Couple Finds New Home, Passion in Alabama Preservation

I wish I could remember the date of my conversion to the cult of Preservation, but I can remember the circumstances. A friend living in Tuscaloosa sent me a newspaper clipping about an upcoming Spring Ramble in the Black Belt, sponsored by an outfit named the Alabama Preservation Alliance. It sounded like fun. Paula and I reserved six seats on the tour, and invited the parents. Was this 1997?

Paula and I live in an old house, not a preserved house, just a humble house. We like it, but at the time of this tour, we really didn’t know any preservationists, or anything about the preservation movement. But something happened that Saturday of the Ramble. We met wonderful, passionate, interesting, informed people on those buses. Our hosts were gracious. The Alliance volunteers were a wealth of knowledge. And before our eyes appeared an Alabama we knew nothing about. History was living right there in front of our eyes, accessible to us as we toured and snooped and asked our silly questions. Paula and I wanted more of this: more of these people with a story to tell, more of these towns rich in history, more of this atmosphere that makes Alabama so unique.

Maybe it was 1998. Anyway, we joined the APA, now the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation. Gradually, I changed how I approached my day. I got off the Interstate. I took photographs of things that interested me. I visited cemeteries. Took more pictures. Started a scrapbook of Alabama cemetery monument pictures. Stopped and talked to people throughout this state and listened to their stories. We started eating in joints and quit the franchises, started going to the Farmer’s Market. Paula began collecting Southern cookbooks, and I started rescuing threatened Alabama native plants.

Our friends are Preservationists, and I guess we are as well. Neither Paula nor I can claim to be native Alabamians, but we proudly claim Alabama as our home. Thank all of you on that tour. Our life is much richer since that Black Belt Saturday (1999?).

Mike Rushing (St. Clair County)