Historic Lincoln Mills

I love scouting for local flavor when I visit a new place, or revisiting a gem that I have discovered on a previous adventure.   We live in a nation where, were one to parachute into the vast majority of the national landscape, one would have no idea where they were when they stood after hitting the ground, tucking and rolling.  The standardized McDonald's, Taco Bells, Walmarts, other assorted fry-pits, and strip centers wrought by zoning laws and retailing strategies brought about by globalization have led to a bleak street scene that looks the same in Memphis or Albany, Atlanta or Minneapolis.

Whereas our nation used to be serviced exclusively at the retail and service level by our neighbors, we are now primarily serviced by national or multinational corporations.

The area of Huntsville immediately adjacent to Lincoln Mills is fortunate to be teeming with local flavor, also known individually as "Mom and Pop Shops."

When I went for a haircut at the Five Points Barber, there was a man dozing on the couch like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western who would interject into my conversation with the barberess from time to time.  I could finally resist no more, and whispered to the barberess, "Is that man drunk?"  Her reply: "No, he's the landlord."  I guarantee that you will not find yourself in such a stimulating scene at the Hair Cuttery franchise.

Hurl macho barbs if you must, however my favorite place to have a business lunch is Emma's Tea Room. The ladies who run this splendid establishment are smiling and spunky, and the food and tea are delicious and varied enough to come back every week without boredom ever becoming a concern.

I went into the Five Points Hallmark store, and was greeted with a "what can I help you find?"  I explained that it was my 20th wedding anniversary, gave her one small additional clue, and the proprietress instantly located and handed me the perfect card.  The penguins on the envelope ensured that my youngest daughter would enjoy the presentation as much as my wife.

Olde Towne Coffee stands as one of the few non-Starbuck's coffee shops of which I am aware that sports a graph of increasing sales over its 7-year history.  The locals are to congratulated for supporting this establishment on Pratt by using their lips to sip, not to pay lip service.

Donny and Marie are classic "Mom and Pop" owner/operators at the Po Boy Factory.  I don't know how they make a profit on their scrumptious seafood fare, given the quality and portions.  Their Hot Damn sauce should win some awards, if it has not already. 

Garden Cove,  run by another husband/wife team, is a superb organic food market.

Curtis and his Dallas Mill Deli sport a local following that threaten to overwhelm his establishment's seating capacity in the near future.

Thai Garden is yet another true Mom and Pop, with caring, competent wait staff serving outstanding fare.

What can one say about Star Market Grocery, save for "They get it?"

Even the Region's Bank and Hardee's feel local flavor due to the continuity of their employees providing consistently excellent service. 

There are other local flavor businesses that are in the works, particularly in and around Lincoln Mills.  These will be spotlighted in the near future as they add their spice to the existing substantial local flavor. 

As we should.  As we must. 

After years of building in the Atlanta high-rise office market by day, and redeveloping historic property by nights and weekends, a wave of horror swept over me in the Spring of 2005.  The thought that had been brewing for years, and one that I continually suppressed into submission as an optimistic, capitalistic American,  unleashed itself fully into my consciousness:  We as a nation were seriously over-built in every category of real estate, and were thus tremendously overextended financially. I immediately embarked on a mission to shed every piece of real estate that I owned, for I felt that the appreciation models we had been using were in serious error.

Divesting of real estate is rarely easy, and my efforts were made even more difficult by my decision to jar my family from their comfortable suburban life, moving them 3 times in 4 years in order for me to be close to, or actually live in, the projects I was selling out or winding down.  

My ultimate objective was to land in Huntsville or Chattanooga and build a lower overhead, more sustainable life in a city with significant quantities of people who were smart, possessed a sense of humor and a sense of community, and one scaled in size to the future.

Our cat, Pepper, accompanied us on our journey;  I had relented to adopting her after she was found in a box in the creek that wound through Legacy Park.  My hope was that this little mammal would capture and hold my then 12-year old daughter's attention and affection, staving off any interest in boys on her part until she was in her mid-twenties.  (This strategy was a resounding failure, as an aside.)

The home Pepper lived in as an adorable kitten was kitten-perfect, for it had a second-story deck with no steps to the backyard.  The backyard teemed with a rich variety of animals and wildlife, including deer, other cats, dogs, rabbits, squirrels, birds, lizards and an occasional coyote seeking the previously mentioned fare. In this safe setting, Pepper was allowed to experience the great outdoors without actually being in any danger, and this suited my wife Karen's maternal instincts quite well.

Pepper moved with us from this setting into a compact, cool loft community on the south side of Atlanta, and was given her first steady, ground-level access to the outside world. She quickly found a "cat cave" in the bushes, fought her first cat fights, learned to use my test gardens as litter boxes, and gave Karen incredible stress when she did not come in some nights.  

From Hampton Lofts, we moved to a truly stunning ravine setting on the old Roswell Mill site overlooking the 1853 mill dam.  Pepper preceded to decimate the ground squirrels in the area.  She developed a taste for hunting and blood, and she fought to stay outside, again to Karen's great dismay, for coyotes ranged Vickery Creek, and were responsible for many pet "disappearances."

When we moved to Huntsville, a curious thing happened.  We have a cozy master-on-the-main just off the kitchen, and Pepper has taken to what we have come to call the "Cat Condo," spending the vast majority of her time lounging comfortably both on, and under, the big bed.

The cat stands at the top of the predator list on planet earth in terms of adaptability. Though they have a reputation for being finicky eaters, they hunt over 1000 species for food.  As they have been living domesticated with humans for at least 9500 years, they have had a front row seat in witnessing our evolution as a civilization.

Just as Pepper adapted to new realities, as eventually did my family I might proudly add, American society must do the same.  Business as usual, embodied in the credit and consumption economy that we have practiced for at least the last 35 years, is not coming back, nor should it if we are thinking clearly, even if it were possible.  Many successful strategies developed over the past 9500 years can be re-implemented at the community level. Combined with some of the more elegant technologies that have evolved, the future could be an interesting, fulfilling place if we have the courage to adapt like the cat and create it.

I have heard the FarmVille chatter in recent months, however, I was absolutely floored when I spent a few moments with my daughter, Ashley, and had her educate me on this cultural phenomenon. 

Did you know that there is a farming revolution underway?  Every day, over 15 million Americans are intensely, personally managing farms?  This could be very exciting were it not for the fact that these farms are virtual farms, meaning they are virtually worthless beyond their sheer entertainment value.  They don't produce a single calorie of food, and one can farm wearing a suit and never break a sweat.

What if this virtual obsession were to become a real obsession?  What would it look like?  It would look like what the 7 acres of ground and rooftops that make up Lincoln Mills will look like over the next few years.  The relocalization of food in Huntsville will find Lincoln Mills at its epicenter.

When I asked some of my obsessed friends and relatives who play FarmVille if they would like to become urban farmers for real, they laughed and said, "No way.  That would be way too hard."

Yes, it is hard to grow food and tend to animals.  But it is fulfilling and, I believe, more critical to our future success as a country than most realize.  Ask most people where their food comes from, and they reply "Publix."

Speaking of fulfilling, I had a fulfilling speaking engagement before the Northeast Huntsville Civic Association tonight.  This town is chocked full of good people. 

For those bored enough to view the entire Question & Answer session, please click here.

Memphis - 1968 

Using the Bible and the Constitution, King argued and demonstrated that ordinary people can affect history by organizing themselves into a coherent force for change

As a nation, we have much for which to thank Dr. Martin Luther King.  It is not found often in the annals of history that such monumental change has been wrought without extensive violence.  Well done, good Doctor.

In 1968, my then Robert Redford-esque father moved our family to Memphis.  We had yet to exchange our Louisiana auto tag (singular, for this was an era when many families, even successful ones, made do with one car) for a Tennessee plate when Dr. King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis.

My family spent a considerable amount of time in downtown Memphis due to my father’s business being in the area, and what happened over the next few years was perplexing to me.  These beautiful, historic buildings became increasingly void of humans and their activity.  Having no previous point of reference, my parents were unable to explain to me that white flight was decanting a large portion of the downtown population to the suburbs, with their “safe” cul-del-sacs, strip centers and malls (which decimated downtown shopping), and generic office “parks.”

I have inherited my father’s strategy of taking the scenic route (how it pleased my mother!), and as we traversed the Southeast, the economically abandoned, derelict buildings we passed, and sometimes stopped and peered into, would haunt me.  I would sketch plans of reuse in my mind and in my school notebooks, and these sketches usually included an indoor basketball court and a hot tub.  The exposed brick, the massive wood columns and beams, the wood and concrete floors, the expansive rolled steel windows - these features made my spirits soar.

When we moved to Huntsville in 1975, this fine town still had millions of square feet of textile mills standing.  Severely misguided demolition (Merrimack) and massive fires (75% of Lincoln Mills and 100% of Dallas Mill) have reduced the square footage to less than 350,000 square feet (Lincoln Mills and Lowe Mill.) Lowe Mill (www.lowemill.net) is now thriving, and it is the Byrne family’s charge to breathe similar life into Lincoln Mills. 

So as an American, I owe a debt to Dr. King. 

As an individual, I owe him yet another debt, for the societal reverberations emanating from his life and death planted in my heart the intense desire to restore, and place back into useful service, these severely underutilized structures. 

And it appears to me that God has given me the desires of my heart at Lincoln Mills.

An interesting occurrence, one that has actually happened several times as an historic rehabilitator in the South, is when a local informs me, after glancing sideways in both directions, and then drawing close to whisper, “you know, this building was part of the Underground Railroad.” 

The Underground Railroad, for those unaware souls qualified to be both screened and accepted for “Are You Smarter Than a 5^th Grader,” is not the insane proposal to bore roads underneath downtown Atlanta to relieve that city’s crushing congestion, rather it was the network of safe-houses that abolitionists strung together to get escaped southern slaves to the North and relative safety.

The fact that many of these buildings were built decades after the Civil War and slavery immediately negates this possibility, however, many people like to hang on to their pet stories, and whether they are actually true or not becomes secondary- they like the truth being elusive in this instance.

Ray Jones has written a quaint history of his family’s purchase and development of what is now known as Jones Valley (The Farm in Jones Valley, readily available at Barnes and Nobles on Carl T. Jones Blvd in Huntsville)  As evidence of how he has lived two or three lives in one, he nary once mentions his, or his father's, substantial role with the HIC building, the Huntsville Hilton and other forays.  

The Jones family’s relationship with the City of Huntsville has been a broad, two-way street, with both parties benefiting through the years.  For instance, the important roads that we use to criss-cross Jones Valley sit on land that was donated to the City by the Jones family. 

And the Jones family has been quite generous with sharing their time and resources through the years.  As an example, though their family are all Huntsville High graduates, they allowed the team that designed and built a float for Grissom’s 1978 homecoming to utilize one of their farm buildings.   This float, extravagant by high school standards, featured an androgynous Senior in cap and gown with two outstretched hands, one clutching a diploma and the other sporting what appeared to be a “We’re #1!” finger.  The problem was that the "We're #1" hand had only three fingers due to design difficulty, time constraints, or some other valid reason.  My father swore that Burke and his team were giving the people in the stands the middle finger salute that does not mean "We're #1," and Burke fiercely maintained that the truth was far more benign. Through the years, neither side has budged on their convictions or perceptions. 

The truth will remain elusive regarding this cherished Sisco story.