No Hill Too High for a Stepper

by Mike Mahan

  Sister, luckily, had a job teaching at Phillips High School downtown, and she could walk to the corner a half block from her apartment to Tuscaloosa Avenue, stand and wait, and soon a streetcar would come by and pick her up. The streetcar, which looked like a single car of a train, had a long rod sticking out the top and touching an overhead wire in the middle of the street. I learned that it was not powered by steam but by electricity running in a wire above the rails, which unnerved me a bit, as I could never understand why if you stepped on the rail you might not get shocked by the electricity going from the long rod to the street car.

  My trips to Sister’s were a highlight of my childhood. I made friends with the children who lived in the apartment building, and I would feel a little blue when I left them and Sister to return to Wilton and then home.

  Tootsie and Sister were close, but they were as different as could be. Tootsie was very tall—five-ten or five-eleven—and very thin, but she had a fine shape. She was always very tan, as she baked herself in the sun at every opportunity. Against her tan skin she loved to lay fine jewelry, especially flashy diamonds. She was quite proud of an antique diamond ring presented to her by her mother-in-law, Gracie Hargrove. She always dressed at the height of fashion, favoring black and white spectator pumps with heels so high that Mother was afraid she would kill herself, especially when she walked around the campus at Alabama College, with its uneven brick streets and sidewalks.

  Tootsie on the pier of her father-in-law’s place on Dog River near Mobile about 1946. Her modest swimsuit was probably worn for my benefit.

  Tootsie loved the good life and adored the pomp and whimsy of Mobile’s Mardi Gras.

  If a daring fashion came out, Tootsie was the first to adopt it. When two-piece bathing suits became popular in the forties, she got a turquoise one, wearing it to Sidney’s family’s cabin on the Dog River and causing much talk among her in-laws. Tootsie did not care one bit about the talk—in fact, she loved it.

  Tootsie was really always a rebel at heart. She smoked heavily from an early age, and later she became a very heavy drinker. And she was always quite public about both practices, even smoking and drinking in front of her mother, who greatly disapproved of both habits—particularly in women and in public. Tootsie and her best friends, Todd Jeter and the Weems girls, were much more daring than were most of the other girls, including Sister. It wasn’t so much that Sister disapproved of smoking and drinking. Instead she was critical of Tootsie because her behavior upset Mother.

  Tootsie craved the good life and gloried in the sense of having made it. High society meant a great deal to her. She always had plenty of money, not just from her husband’s ample salary, but also from her work teaching at the secretarial college in Poughkeepsie. Tootsie had married well. Her husband was the son of Captain Hargrove, who piloted on the river at Mobile for many years. When he retired, he was the oldest practicing pilot in America, having piloted sailing vessels, steam vessels, various kinds of crafts in World War I and World War II, and even an atomic-powered vessel. I always found him fascinating when I visited as a boy.

  I remember boarding the Southerner at Birmingham’s Union Station with Mother when I was ten or eleven and riding it to Mobile to visit Captain Hargrove and his wife Gracie, who lived on Ann Street in Mobile. Tootsie, who had come down from Poughkeepsie for a visit, met us at the station, which I noted was not as big as the terminal in Birmingham. But I thought its art deco design was even more beautiful. The Mobile terminal had lots of color inside and out, and the ceiling was high, but not reaching the sky as the one in Birmingham seemed to.

  Tootsie drove us down Government Street to the Hargrove home, and I was awed by the immense oaks that arced over the street. It seemed as if we were proceeding through a large tunnel made of trees and green leaves. It was early spring when I visited, and azaleas were in bloom everywhere. When we turned off Government onto Ann, I realized that the Hargroves lived in a neighborhood even finer than Highland Avenue at home. Their house was a gleaming white two-story, with porches across the front on both floors. As we got out of the car, I looked out at the manicured lawn with bright pink azaleas blooming everywhere and was amazed at the funny-looking grass growing in the yard, even up under the shade trees. It turned out to be St. Augustine grass, and I told Mother, who often complained about grass not growing under the trees in our yard, that we needed to get some St. Augustine grass.

  Gracie, a thin lady in a bright green dress, met us at the door. Behind her stood Captain Hargrove, wearing white pants and a navy coat with gold buttons. I noticed that he was shorter than she was. He bowed to Mother and came over and shook my hand, and I was amazed at how huge and muscular his hands were. I knew what Dad meant when he said be respectful when somebody had a firm handshake.

  The interior of the house was impressive. Everything was just so. Although it might not have been quite as big, I thought it rivaled the Craig house across the street from us in Montevallo. I gazed at the furniture and at the drapes, and I knew somebody had to have some money. Gracie said that she knew we were tired from our trip so she had prepared an early supper, and she took us into the dining room, where an elegant table was set. As I looked at the table service, and as I realized I knew precisely what to do with every fork, spoon, and knife, I was glad that Momma had insisted that we set a full table at home. Home training paid off.

  I went to Mobile to visit the Hargroves several times, and when I did Captain Hargrove would take me down to his cabin on the Dog River where he kept his boat anchored. We would go out in the Suzy Q., a small white skiff with three seats and a small inboard motor that was named for Tootsie. After cranking the motor with a small rope wound around a black starting wheel, the engine would begin to run melodically and rhythmically. We would lower the tiller into the water and slowly move down the river toward Mobile Bay and travel under the Dog River Bridge, which seemed mammoth to me at the time. Captain Hargrove would let me sit at the tiller, and I would pretend to be a sea captain as I guided the boat. He taught me nautical terms like port, starboard, bow, and stern. When I returned to Montevallo, I told the Shelby Street boys about the red buoy on the right (or starboard) going to the bay and about the green buoy on the left (or port) going up Dog River.

  Later, Captain Hargrove and his wife would take us all to the Mobile Yacht Club for fried shrimp and stuffed crab and grilled red snapper. On one trip he presented me with a model of a sailboat made of mahogany and birch. It was painted white with green trim and white sails. It had a single mast about twenty-four inches high with string rigging and a bow jib. Complete in every detail, it had a rudder similar to the one Captain Hargrove let me operate on the Suzy Q. As I recall the times I spent on the Dog River, I am grateful for the kindnesses of this wonderful, generous man.

  Gracie Hargrove was not much like her husband. Mother said she was a Government Street aristocrat, and it might well have been that Gracie set a model for Tootsie to follow. She, too, I have learned since, treasured beautiful things. At some point she gave Tootsie twelve place settings of fine Havilland bone china, which Tootsie gave to Linda and me as a wedding present when we married.

  Sister also liked nice things, like beautiful clothes, jewelry, and furnishings, but she was more moderate in her desires than Tootsie. Bobby finally bought her a mink coat, but Tootsie had several fur coats, some with the heads and tails hanging from them. Sister and Bobby were well-off too. They belonged to the Vestavia Country Club, but somehow it didn’t seem so vital to Sister. It was just a good place to enjoy her favorite pastime—dancing. In her teens and early twenties she was well-known as a jitterbugger, and for the four years she was a student at Alabama College she had the reputation of being the best dancer on campus. She did it all: tap, ballet, and ballroom dancing. Each year she was the featured dancer in the Purple Show at College Night, a student competition at Alabama College which pitted the purples against the golds and required students to write th
e show, to do the acting, singing, and dancing, and to compose the music and play it.

  The Vestavia Country Club was a great place to dance. When I was older she would take me and we would dance the jitterbug, the mambo, the rumba, and the samba. We did not care much about waltzing, as we thought that the bands at the Club played inferior waltz tunes like “The Tennessee Waltz,” rather than, say, the classier waltzes by Strauss.

  There was never a question that Sister loved to have a good time, but, while Tootsie seemed almost driven to have a good time and could be quite self-centered, Sister’s having fun always seemed more moderate, wholesome, and healthy. Throughout her life she continued to dance, and up into her eighties she was tap dancing with a group that performed at the grand Alabama Theater in Birmingham. At her surprise ninetieth birthday at my home, Montebrier, she and I jitterbugged to the music of Chuck King and Friends. Until her death in 2011, she kept alive the tradition she established with Red those many years ago.

  Sister was always more practical than Tootsie. She worked in Mother’s beauty shop while she was in college, but Tootsie never had any interest in it. She was an excellent homemaker, a much better cook than Tootsie. Her dress was much more conservative than Tootsie’s, but I always thought she looked beautiful.

  Mother and Dad were not so sure that Sister had shown her usual practicality when she married Bobby Baker, a high-spirited man who loved fancy cars and made a lot of money in the scrap iron business and more by gambling. He traveled to Las Vegas quite often, sometimes taking Sister with him. When they married, he was working at Tennessee Coal and Iron (TCI) in Birmingham as part of a railroad crew. At that time the engines at TCI were all steam-powered, and Bobby became very adept at the do’s and don’ts and why’s and why not’s of steam power.

  After Sister’s husband, Bobby Baker, was drafted into the Navy during World War II, she posed for this photograph to remind him what he had waiting for him back home.

  When World War II came, Bobby was drafted from his railroad job into the Navy where his steam power experiences fit right in. After basic training, he was assigned to Okinawa to help engineer a destroyer. Soon his expertise and experience were noted by his superiors, and he was sent back to the states to teach young sailor engineers what he knew about steam power. One week after he returned home the destroyer he had just left was sunk and the young sailor who took his place was killed. Bobby never forgot this tragedy.

  After coming back from World War II, Bobby returned to West End and his job with Tennessee Coal and Iron. When he suddenly quit, giving up a good salary, health benefits, and retirement, Mother and Dad were sure he had lost his mind. But Bobby always seemed to make the right moves, taking and quitting jobs, forming business partnerships with Harry Jaffe and others, and always getting the most out of his change. He was a natural trader, and he always made money. For a while, he worked for a company that unloaded boxcars and distributed goods in Birmingham. Finally, he went into the scrap iron business for himself, and he was quite successful, bragging about the time he bought a pile of scrap by telephone from TCI and sold it back to them at a handsome profit without ever even having to move it.

  Bobby loved classy, cool cars, and he bought a 1947 two-door Ford with double bullets in the grill. I loved it when they came to Montevallo, as Bobby would give me rides, and later when I could drive would let me take a spin in his latest car. He called me Sport, and Squire was the name he gave to Dad. And though he was a son-in-law, he always called Mother Ethel.

  Once in the mid-fifties Bob and Sister appeared in Montevallo in a gleaming new Ford Crown Victoria, and everybody on Shelby Street had to come out and look it over. I was amazed when he threw me the keys and told me to take it for a drive. My friend Stinky Harris and I drove the car up and down Highland Avenue, showing it off. At some point Stinky looked in the glove compartment where he found a package of condoms, and we were impressed. Bobby wasn’t a kid anymore, but he still must have felt the attraction of girls and gasoline as much as we did.

  Successfully dealing in scrap and pursuing his gambling interests, Bobby was doing very well. Sister was also working, first at Blach’s Department Store in sales and buying, then until retirement at Phillips High School. Early in their marriage, she and Bobby had a son named Robert A. Baker Jr., who we also called Bobby. This event resulted in the need for more room, so they bought their first house in Crestline Village. Little Bobby’s arrival pleased Mother and Dad immensely, but I was told that it made Tootsie even more aware that she couldn’t have any children, no matter how hard she and Sidney tried. It became clear to all of us that she was envious of Sister. But I always figured that Sister was much more suited to motherhood than Tootsie.

  Whether her inability to have a child figured into it or not, Tootsie and Sidney drank every day and became severe alcoholics. To some degree, alcohol caused the death of both. In Tootsie’s case, she drank herself to death. In 1967 she retired, and shortly thereafter she had a massive stroke that left her unable to care for herself. It became clear that Sidney could not manage, and I was not at all surprised when Sister dropped everything and went to Poughkeepsie to care for her. Eventually, however, it became obvious that she would have to be brought to Alabama and put in a nursing home. Bobby and Sister arranged with a friend to use a private plane to fly to Poughkeepsie and bring Tootsie back to Alabama. They were accompanied by our dear friend and nurse, Bennie Fancher, to make sure she had proper care during the flight.

  Dad and I went to Poughkeepsie to help Sidney close the house, and we drove him back to Montevallo, pulling a U-Haul trailer. The plan was for him to stay a short while in the apartment in Mother and Dad’s basement, but he stayed there for the rest of his life. He was in easy driving distance of Briarcliff Nursing Home in Alabaster, where Tootsie spent the last eleven years of her life. His own life was disastrous. He would be picked up for driving under the influence, and I would have to get him out of jail. I got him into an alcohol treatment center several times, but it did no good.

  After Tootsie died, his life became more and more chaotic. I wasn’t really surprised to learn that he had put a pistol into his mouth and blown his brains out. One of the hardest things I ever had to do was clean the bloody apartment on Shelby Street, but there was no one else to do it.

  Tootsie’s life was tragic in many ways. She did achieve the American dream—or at least one version of it—but in it there was a terrible self-destructiveness. Sister was anything but a self-destructive person. Throughout her long life, she was a survivor, strong and solid. Momma used to say that Tootsie took after her father, but that Sister took after her mother. And based on the little I knew of Mr. Peters, that assessment is pretty much on target. But both sisters gave me opportunities, especially as a child and adolescent, to see a world I would otherwise have missed, and I remain grateful to both.

  5

  Maggie

  In addition to all the other women in my life, there was Maggie Hale, who for some years was a member of our household—or at least I thought of her as that. She was, at least nominally, our maid, but to me she was far more. This black woman came into my life when I was an infant. Perhaps because my mother was rather old for child-bearing, she had problems producing sufficient milk for me. And that is when Maggie was pressed into service. It was at her teat that I suckled the most.

  Of course, I do not recall that experience, but in my earliest memories I can see Maggie entering through the back door. A tall, chunky woman, she wore a bandanna of red and white checks, tied tightly in the back. If she was wearing her coat, she would hang it on a hook inside the broom closet on the back porch. Then she would take a white apron hanging on a nail and put it on over her shift and full long skirts. She was ready for her day. “Good morning, Mr. Stanley. Good morning, Miss Ethel,” she would call out as she entered the kitchen.

  I can see her in the kitchen putting coal in the water heater. Although she always washed
the coal dust from her hands, I can still picture her going to wipe her hands on “her” towel. It did not seem particularly strange to me that she was not allowed to use the family towels. I also remember how by the end of the day her white apron had black dusty streaks on it. But she kept the kitchen itself spotless.

  Maggie was not pretty, but she had a great smile. One side of her lips rose higher than the other because her first husband had cut her with a switchblade. He caught her just left of her eye, making a deep gash down the left of her nose and on down to the side of her mouth. The definitive scar was pink and shiny, and that side of her mouth was higher than the other when it healed. But the most unusual thing about Maggie was that a quarter of her right ear was gone, bitten off by the same man who cut her. Maggie did not try to hide the mangled ear, wearing a gold earring on it as well as on the complete one.

  When I was just a small child, Maggie began referring to me as “Mr. Mike” when she spoke about me to my parents or called my name in their presence. After they left for work, and especially when she needed to be firm with me, she dropped the Mr. When things got real serious, she called me boy. When I heard that, I knew to get ready for some sort of punishment. She would never have laid a hand on me, so she adopted my mother’s favorite mode of punishment—sending me to the bathroom. Early on I learned to keep toys hidden under the claw-foot tub, and later I learned the rope escape, so that never was much punishment at all.

  Maggie did everything around the house—cleaning, sweeping the porch and sidewalk, tending to me and walking me to school, telling me stories, cooking (when Momma was not there), and ironing our clothes. Maggie did not have to wash, as Mother took the laundry uptown to the shop.