Hillbillia

The reason for going to Birmingham was to visit author Tim Hollis and his fabulous museum of 20th century stuff (for lack of a better term). It's more than ephemera, more than collectibles, more than souvenirs, more than toys, it's basically all the stuff from American popular culture for much of the later half of the century. Words don't do it justice. And Tim, a prolific author of countless books on Southern popular culture, is the perfect person to offer more information about the hillbilly stereotype.

The museum, two full stories added to the back of Tim's house, is really overwhelming. The walls are lined with records, children's books, games and puzzles. Advertising characters hang from the ceiling and shelves are packed with everything from lunch boxes to collectible shampoo bottles. Downstairs the fun continues with more stuff like regional tourist ephemera like maps, brochures and pendants from roadside attractions. There is a "grocery store" with vintage packaging, a Halloween area with glow-in-the dark kids' costumes, a Christmas section with animated characters from department store window displays and re-creations of entire rooms from Tim's childhood home. Too much to take in on one visit.

Tim pulled great samples of print ephemera for me detailing everything from the hillbilly-esque radio duo of Lum and Abner to the now defunct Arkansas theme park Dogpatch USA. In addition, we poured over souvenirs and collectibles from the Lil Abner, Mountain Dew, The Beverly Hillbillies, and countless other pop cultures examples of Hillbillyana. My dad found memorabilia from radio shows he listened to as a kid while my brother had flashbacks from Saturday morning cartoons we used to watch together.

Tim was gracious and hospitable, a true Southern gentleman, setting us on our way with more than I can ever use for my 15 minute presentation, and the soundtrack from his museum. If you have some free time next time you are in Birmingham, I suggest looking him up to see his amazing collection.

Next stop for us was Hillbilly Village in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. If you've never been to Pigeon Forge, it's somewhere between Orlando's International Drive and the strip in Vegas. Miniature golf, dinner shows, outlet malls, souvenirs shops and roadside attractions compete to out do each other in Southern gaudiness. A giant Titanic replica stuck by the side of the road and dinosaurs compete with religious-themed attractions to overwhelm the visitor. And right in the middle of this chaos is Hillbilly Village, an attraction that has been pulling in visitors with its "authentic" re-creation of a mountaineer homestead for almost 60 years.

But first one has to endure two layers of gift shops with tacky souvenirs, many of which are hillbilly themed. From corncob pipes, hillbilly cookbooks, figurines, hats, and novelties, they have all your hillbilly needs covered. The "exhibit" consists of a couple stills, an outhouse with a hillbilly mannequin inside and a 100-year old cabin. Decaying plywood figurines are posed throughout the village and some are missing body parts after years of use. I was amazed that with all the over-the-top glitz on the commercial strip, that this deteriorating presentation still had the ability to draw in tourists.

As I purchased my hillbilly calendar and vintage souvenir decals, I inquired about the history of the place and immediately got a cold shoulder from one of the clerks. The other explained that the establishment had been around for at least 58 years, more than 40 with the current owner. I really wanted to know if they ever encountered anyone who felt offended by their blatant use of the hillbilly stereotype, but it felt like I had already offended them with my questions, so I took my purchases and moved on. My father who grew up in the mountains about 3 hours away, said it didn't offend him, it was just tacky. I agree with him – to me Hillbilly Village is equivalent to the numerous t-shirt and citrus shops found around Florida, but instead of luring tourists off the road with alligators and orange juice they use mountaineers and moonshine.

Birmingham or Bust

The great Hillbilly Road Trip was not a luxurious drive – there were huge chunks of miles to be covered everyday. The biggest chunk was Gainesville, Florida to Birmingham, Alabama. A lot of road and not a lot of stops; fortunately my brother drove all the way through Georgia so I could at least snap pictures from the car.

It rained all the way until we got well into Georgia and my brother and I used the opportunity to try to learn from my father what it was like to grow up in the Appalachians. He remembered the days before his family's home had electricity and to get power his father had to clear the land for the lines to be brought in. We discovered that my father's family subsisted mostly on the crops they grew and the animals they raised on small piece of land in a community known as Persimmon in Georgia. And every member of his mother's family played musical instruments except his mother, and so musical ability has eluded my family entirely. His maternal grandfather, "Grandpa Justus", often entertained the entire clan with his banjo picking (see the photo in the previous post).

Eventually my dad's father succumbed to pressure from my grandmother and moved to Michigan to work in the auto industry on the factory loading docks. He left his family behind in Georgia and drove 20 hours straight on holiday weekends to be with them. Meanwhile my father's oldest sister had managed to get my dad and his siblings accepted in the Tallulah Gorge School, a boarding school run by the Women's Club for poor Appalachian children. Eventually the entire family moved up to Michigan, but my dad was the last to leave because he had to harvest the corn crop he was growing as a school project.

Pontiac, Michigan was a new world for my father and he would ride his bike through the neighborhood in amazement at the great number of houses in such close proximity to each other. The girls at the school like to ask him lots of questions in order to hear him answer in his Southern accent, but my dad said he liked the attention!

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You know you're in the South when large bits of the roadside are engulfed in Kudzu

Our first real stop in Albany, Georgia was for an amazing lunch at Pearly's Famous Country Cooking. The owner of the restaurant met us in the parking lot and told us all about Albany's oldest family-owned restaurant before we even set foot in the door. The menu of Southern favorites was overwhelming but I settled on turkey pot roast, greens, cornbread and cheese grits. After lunch, the owner returned with complimentary dessert: buttermilk pie, the house specialty. Truly a monumental meal and our first act of Southern hospitality. And because we had traveled off the beaten path to dine at Pearly's, we stumbled across a wonderful mid-century motel sign, just as the sun peaked out from behind the clouds.

As we neared Alabama, I saw a sign for folk art and we stopped in Brooklyn, Georgia. It appeared that the folk art was really just advertisement for a small roadside church. The artist, Floria Yancey, is a self-taught artist and preacher originally from Alabama. The work reminded me of Florida's Mary Proctor or Ruby Williams with a little Howard Finster evangelism thrown in.

Finally, we drove into Birmingham and out first stop was the monumental Vulcan statue which my brother and I proclaimed as "Vulcan awesome." Downtown Birmingham was somewhat obscured by the summer haze but the view from New Deal era hilltop park was a great way to orient us to the city.

A miniature version of the 56 foot tall original stands outside Vulcan Park's museum

We stayed in the historic Tutwiler Hotel in the middle of downtown and we quickly set out on foot to explore the city. We found great architecture and wonderful vintage signs and I saw just enough to make me want to go back. Our accomodations were super-deluxe and after a great meal at one of Birmingham's urban eateries I couldn't have felt more distant from that little North Georgia farm that my father grew up on...