Day 19 June 16

Dear Happy Trail Readers,

What an incredible day. We left Birmingham and headed south toward Montgomery and then Ozark.  On the way we once again passed a scene of tornado devastation –much worse than anything we had seen before (pix below). With Robert and Trystan following in her car we arrived in Ozark early in the afternoon.

Everything has changed since we were last here in May, 1970. What was once a small sleepy Sothern town with little more than a court house square with its confederate memorial and a few shops was now scores of strip malls and chain restaurants. When we first lived there segregation was still the official policy. Now we drove in on

Martin Luther King Blvd.

We got rooms at the Microtel, a chain we had never stayed at before. The rooms were really micro, you almost expected the staff to speak Japanese, but room spotless and very comfortable. The manager  had suggested a local southern buffet restaurant for lunch. It was cheap and absolutely the best Southern cooking any of us had ever tasted.

I asked the restaurant cashier if she knew of a Purvis or Elizabeth Taylor (our old landlords back in ‘70) but she did not know them. We hoped to find our old duplex that we had lived in 40 years before. Trystan did a quick Google search on her smart phone and found the obituaries of both husband and wife along with other helpful information. We decided to continue our search later.

We decided to visit Fort Rucker. Richard had trained there in 1967, proposed via the phone while in training, and, after returning from Viet Nam, was stationed there. We had moved to Ozark where I worked briefly for the phone company and eventually got a good job at the newly built Army commissary on base.

On the way to the base we spotted a Lutheran church that we had attended a couple of times during our year and a half at Ft. Rucker. At that time, it seemed very modern (circular, natural wood and lots of windows and surrounded by woods on three sides). I often wondered why this church was in such a small southern place and I think I found out when visiting the wonderful Army aviation museum at the Fort.  Unbeknownst to us, German POWs were at held at Fort Rucker during WWII and worked on peanut farms in the surrounding areas. After the war, quite a few stayed or later returned to this area. I’m suspect that is the reason for this church in an area which otherwise seems exclusively populated southern fundamentalist denominations. We did note, however, that the church was Missouri Synod, the more conservative flavor of Lutheranism. I don’t recall that that was the case when we attended years ago.

After the visiting the museum, we drove by the commissary. I would never have recognized it. There were buildings all around it which were not there before. We took pics and then drove through the base. When we were there the base buildings were aging wooden examples of WWII hasty construction –including heating courtesy of pot-bellied cast iron coal stoves.  Now the base looks like an expensive corporate office park surrounded by a golf course, manicured lawns, modern housing complexes and piney woods.

We also stopped at the town of Enterprise, on the opposite side of the base from Ozark. The story is that a plague of weevils destroyed cotton production in the area. George Washington Carver suggested that peanuts could be an even more profitable local industry for the area. This proved to be true and the result was a great prosperity for the entire region. The town fathers could not bring themselves to honor “a negro” so instead they erected a statue honoring the bug that had destroyed the cotton crop instead. It is claimed that this is the only monument honoring a bug in the world today.

Finally, we began looking for our old house. We had no luck with memory (i.e. driving around and searching), current phone books or asking people living in the town. I did remember it was in a neighborhood near the phone company building.

We decided that we needed to find a phone book or directory from around 1970. We went to the library and were sent to the genealogical area. We were helped by a sweet lady, and found the phone book… we found that the Taylors had lived on

Simmons Street

(this street name finally rang a bell). We got the address and, as we were leaving, met a woman in the library who knew someone who had bought the house from the Taylors and also remembered that Elizabeth Taylor made pottery (again, familiar memory).

Off we went, with her directions. We managed to find

Simmons Street

and despite the fact that the town had changed all the street numbers we found the house and, sure enough, our duplex sat in the back. It had aged, was a bit shabbier and the grounds had gone to seed but  we were happy to see that the place was still there.

All in all, a fantastic day. I think our search for this house made this day very special to us. We felt like detectives…

Good Detectin’ to All,

Linda