Throughout, Hoffman is concerned with stories and their enduring nature. As he writes, "When buildings are leveled, when land is developed, when money is spent, when our loved ones pass on, when we take our places a little farther back every year on the historical time-line, what we have still are stories."
"Writing in a style that is eloquent and clear, Roy Hoffman offers an affectionate portrait of one of the most storied cities in the South. This is an engaging piece of journalism from a writer who understands and embraces the larger possibilities of his craft."
—Frye Gaillard
Chapter One
If you drive downtown on a weekday afternoon in the last years of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st you may find, at first, a quiet place where time seems to have curved just beyond the boundaries. It even seems haunted in places, the names of old stores faint signatures on peeling walls. There are new places thriving, to be sure—a children's science museum called the Exploreum, a high-rise Government Plaza, rock-n-roll emporia that do not begin to fill until 10 P.M.—but most stores and offices have moved toward suburban west Mobile, out where Airport Boulevard and I-65 cross amidst a sprawl of shopping centers and American eateries.
Three centuries have passed since the French first settled upriver, got flooded out and moved down to the present site of downtown Mobile, at the mouth of the Mobile River. The flags that flew over the realm changed through the eras—French, British, Spanish, United States, Confederate and, of course, United States again. But the site of Mobile's heart, close to the boats and the trains, stayed the same until automobiles took it far away.
I start my journeys through Mobile like my grandfather—on Dauphin Street. My stories are 20th-century ones, and now that the century has astonishingly come and gone, we can sec what we had, and what we lost—many of our downtown family enterprises, the bakeries and drugstores andmovie houses and retail stores that made "going downtown" a special event, one you got dressed up for. That's what many people remember and long for—not out of nostalgia, I don't think, but yearning to be somewhere distinctive, somewhere that says it's truly your home.
To go downtown today can be a melancholic experience, since so much has vanished even after these pieces were written. But if you remember some of the businesses and lives that flourished there, and replay the stories of some storekeepers and families, it can be a rich, involving experience, too.
Copyright © 2000 The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.
| List of Illustrations | xi | |
| Introduction | 1 | |
| Part I | Going Downtown | 7 |
| My Grandfather's World | 11 | |
| A Walk Down Dauphin | 11 | |
| A Contract for Watermelons | 18 | |
| The Enduring Ring | 21 | |
| Corner Drugstores, Moviehouses, and Bread | 25 | |
| The Lost Counter Culture | 25 | |
| Moviehouse Dreams | 30 | |
| Our Daily Bread | 36 | |
| Pictures of Overbey | 45 | |
| Bienville Square Bus Stop | 53 | |
| Part II | On the Dock of the Bay | 57 |
| Reading the Lights | 60 | |
| On Fairhope Pier | 63 | |
| Coming to Port | 71 | |
| A Night With a Bar Pilot | 71 | |
| Bearing the Load | 80 | |
| Shore Leave | 85 | |
| Hurricane Chronicles | 91 | |
| Hurricane People | 91 | |
| Old Hurricane Stories | 92 | |
| Waiting for Georges | 101 | |
| A World of Water | 104 | |
| Jubilee! | 106 | |
| Part III | Through the Countryside | 111 |
| Old Highway 90 | 114 | |
| King Cotton's New Face | 121 | |
| The Miller's Tale | 129 | |
| The Music of "Pah-cahns" | 136 | |
| Part IV | Colorful Competitions | 141 |
| Baseball in the Blood | 145 | |
| Tommie Littleton: Gentleman Boxer | 155 | |
| Men of Steel: Wheelchair Basketball | 163 | |
| The Great Anvil Shoot | 170 | |
| Part V | Tangled Legacies | 175 |
| Peter's Legacies | 179 | |
| Search for a Slave Ship | 185 | |
| Alexis Herman Comes Home | 194 | |
| Long Lives the Mockingbird | 199 | |
| Part VI | Newcomers Among Us | 205 |
| Las Familias de la Tierra | 209 | |
| By the Sweat of Their Brows | 209 | |
| Helping Hands for Children | 218 | |
| On the Asian Coast | 224 | |
| Khampou's Village | 224 | |
| Buddhist Temple | 234 | |
| Part VII | Intriguing Portraits | 245 |
| Sage Voices | 249 | |
| Joe Langan's City Limits | 249 | |
| Albert Murray's House of Blues | 259 | |
| Alma Fisher: Out of Auschwitz | 268 | |
| Past Triumphs | 280 | |
| Dr. James Franklin: Healing Us Still | 280 | |
| Ben May: The Quiet Philanthropist | 288 | |
| U.S. Attorney Armbrecht: A Matter of Will | 295 | |
| Close Ties Far Away | 303 | |
| Morocco to Mobile: Paul Bowles' Secret Journey | 303 | |
| Monumental Talent: Tina Allen's Heroic Sculptures | 309 | |
| Part VIII | The Seasonal Round | 317 |
| As the Calendar Turns | 320 | |
| Rain Town, U.S.A. | 320 | |
| Azaleas at 8 mph | 321 | |
| Point Clear P.O. | 323 | |
| In My Parents' Dancesteps | 326 | |
| The End-of-Year Recital | 329 | |
| Summer Heat | 331 | |
| The First Music of Fall | 333 | |
| Already Home for the Holidays | 337 | |
| Snow! | 340 | |
| Holiday Lights | 342 | |
| Marking Time | 345 | |
| Part IX | Mardi Gras Drums | 349 |
| Let the Good Times Roll | 354 | |
| Welcome Millennium | 363 | |
| Acknowledgments | 371 | |
| Permissions | 375 |
Anonymous
Posted July 30, 2001
It is impossible to grow up in Mobile, Alabama without this historic Southern city leaving its indelible mark. Even though I moved away 25 years ago, I still call Mobile home. Roy Hoffman's collection of articles about the people and places that make Mobile unique, brought back many memories and has stayed with me long after I turned the last page. The Mobile Register is indeed fortunate to have such a talented writer at its disposal.
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