The oldest baseball stadium in the country, Rickwood Field, is located in Birmingham. They have done a wonderful job keeping it "out of date," as it is the oldest pro ballpark still in use in the entire world. It's a definite must visit if you ever pass through the area, as it is open year round for self guided tours and local teams still play many games there. For further information, check out the Friends of Rickwood Web site at www.rickwood.com.
  • Birmingham Museum of Art's collection of Wedgwood pottery—the largest in the world outside Britain.
  • Birmingham is the only place in the world where all three raw ingredients for steel (coal, limestone, and iron ore) occur naturally within a ten-mile radius.
  • The Divinity of Light (although most people just call her Electra) stands atop the Alabama Power Building. In 1926, a writer for the Birmingham Post began publishing installments of the love story of Electra and Vulcan, attributing the potholes downtown to their footsteps from their trips to see one another.
  • The multi-colored dance floor at The Club in Birmingham was director John Badham’s inspiration for the flashy set-up in Saturday Night Fever.
  • A Birmingham serviceman is the reason we now celebrate Veteran’s Day. In November 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day, set aside to honor veterans of World War I. But World War II required the greatest mobilization of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen in American history. Raymond Weeks, a World War II veteran from Birmingham, thought Armistice Day should be expanded. In 1947 he led a delegation to Washington, D.C. to urge then-Army Chief of Staff General Dwight Eisenhower to create a national holiday that honored all veterans. In 1954, President Eisenhower signed legislation establishing November 11 as Veterans Day. Weeks led the first National Veterans Day Parade in 1947 in Alabama, a tradition he continued until his death in 1985. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan honored Weeks as the driving force for the national holiday with the Presidential Citizenship Medal. Learn more at NationalVeteransDay.org.
  • Stand on the rim of a Jordan-Hare-sized meteor crater. Scientists estimate the meteorite that struck Wetumpka 81 million years ago would have been the size of the bowl of Auburn University's Jordan-Hare Stadium. The rim of the crater is visible for visitors to see today. The Wetumpka Library says: "The enormity of the Wetumpka explosion is hard to comprehend. The impact of a large object traveling at 40,000 miles per hour would cause an explosion that would dwarf even the largest thermonuclear weapons." Of only 157 craters on earth, only six, including this one, are visible above ground. Wetumpka Impact Crater Commission
  • Birmingham Zoo and Botanical Gardens built on 4,700 graves

    If you've been to the Birmingham Zoo or the Botanical Gardens, you may be surprised to find you were walking across a cemetery with as many as 4,700 graves.
    https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2015/03/post_221.html

    According to a description on the Birmingham Public Library's website, "The cemetery contains 4,711 burials (sources differ on the exact number) and was located south of the city on the site that is now Lane Park and the Birmingham Zoo. The graves were not removed, but decades after the cemetery ceased to be used, the park and zoo were built over the graves."

    Before 1909, the name changed to Red Mountain Cemetery, then to Red Mountain Park. It was eventually named Lane Park in honor of Birmingham Mayor A.O. Lane and was used as a city park, as the site of the Allen Gray Fish Hatchery fed by nearby Pullen Springs, a stone quarry, a baseball field and golf driving range.Two hundred acres were set aside to establish the Birmingham Zoo in 1954 and the Botanical Gardens in 1962.Some records of those buried in the cemetery are available at Birmingham Public Library. Click here to see the information available online.
  • Fant Hill Thornley (born c. 1909; died 1970) was director of the Birmingham Public Library from 1953 until his death. Prior to that he was a reference librarian from 1949, and had previously been a partner with Emma Bostick in the Columbia, South Carolina publishing company of Bostick & Thornley.

    It was because of his friendship with Thornley that Birmingham investment banker Rucker Agee donated his extensive collection of antique maps to the library. In response to a lawsuit filed by activist Lola Hendricks, Thornley successfully urged the library board to desegregate the city's library system during a called meeting on April 11, 1963. In taking this action, he and the board defied a pledge by Mayor Art Hanes to desegregate the libraries "only at gunpoint."

    Thornley is thought by some to haunt the Linn-Henley Research Library in downtown Birmingham. In 1977 archivist Marvin Yeomans Whiting saw the elevator doors — then a set of swinging doors — open, followed by the smell of Thornley's favorite Chesterfield cigarettes. In 1989 an electrician working at the library says a ghost appeared and spoke to him. He refused to return to the archives area. http://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Fant_Thornley?fbclid=IwAR1ZltWWNagOlFQtzJvIgvSkC0JkgV82YD-c4wdNcIWjofe3_ujaBaiVvJM
  • Jim Baggett (archivist at the Birmingham Public Library downtown) shared this with me: Apparently at some point in Bham history, there was a Wild West Show parade and some kids threw rocks at an Indian chief on horseback . . .and he promptly whirled his horse around and came after them. With his tomahawk. He chased the kids into a local store--still on horseback.
  • On the University of North Alabama campus, Wesleyan Hall is said to be haunted. UNA also keeps lions on campus. https://leoanduna.com/
There's a new topic each week.  If you'd like to join in on the fun, register your email on our calendar to receive a link to the meeting: http://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/4320493
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