History might be in the past, but the Wetumpka Depot’s Front Porch lunch program brought local history to life in the present.
Jenny Stubbs, Billie Rawls, Dennis Fain, Arthur Smith and Janice Wharton shared a stage. They all shared local history with a personal twist.
Fain shared stories of flooding and Wetumpka’s four bridges basically built on the same site at the foot of his grandparents’ Fain Theater.
“The Coosa river that runs through here,” Fain said. “We all take for granted the beautiful natural resource. It's one reason that our city is entitled the ‘City of natural beauty.’”
Fain said the Coosa has been a great benefit to the city but also a challenge when flood waters came. Some have flooded the streets of downtown. He said the first bridge was built in 1834 only to be washed away in a flood 10 years later.
Freed slave Horace King designed and built the 1844 bridge across the river.
“That bridge was a testament to the engineering ability of that time,” Fain said. “It lasted from 1844 to 1886 when it was washed away by, guess what? The flood of 1886 was the largest that we have had in modern times, supposedly.”
A steel girder bridge came next but rust took it. In 1930 construction began on the current Bibb Graves Bridge. It was completed in 1931. It has seen many floods including the 1928 that has a marker by the old jail along the river walk.
Fain recalled other floods including in 1961. It was the same flood that caused the Wetumpka High School junior senior prom to be stopped mid-way through the night. Janice Wharton was at the prom. She grew up on Company Street in the building that is now Our Place.
Wharton knew it as a service station with an apartment above that she and her family lived in.
“My older sister actually was born there,” Wharton said. “She was supposed to be the first baby born in the new hospital, but she came early.”
It was a time before the four lane bypass. All of the traffic had to leave Wetumpka heading north by way of Company Street came by Wharton’s home. A few years later the family moved across the street to a house.
“Traffic was absolutely horrendous,” Wharton said. “Because of the amount of traffic, mother would never let us consider crossing the street.”
It was well before U.S. Highway 231 south of Wetumpka was developed. Wharton recalls a vibrant downtown with few vacant storefronts.
When the bypass came, it messed up a playground of Wharton and her sisters. It was part of what would later be known as the part of the crater rim.
“We played in those woods for years,” Wharton said. “There was a beautiful creek with lots of space and the most beautiful rocks.”
Road construction changed Wharton’s play habits.
“They would have to tell us to come in and stay inside for the blasting that took all of that away,” Wharton said.
Smith has pastored Saint James Baptist Church in Wetumpka for the last 32 years.
“I may have did something right, since they hadn't gotten rid of it yet,” Smith said. “But other than that, thank God for being here.”
Smith said things have sped up in Wetumpka in the last three decades.
“Everything is so rush, rush,” Smith said. “Everybody's in a hurry to do everything. Everybody wants everything microwaved so it can be quicker.”
Speed wasn’t something Smith’s grandmother cared about nor really experienced. She was able to send all of children to college.
“All of them ended up with college degrees and grandmama didn't have a high school education,” Smith said. “She always said when they came back home from college, they came back dumber than me.”
Smith recalled reciting Bible verses to go along with the blessing of food. And grandmama was a disciplinarian. Smith said he ate supper at her house once and got the same food for breakfast, even Brussel sprouts.
Smith didn’t eat them. Instead he ate spinach. But grandmama wouldn’t allow him to eat dessert until he ate the Brussel sprouts.
“It's a late night,” Smith said. “I'm like, ‘That's alright. I can get up in the morning and I'll eat breakfast.”
The next morning Smith woke to the smell of bacon, sausage and biscuits being cooked. He sat down and closed his eyes to bless the food. But there was no bacon, sausage or biscuits in front of him.
“Grandmama didn't believe in throwing stuff away,” Smith said. “Those Brussel sprouts were there. You know, things will be better today if we did things grandma's way.”
Stubbs shared stories from one member of her family that is rooted in Elmore County for eight generations. She told a story about “Big Daddy” who had a multitude of talents including being a pilot.
“He had an acute aversion to attending Sunday services at his church known as Rushenville Baptist Church,” Stubbs said.
The church is just outside Eclectic.
“One Sunday, he decided to fly his plane and landed at the doors of the church during services, much to the surprise of my great-grandmother and my five-year-old grandmother,” Stubbs said.
She thought about embellishing stories for the program but decided otherwise.
“It occurred to me that there are many collective memories that we all share as a community,” Stubbs said. “I think that's one of the reasons that the identity of our town is so strong and connected, is all of these collective memories together.”
Attendees for the Front Porch program first had lunch together before the story telling. It filled the gallery and audition of the Wetumpka Depot inspiring Deport director Kristy Meanor.
“This was far better than I thought it would be,” Meanor said. “We will try to do this again with more storytelling.”
