PRELUDE
There are only two things you should know if you’re moving to Alabama.
The first, when someone asks “who are you for?” there are only two correct answers. Roll Tide or War Eagle. That’s it. Pick one and stick to it. Anything else will label you as a “sideliner” and greatly decrease your respectability in the state.
Roll Tide and you’re a diehard University of Alabama fan and War Eagle you’re an Auburn University fan.
Seriously. People have been known to plan the births of their first born around the Iron Bowl in November when the two football teams play, not to mention lose or gain jobs based solely on the answer to this question.
The second is based on whether you’re male or female. Granted there isn’t much one can do about this unless you’re into cross-dressing and that’s another beast we won’t even talk about now. If you’re male, then you’re in. In the boy’s club, in-the-know (whether you actually do know anything or not is totally beside the point) and can basically get your foot into just about any door. If you’re female, well there are cliques for that too, but forget an all out do or die career. You’ll never make it. You’re a woman and for a large part of the male population – well, you can’t possibly know anything because you’re a woman. Get the picture?
My name is Cassie Torello and I was born and raised in Prattville, Alabama. At the time P’ville, as its known here, was a Mayberry type town. Small and everyone knew everyone else’s business. I remember once somehow getting separated from my grandmother in a local store. It wasn’t an uncommon thing back then and since everyone knew who you were and who you belonged to, if a stranger had actually spoken to you, he would have had his ass kicked before he could get out the door with you. Things like that just didn’t happen then.
Anyway, the store owner, Mr. Larry kept an eye on me until the Gin Shop whistle blew. He held my hand and stood outside the door waiting for my Grandpa to get off work and handed me over to him.
The Gin Shop was a source of great pride then. It stood on the very spot that Daniel Pratt, the towns founding father, had built his first cotton gin and with proper care and renovations it still employed more than half the town. There were rumors that Mr. Pratt’s ghost still walked the halls of the two story building and when an employee failed to perform up to Mr. Pratt’s standards, well accidents were prone to happen.
Paw-paw, as I called him, just thanked Mr. Larry and invited him to Sunday dinner, an invitation he readily accepted. My grandma was the best cook in the county and no one refused a meal at her table.
I wish I could say I remembered if Paw-paw ever mentioned anything about the incident to my grandma, but I can’t. I only know Mr. Larry had let me play with a lot of toys and even treated me to an ice-cream sundae. I was one happy lost kid.
Now in my Grandma’s defense let me say there was good reason she didn’t miss me. She kept fourteen of the meanest kids in town. For one us to go missing wasn’t going to flag any type of emergency on her radar and she probably would have figured I was up to no good and been right about it.
Like most everything else, time puts its mark on things and unfortunately it has for P’ville. The Gin Shop is gone – vandalized and burned to the ground, and Mr. Larry’s store has changed hands so many times its hard to keep track of current owners.
The town has grown and lost the innocence that made it such a joy to grow up in. All the big city stuff reached out and grabbed the community and shook it into the twenty-first century.
Time has touched me too. I still get lost in a paper bag, but I can usually find my own way home now. I guess my biggest claim to fame was when my younger brother Neal played for the University of Alabama; linebacker and a real bad ass until he met Becky his wife. She settled him right down, as we say around here, and he now owns a computer business near Guntersville.
Me?
Yeah, well me. Paw-paw use to tell me I could find hot water in the middle of the Antarctica and I did. This time I found a damn geyser.
