Fence history exhibit opens
Published Saturday, June 23, 2007
By Lucinda Coulter
----Dorthy Grimes laughs as she talks with volunteers trained to be docents, people trained as guides and lecturers to conduct groups through a gallery, at the Smithsonian-sponsored exhibit “Between Fences” at the Cahaba Lily Center in West Blocton on Tuesday.
Staff Photo | Dusty Compton----
WEST BLOCTON | Barbed wire and picket fences are more than barriers of steel or wood. They are the saga of the nation’s settlement — of laborers who set posts, of farmers and ranchers who fought boundary disputes.
The Smithsonian Museum on Main Street’s exhibit “Between Fences” tells it that way in a display of five kiosks with text and photos at the Cahaba Lily Center downtown.
For West Blocton Town Council member Myrtle Jones, the exhibit is another step in an effort to encourage more visitors to come to the once prosperous coal-mining town. She helped organize the museum display and events.
“It really is an honor for a little small place like us,” Jones said. “I think the museum will help us with the local economy and civic pride.”
The exhibit is part of a touring Smithsonian program encouraging tourism in small towns. West Blocton, Decatur, Demopolis, Greenville, Centre and Headland hosted the “Fences” tour earlier this year.
Subjects range from how fences evolved from agrarian to urban cultures, the meaning of fences in slavery times and the impact of Canadian and Mexican borders.
Jones said $5,000 from state grants and private sources was used to install better air conditioning at the Cahaba Lily Center in time for the display.
Jones said she hopes visitors will enjoy both the national exhibit and West Blocton’s own offerings — its
history and natural beauty of the nearby Cahaba Wildlife Refuge.
Now retired, she has loved the town’s rich immigrant lore since she started teaching at West Blocton High School in 1955. Her students told her stories of their Polish and Italian grandparents.
And Jones listened to the stories as she and her students swept the wooden floor of the old school together.
“They were proud of their heritage,” Jones said. “On weekends, they’d show me the cemetery and coke ovens. They knew there was something special in the lives of their grandfathers.”
Italian settlers were some of the first to mine coal in the area, and Polish settlers built many of the 19th and early 20th century buildings still standing on Main Street.
Many of the stories of the Italian immigrants buried in the cemetery are tragic.
“One child died at sea and another whole family died of eating poisonous mushrooms,” Jones said. “Each grave carries a special story.”
In addition to the national exhibit, the exhibit includes student interviews with longtime residents about life 90 years ago in West Blocton and a 19-piece photo exhibit by Columbiana artist Rachel Fowler.
West Blocton Elementary School teacher Annette Harris assembled 11 interviews that third-graders recorded from their grandparents’ stories.
The story of the last circus that came to town, submitted by historian Charles Adams, is especially interesting, Harris said.
Museum tour guide Bill Hubbard said he is looking forward to volunteering during the month-long fences exhibit.
“This exhibit will fill up our town with people,” Hubbard said.
Reach Lucinda Coulter at lucinda.coulter@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0206.
