Memories of Irondale, 1925 to 1942, Part IV

by H. Bishop Holliman

This is the fourth in a series of reflections on an earlier Irondale, Alabama by my father, Bishop Holliman, born 1919. Below he continues to remember the grocery stores in the small community. - Glenn N. Holliman

"The chain stores eventually came and Mr. Davis could not compete with Hill grocery Company nor with the A & P.  J. T. Ramsey stayed in business much longer. Another grocery opened on 1^st Avenue, I am not sure of the year, by Ed Fortenberry.  We know he was in business when I went off to war, and I don’t know how long he was there.  But Hill’s and A & P, I am sure, soon took all the business from local merchants.

At one time, though, there were two grocery stores there on First Avenue, North.  Hill’s was in the same block as the A & P and Fortenberry’s Grocery  where the drug store, operated by Dr. Brock and the hardware store owned by Mr. T. C. Burgess.  In 1943, Mr. Burgess retired and his store bought by Robert Daly, Sr. (my brother-in-law) and his brother, George Daly.  

The announcement of the Daly Hardware opening is on the right. Below is Robert W. Daly, a Woodlawn, Alabama banker. From early 1930s until 1946, he and his wife, Vena Holliman Daly, lived in the 2300 block of 3rd Avenue, North in Irondale.  When the war ended they built a larger home on the east side of Irondale adjacent to the current location of the United Methodist Church.  The house was demolished in 1969 for a business complex.

In 1947, the building next to the Robert and George Daly Hardware Store in Irondale collapsed.  Below are photos of the event.

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Also in the same block was Bess Fortenberry’s hamburger stand that gained fame as the ‘Whistle Stop Café’.  We young boys always bought our baseball equipment each spring from the hardware store and Dr. Brock helped us young men fill out the questionnaire we received from the draft board in 1940 and 1941. 

Incidentally, the chain grocery stores provided about the only job opportunities available at that time for boys.  I worked at Hill’s on Saturdays ‘off and on’ almost to the time I left for the Navy.  I was going to Birmingham-Southern at the time and was paid $2.50 for working from seven in the morning until 10 that night.  Three cents was withheld for Social Security!"

More memories of Bishop Holliman next posting....

Memories of Irondale, 1925 to 1942, Part III

by H. Bishop Holliman

This is the third article of my father’s memories of growing up in the small suburb of Birmingham, Alabama during the 1920s and 1930s, a time of economic deprivation prior to World War II. - Glenn N. Holliman

"Grocery Stores…I remember the two stores that provided food for Irondale folks in the 1920s and early 1930s.  We traded with R.H. Davis and Sons, located on 2^nd Avenue North and 19^th Street.  I remember stopping by the store when I was in the first grade and buying a nickel package of juicy fruit chewing gum and trying to chew it all before I reach home.  I did not succeed.  And I never did that again. 

Our groceries were bought on credit and Daddy  (Ulyss S. Holliman, 1884 – 1965) would pay the bill every two weeks. Mr. Davis would give him a little sack of candy each time, and my sister Virginia (Holliman Cornelius, 1922 – 2011),  brother Ralph (Holliman, 1924) and I looked forward to that treat.  Mr. Davis had a small truck he used to deliver groceries, and it could be used for other purposes, such as taking us once to ‘Blue Hole’. "

Above, Bishop Holliman, born 1919, in 2010 standing by the Irondale, Alabama tracks he crossed many times in the 1920s and 1930s.

"This was a small swimming hole created from the artisan well that flowed on the west side of town where 30 to 40 years later the East Side Mall was built.  ‘Lokey’ was a black man who worked for Mr. Davis.  He would come by the house to take grocery orders then he would deliver them later in the day or the next day.  We all learned to love Lokey.  He was highly regarded by our family, Grandma Lula Caine and Aunt Maud Cook’s family.  He always came into the house through the back door, as was the custom of that era.

The other grocery store was J. T. Ramsey and Son, located on south side of town by the Seaboard tracks in a large brick building that was still standing the last time I looked (2010).  We never did trade there.  I guess because it was farther away from our house.  At one time, I don’t remember the year that it opened or closed, the Jane Griffin family (Eloise, Janie, Joyce and Gerry) operated a store on the corner of 1^st Avenue South and 20^th Street.  I remember buying a cap pistol from Mrs. Griffin when I was about eleven years old, for 25 cents!"

Bishop Holliman’s brother-in-law, above right, Charles T. Ferrell, worked at a Birmingham,  Alabama A & P grocery of the late 1920s.  Charles would graduate from Birmingham-Southern College and Yale Divinity School, be ordained a Methodist minister and in 1935 marry Loudelle Holliman of Irondale. Photo courtesy of Charles H. Ferrell.  This store was similar to the Irondale groceries recorded above.

Next posting, more memories of an earlier Irondale, Alabama....

Memories of Irondale, 1925 to 1942, Part II

by H. Bishop Holliman

We continue the memories of my father, Bishop Holliman, of his boyhood home in Irondale, Alabama. The suburb of Birmingham was a rail road center, and it was the Seaborne Rail Line that took Bishop Holliman to the U.S. Navy in 1941.  On December 7, 1941, only three weeks into the Navy, he heard the news at the Norfolk Navy Base that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.  Almost four years would pass before he could return as a civilian to his Irondale family. - Glenn N. Holliman

"As we got older, one of our fondest dreams was to get on one of those fast passenger trains and ride off to some enchanted places we had heard about.  Alas, it did not happen for most of us until World War II.  I left Birmingham on Friday, November 13, 1941, on the Seaboard’s Cotton State Special for Norfolk, Virginia to spend nearly four years in the Navy." 

Below, Bishop Holliman, left, and his brother, Melton Holliman sans his U. S. Army uniform, both home on leave at their parents, Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman at 2300 3rd Avenue N., Irondale, Alabama.  It was February 1945, a time when many Irondale men were in service.

 "Incidentally, gates were installed in Irondale after the war to protect against on-coming trains, and thanks to efforts by my Mother, Pearl Caine Holliman, home delivery of mail was begun before the war ended, thus eliminating a daily rail crossing to the post office for all the folks on the north side of town."

Bishop Holliman’s mother, Pearl Caine Holliman of Irondale, wrote this letter to Alabama Congressman Luther Patrick in 1943, describing her efforts to mobilize public opinion.  In January 1945, home delivery mail service began Irondale and residents on the hill above the center of town were no longer required to cross the rail road tracks to collect daily mail at the post office.                 

Below, in 1945, to recognize the beginnings of home delivery of the Irondale mail, the Woodlawn, Alabama newspaper ran this photograph of a postman with Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955) and her grandson, Robert W. Daly, Jr., son of Robert W. Daly, Sr. and Vena Holliman Daly.  The Dalys lived next door to the Hollimans in the 2300 block of 3rd Avenue North.

The little boy holding his grandmother's hand would earn a Ph.D. in biology, teach for decades at the University of North Alabama, Florence and become a well-known Alabama naturalist.  Dr. Robert W. Daly, Jr. grew up in Irondale and graduated from Shades Valley High School.

Next post, more memories of Irondale, Alabama....

Memories of Irondale, 1925 to 1942, Part I

by H. Bishop Holliman

In November 2010, also 91 years of age, H. Bishop Holliman (pictured below in the red sweater) who lived his childhood and youth at 2300 3^rd Avenue North, Irondale, Alabama, returned to look once more at his home town where he grew up in the 1920s and 1930s.  These are his memories and photographs. - Glenn N. Holliman, his son

"Trains, trains, trains…Among my earliest memories of Irondale are the trains that went through the center of town.  Four main lines that used five tracks – two for the Alabama Great Southern that ran from Birmingham to Chattanooga on to Washington, DC.  One for the Southern that ran from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans and one for the Central of Georgia that connected with the other line that ran from Chicago to Miami.  Finally, one for the Seaboard that came from Washington, D.C, through to Birmingham."

Above the Norfolk Southern freight pulls through Irondale with Bishop Holliman walking beside it in 2010.

"Long before ‘rock and roll’, music came on the scene, Irondale already knew how to shake.  It seems that a train was barreling through every few minutes – sometimes four at a time.  On summer evenings we would try to sit on the front porch to listen on the radio to Major Bowes or Bob Hope.  But about 8 o’clock, the Pelican on its way to New Orleans or the Robert E. Lee from Washington and Atlanta, plus a couple of freights, would create so much noise, we had to go inside.

Each day to and from school, to church on Sunday, to the post office and to the baseball diamond, we had to cross those tracks.  There were no warning lights and no guard rails to stop us – we crossed the tracks at our peril.  You can imagine the anxiety our parents felt every day that we went to school or to other placers, hoping and praying we would get there and back safety.  

Some did not make it.  I remember three deaths that occurred.  Usually an older student would lead first graders from school across the tracks in the afternoon.  About two thirty each afternoon we would hear the toot of the Seaboard train on its way to Atlanta and we would know then school would soon let out."

More in the next post on Irondale, Alabama from 1920s to 1940s.....

Stewart Butten, Family Friend, Part III
by Glenn N. Holliman

The beloved mother of seven children, Pearl Caine Holliman, pictured below, died of heart failure on May 5, 1955.  This is one of the last photos taken of her, again, on the lawn between her home and the Robert W. Daly's.  Born in 1887 in Fayette, Alabama, she married Ulyss S. Holliman in 1906, and with him and their growing family moved in 1917 to Irondale, Alabama, a suburb of the then growing city of Birmingham.

 Stewart Butten wrote the following letter to Mary Daly Herrin, the oldest of Grand Mama Holliman's 19 grand children. Sadly, many grand chidlren are too young to have known of her warmth and caring.  Her memory lives today for those of us grandchildren who were fortunate enough to have sat around that long and large Holliman table at Christmas, which Mr. B. eludes to in  his letter. Click twice to enlarge the letter.

Two good friends, a picture taken in the middle 1930s of Robert W. Daly, Sr. and Stewart Butten, both had an infectious Irish humour.

Next, more memories of Irondale, Alabama....in the 1920s and 30s.

Stewart Butten, Family Friend, Part II
by Bishop Holliman


"Mr. Butten married in the early 1940s and later moved back to Chattanooga and ended up in Knoxville. In 1975, he attended my younger daughter's wedding in Cookeville, Tennessee.  My wife and I visited him in a nursing home once and also in his home. His wife, Hazel, died before he did.


Below, Hazel and Stewart Butten visit with Ralph Holliman in 1975 at the wedding of Alice Holliman and Bill Murphy.  At that time, Mr. Butten was retired and Ralph, Bishop Holliman's youngest brother, was a corporate executive in Chicago.

He went back to Ireland once, I'm sure, after Hazel died, and visited his old home place. He is buried near Seymour, Tennessee. Robert Daly, Sr. died in 1959, and Mr. Butten lived on into the 1980s."

Compare the photo above with the one on the right of the same Ralph Holliman, age perhaps 15, the tallest of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman children, leaning on Mr. Butten at one of those memorable Florida vacations the Robert Dalys made possible for the family.

Next posting a letter by Mr. Butten on the death of Pearl Caine Holliman....

Stewart Butten, Family Friend
by Bishop Holliman

 In reviewing the letters and photographs of the 1930s, I continue to come up on the name of The Rev. Stewart Butten (spelled with an 'e') of Irondale, Alabama.  My father, Bishop Holliman, knew 'Butten' in the middle and late 1930s and renewed the relationship in the 1970s.  I remember stories about Mr. Butten's liberal views (liberal for the Ulyss Hollimans who were largely Republicans in the 1930s and 40s), and have wondered how he became such a close friend of the family.  Here are my father's memories. - GNH

"Mr. Butten was a native of Ireland. I don't know the year he came to the U.S., but he ended up in East Tennessee, attending Maryville College, and eventually becoming pastor of the Presbyterian church in Irondale, Alabama about 1933. He also pastored a church near Trussville and one other out by Lake Purdy. The churches were very small, and he preached at a different one each Sunday. 

He was about Robert Daly, Sr.'s age (my brother-in-law who had married Vena Holliman in 1928), so they became very close friends.  The Dalys, who lived next door to us (the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman house) took Mr. Butten under their wings. He was not married and had no family in the States, so he welcomed their friendship .  He went with Vena, Robert and Loudelle (Holliman Ferrell) to the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 and to Florida several summers. He became like one of the family and became sort of a role model for me as I was a young teen-ager, and was always around the Dalys when Mr. Butten was there.

Irondale, of course,  had a very conservative Presbyterian church, but I guess it was Mr. B's Irish wit that endeared him to the congregation and community. He seemed to be a good fit, but he was way ahead of the time and place with his social and liberal views about religion, politics  and race. He managed to get along well with all the folks.

Above, Mr. Butten in Florida on a Daly trip in the 1930s.

Once, though, he spanked a little boy who had misbehaved at the Bible School. The boy's daddy brought suit against him, and the newspaper picked up the story, and it got all the way to Belfast, Ireland. It was seen by Mr. B's family there, and that's how they learned that he was in the ministry and what he was doing!  The law suit was eventually dropped and nothing came of it.

Mr. B drove a motor cycle to his various churches, as an automobile was too expensive. I guess that was also his way of flouting the establishment. He was well-educated, a well-read man. He enjoyed engaging Robert (and me) in heated discussions about current events, FDR, and other issues of the day. He would usually end up every Sunday night at the Dalys, and I would often be there to hear their discussions and engage in arguments with them. 

He left Irondale in 1937, taking a church in Knoxville, Tennessee, lived there several years, moving to some job in Ohio, and eventually went into library work. After Mr. B moved to Knoxville, that summer 1937, he returned to Irondale on a visit, and I went back to Knoxville with him and stayed at the home of one of the members. They had a boy my age, and we went up to the Smokies, my first time there and climbed the Chimney Tops. I rode the train back to Birmingham, always a thrill for me.   

Above, Stewart Butten right with Bishop Holliman left.  Note the stylish white shoes in the late 1930s.


More on The Rev. Mr. Butten and his influence on Holliman lives next posting....