The textual material on this particular page is drawn directly from my published work
        The Spiritual Pilgrim © 2021, pages 58-75.

ENCOUNTERING SOUTHERN CULTURE

Entering Martha's world

What I would find in setting up life in Mobile, Alabama, was that I was entering yet another culture, one that basically looked like Middle America on the outside, but operated internally on its own terms, its very special own terms.  I was now living in the American South!

Actually I was now entering fully into Martha's world.  She was a Texan, yes.  But a Texan whose family roots were deeply planted in North Carolina.  Thus she was a Southern "blend."

Her father was a banking executive, and also chairman of some industrial boards, which included a hotel chain that owned a number of hotels across the country.  This not only included the National Hotel in DC, located a couple of blocks from the White House (where our parents stayed during their visits to DC) but also Mobile's Admiral Semmes Hotel that put us up (for free naturally) upon our arrival to that city, and where we stayed until we were able to locate our rental home.
Texas

While living with her family in Texas during my dissertation-writing days, I came to appreciate the uniqueness of Texas culture.  Status in Texas, though definitely a Southern state, seemed not to follow very closely the South's stricter status system, one that established a person's place in society on the basis of his or her birth – much like the social status system of old Europe, which the South had been following closely since the establishment of Virginia in the early 1600s.  Instead, Texas was very "entrepreneurial," something of a leave-over of the wild, wild days of the American West.  I remember how some of Martha's dad's Texas friends would brag about how many times they had failed at this or that business venture, only to get up and try again.  They were proud of the many comebacks, and not at all embarrassed by the failures.  That was something that, if you were not a Texas native, you would find difficult to appreciate.  But a Texan understood the meaning of it all.  They were a tough breed!
Mobile, at the heart of Southern culture

Mobile was more classically Southern in the way it went at things.  For instance, I was quick to learn that the high-achievement mentality that drove the university community did not impress Southerners greatly.  Yes, they appreciated the role of "professor."  But lawyers, bankers, and commercial and industrial executives ranked much, much higher on the strongly-ranked Southern social system.  Even pastors outranked professors, certainly if they were Episcopalian priests, and maybe even Presbyterian pastors (Methodist pastors ranked more towards the "middle" of things, and Baptist pastors seemed to be considered merely the voice of the Southern working classes, both White and Black.)

I was surprised also to discover that local politicians ranked very low on the social scale, also considered more the voice of the lower classes than of the Southern aristocracy, the latter which actually ran Southern society from behind the scenes.  U.S. senators and Federal judges were okay, some of them coming from that aristocratic class. But city and county officials were typically drawn from the more ambitious (and usually very colorful) individuals of the Southern working class.

For a Northerner, these loud local politicians had been considered the "face" of the South.  I am referring here to the 1960s militant segregationists known so well in the North, Southern politicians who used Black-baiting as a means of getting voted into office.  However, and quite strangely, that seemed to have been one strategy that they had largely dropped by the time I arrived on the Southern scene in 1971.

What surprised me most was that Governor George Wallace had dropped the Black-baiting once it no longer gave him an electoral advantage (Blacks now voting in huge numbers).  Indeed, he had become a very special friend of the Alabama Black community, setting up technical training schools and junior colleges particularly accessible to aspiring Blacks.  He was actually very popular with the Black community, in Alabama at least.  And none of this was known – or even wanted to be known – in the American North.  In the North he continued to serve as something of a racist "icon" that the Northerners loved to attack, in distinguishing themselves from the racist South.  Actually it seemed to me at this point that racism in Northern cities (which I personally was quite familiar with) was far more virulent that the racism that the South was famous for.
The rather isolated university community

Also something I came to realize quite quickly was that the university faculty tended to be made up almost completely of Northerners.  There were a few exceptions.  But that seemed very strange to me, until, again, I came to appreciate how the Southern status system worked.  Professorship ranked way higher professionally in the North than in the South.

Also, coming into full membership in this academic community I found out very quickly that it was not a comfortable fit for me, or for Martha.  True, for Martha's part, it was her natural Southern instincts to be not particularly impressed by the professorial sense of special place in society because of their status as "intellectuals."  But for both of us, the academic mentality was problematic, because we were adventurers at heart – rather than intellectual system-builders.

And that made us very different from the social world that the academic community lived in.  Their world was generally fixed, protected, and very isolated from what went on beyond the precincts of the university itself.  Indeed, it was a "complete" world unto itself.  But we just could not identify ourselves with that "completeness."

Rather, we found at faculty parties that it was hard for us to find a natural way into the conversation, sort of reminding me of the problems we once had with the Capitol Hill crowd – although for different reasons.

And just in general the way the academic community understood life outside of its intellectualized universe I came to consider to be not only static but also rather unrealistic.  And I also discovered quickly that academic politics could be brutal, and usually quite senseless in being so brutal.  Just egos at work.

Wow, that did not leave us much to stand on within such a community. And in fact, we were quick to find our Mobile social world elsewhere.
My relations with my students

But my own personal relations with my students were quite different.  I had a wonderful, very wide world to introduce them to.  I wanted to take them with me, at least in story and lesson, into a much larger world that I knew personally.  I wanted them to understand the various cultures that were found here and there across the civilized world, and the way those cultures shaped the politics and economics of those societies.  I wanted them to be among the "wiser" of Americans, as we looked out upon a world – supposing (horribly wrongly) that we simply could introduce (or impose) our own social logic on these societies, to make them "progressive" like us.

But even there, which "us"?  I also realized that there were many Americas.  I came out of the North's Middle America, which I knew well, especially when I had to put it side by side with the German, Swiss, Belgian, French, British, Muslim and Hindu worlds, which made Middle America's unique features stand out even more clearly for me.

And I liked Middle America, although I liked other cultures as well.

But most of all, I wanted my students to understand the special qualities of being "American," at a time that the Boomer world (and some of its professorial mentors) thought that discrediting America wherever possible was the most "progressive," the most noble thing to do.  America-bashing made no sense to me.

And I had lived, worked, and studied in the self-centered culture of Washington, D.C., a mixture of aggressive Capitol Hill politicians (including importantly their very ambitious staff) and the countless numbers of bureaucrats spread around the area.  I knew personally how sex, money and public attention fueled the engines of so many of these politicians who had succeeded in getting themselves elected to power in DC, behavior that would be considered scandalous in most any other environment, but by the rules of DC was kept out of sight of the larger world.  And I could go on and on about specific instances I knew of, how this game went.

And I was well familiar, having worked with both the Peace Corps (placing volunteers in this or that overseas program) and the World Health Organization (funding doctors in their research here and there within the Western Hemisphere) noting that the talents needed for such work were only the ability to quickly learn what was expected of a person at his or her desk, moving documents from the in-box to the out-box, no matter what agency it was that you were working with.  And I also understood clearly the bureaucratic game of moving upward in status, transferring from one department to the next when a higher "G" ranking position opened up there, for instance, serving in the Department of the Navy, before transferring to the Department of Education, before transferring to the Department of Commerce, etc., etc., etc.!

That was a world unto itself, one that was trying desperately to insert itself ever-deeper into the life of the nation!  And yes, I wanted to have my students understand the workings of that world as well ... mostly for protective purposes.

I now took up the respectable life of a young university professor.  I had a pretty good idea of what was expected of me ... and how I was going to meet those expectations. 

I settled quickly into my classes and then began to look around at my setting (Mobile).  I had spent enough time in Texas to know that Alabama was a very different kind of "South."  I was interested in learning more.
BECOMING THE CONSUMMATE
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

The political science department

On the other hand, I found working with the fellow members of my department at the teaching job itself to be quite pleasant.  The department chairman, David (a Harvard PhD from Missouri) had no particular social pretensions of his own, was very supportive of whatever it was that I wanted to bring to action, and just in general was a great person to work with.  His wife, Janet, was also very gracious, a teacher in the special-education world, who had a lot of ideas to share with Martha.

The only "problematic" individual in the department was a young lady (who didn't stay long) who felt that she had to always be actively opposed to the system, especially the way it worked to favor men.  For instance, she blew up at me once when I found myself in front of her as we headed toward the building where our classes were, and made the horrible mistake of opening the door for her.  What a male chauvinist I was for doing that!  She could open her doors herself, thank you!  Wow!

Ultimately she moved on, unable to bring about the "reforms" that seemed to engage her so much.
 
Next door was a very likable guy, Bob, a quite happy "good-old-boy" that I came to like very much. He had married a very interesting German girl that he had met when posted as a NATO officer in Germany.  He now headed up the university's Criminal Justice Program, but also spent about as little time as I did on campus (he was very active with the Mobile police force).

There was an American politics professor down the hall, Joe, who had lost his foot at the disaster of Anzio (Italy) during World War Two.

And there was a quite young Black professor who joined the staff the same year I did, who was actually local – and of "elite" status within that Mobile society!  I was amazed to learn, from getting to know him, that there was also a Black Southern aristocracy, one that worked behind the scenes just like the White Southern aristocracy – performing the same roles in directing their respective communities.  In fact, the two groups, Black and White, often worked closely together – as I was soon to find out personally.  He did not stay long at South Alabama, but was quick to take a job offer from a more prestigious university elsewhere after serving only a single year at South Alabama.

And there was the young couple, Tom and Nancy (he taught constitutional law) that Martha and I spent some time with in the first year or two, who were very nice.  But the relationship did not succeed in going very deep or very far, before they moved on to a position elsewhere.

And a couple of years along the way, another woman came to the department (American government), Louise, whom I got along with very nicely.  However I later had to be very careful to keep things on that note, after she succeeded in overthrowing the new replacement department chairman for his shortcomings (which I never quite saw at all), and making herself the "temporary" replacement chairman in the process (she was still in that "temporary" position when I left for seminary years later).  Ah, academic politics!
The Deep South Model United Nations

Something that awaited me in taking up my job at South Alabama was serving as the faculty advisor for a campus activity, one that had been started up, at least in conception, the year before, and was due finally to swing into operation that coming April: The Deep South Model United Nations.  In taking up this responsibility as faculty advisor, I found myself working with a very talented young man, Jim (we would remain close over the next dozen years, as he developed as a very inventive lawyer in the world of computerized legal research – both in DC and then in Texas), and an equally special team he had put together to direct the Model UN Program.

And not only did huge numbers of my own students (international relations and comparative world politics) eventually become involved in the project in signing on as delegates of this or that country, but university students came from all around the South (Virginia and Florida in the East to Texas in the West) to participate. I found myself even involved a bit with these delegates (and their advisors, many of whom I would see year after year) from these other universities.

The three-day event was huge, held in the vast conference facilities at the Admiral Semmes Hotel, and very, very successful in what it was trying to accomplish: to get university students to do some serious research into how the country they were representing would go at a number of United Nations issues actually going on at the time (which we specifically pre-selected for them to research well prior to the event).

And I enjoyed every minute of the program, from beginning to end, including the great party that the staff put on after the event!  And in the process, I grew very close to those students, remaining in personal contact with many of them for years afterwards.

In fact, the program was so successful that we began plans to have another such event the following year, and then the year after that, and after that, in fact, the event taking place every spring that I was at the university!
The International Studies Program

By my third year at the university I found myself putting together a new academic program: one so extensive in its academic reach that it would serve to meet both major and minor requirements at the same time, in full and even beyond.  The International Studies Program comprised five introductory courses (in the political science, history, economics and anthropology departments), plus the requirements of two years' study of a foreign language (though the students almost always took as many additional language courses as they were able to squeeze into the program), plus an academic concentration of their own design, one put before a board of nine professors (from a variety of departments) as a self-designed contract, for the board to review and approve.

In most cases, my job was to help international studies students assemble this self-designed program.  This turned out to be a very big job for me, as we soon ended up with roughly 30 to 40 students in this program every year.  And it was my job to find internships that allowed each student to get some practical experience in the international field they had chosen (usually business, but sometimes academics, law, and even diplomacy).

Other professors were called on to help mentor these students, although it was usually me they came to in order to assemble and then undertake the program.

For me, it was hugely time consuming.  I still had four courses to conduct in each of the academic quarters (except summers which I took off), each course involving essay exams and a huge term paper – things that involved an enormous amount of time to grade (no, I never turned such responsibilities over to graduate assistants).  So all this international studies advising alongside my regular teaching duties was exhausting.

Nonetheless, I loved it!  To take students who had never thought much about life beyond Alabama, and to fire their imaginations with thoughts about working or studying abroad, was a very great thrill for me.

Indeed, helping students catch a higher vision of life for themselves was something that I had dedicated my life to, and seemed to be as much a benefit to me as to them.  Working this way with my students was my way of connecting to that something larger than myself, that transcendent soul, that I hungered for – though I had no words, no clear concept, for it.
The Fulbright Program

This also played itself out for me in my longstanding work with the university's Fulbright Committee, which I eventually came to chair.  What a thrill it was when one year our students received five Fulbright scholarships, one to Germany, one to Belgium, and three to France (out of the total of 50 that France makes available annually to the entire United States).  I lived for this sort of thing!
Children?

I naturally grew quite close to those students that I worked with on these various projects.  They became to me something like my own children, children that Martha and I came to realize that we were not going to be able to have of our own.

And here we were, both teachers (Martha was presently working with "special ed" children, also pursuing a master's degree in the same field), our lives directed to the task of bringing young ones forward in life.  So indeed, we turned our full attention to those born of others, but who became somewhat "adopted" into our own world, through our work – which completely absorbed us.  

One of the University activities that I particularly loved was the annual Deep South Model United Nations 3-day conference held each April (for which I served as faculty advisor)




In my 3rd year at the university I put together a new major/minor program:  International Studies – involving professors and courses from a number of different academic departments.  And I soon found myself also as Vice President and then President of the Alabama Political Science Association.  Then I became head of the University’s Fulbright Committee.

I was a very active boy … making my way up the chain of command at the school and in the Mobile Community.  It was exhausting.  But I loved it!
ENTRY INTO MOBILE SOCIETY AND LIFE

"Downtown Mobile"

Step by step, from almost our first days in Mobile, Martha and I found ourselves meeting this person, then that person, people living in the world outside of the academic community.  I myself built some of the contacts with that world, for instance, through a local architect who was very interested in expanding Mobile's Sister City program from its present single relationship with Malaga, Spain.  He had been in contact with the French, and asked me (with my knowledge of French ways) to help develop a sister-city in that country as well.  I agreed.


Also a student of mine invited me to join him as crew on his boat during the annual Dauphin Island Race.  I enjoyed the experience very much, sailed with him in a couple of more summer regattas, and decided to get deeper into that world by joining the yacht club he sailed out of (the Buccaneer Yacht Club).  But I soon found that in not having a sailboat of my own, the membership itself did not do much to bring me deeper into that world.  I would let my membership lapse.

It would be Martha who would really get us up and going with the Mobile crowd.  Being a Southerner, she knew exactly how to go at things, and she was very social!  For her, one contact led to another, and then another, until we found ourselves amidst a wide circle (actually several circles) of Mobile friends.

One of the things I came to note in entry into this new world was the rather quiet graciousness of the "gentry" class of Mobile.  Perhaps it was because they did not need to "work at it" to make themselves significant.  They were already significant by way of birth.  But this was so different from the kind of ambitiousness that seemed to drive the world I came from, but which also drove local politics right there in Mobile as well.

In any case it did not take us long to find ourselves in "Mobile society," in particular in the close social company with the local "judge" (not really active as such) Judge Inge, and his very aristocratic wife Eleanor.  It was through them that our Mobile world opened up, not just through an invitation to one of the all-important Mardi Gras balls, but by becoming part of a small circle that met at the Inge home to discuss the matter of what Mobile needed to do to recover from the enormous economic disaster that hit the city when the US government shut down the Brookley Naval Air Station, ending about 6,000 jobs locally in the process.  It was in those discussions that I began to learn how it was the "city fathers" – not the local democratically-elected politicians – that actually shaped not only the social but also the political and economic life of the city.
The Mobile "Colloquium"

I was so intrigued by all this that I decided to follow up on these discussions by putting together a "Colloquium" on Mobile and its future, conferences held once a week in early 1973 for six weeks at the university, all six evening sessions led by my new friends Judge Inge and the young and newly-elected county commissioner Bay Hayes that I had come to know personally… plus a few others I had invited to take the lead in the matter (I myself stayed behind the scenes).  As it turned out, all these sessions were well attended.

We invited officials (including the young mayor Gary Greenough), businessmen (including officers of the town's Chamber of Commerce), prominent lawyers in town, the newspaper editor, local labor union leaders, pastors, community organization leaders, etc., to present their views on the future of Mobile.  The talks were frank, insightful, and yes even inspiring.  It reminded me how people could work together – business and labor, Black and White (yes some of these local leaders were Black) – if their goal was to find a higher social goal together, rather than – as we so often find ourselves doing in hard times – going at each other viciously, trying to fix the blame for social misfortune on this local group or that local group.

I had seen that reach to higher things develop in Belgium.  I was now seeing the same thing develop in Mobile.

So impressed were the leaders of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce with the results of the Colloquium that they decided to continue these discussions themselves.

And indeed, I was very pleased to see come from all of this, Mobile's decision to become one of the first port-cities in the nation to go largely containerized, not only assembling the considerable amount of investment capital to get things going but undertaking serious vocational retraining of their port labor force in order to make the transition.  No one lost his job in the process.  In fact, this all turned out to be a huge economic blessing to the town.

And I got to be part of this renewal, of what by this time had become "my town"!
Local politics

It was during that coming summer of 1973 that I decided that I also would get myself more seriously involved in the city's political dynamics, working with an actual campaign for local public office.  And it all started simply enough with a summer course I taught at the university.

After that first year (1971-1972) of living in our tiny cracker-box rental home, Martha and I were able to purchase a house (story and a half with somewhat alpine features) on a nice-sized lot in a very middle-class subdivision right across from the university.  We moved in (early summer of 1972) and then left the following week for Brussels for the summer.

Upon our return, I set to the task of doing some upgrading of the house, repainting the army green exterior in a warmer yellow, and building a large roof over the large concrete patio behind the house.

To complete that work, we decided that we would be spending the coming summer (1973) in Mobile. And to earn some extra money to help pay for the upgrading of the home, I decided to take on some summer teaching at the university (the only time I would do that!).

One of my students that summer was an older student, a criminal justice major, simply meeting the last of his requirements for graduation.  But, as it turned out, he really liked my course, and at the end of it, informed me that he planned to run for the position of county sheriff – and would like it very much if I were to become part of his campaign staff.  Loving adventure as I did, I was quick to say "yes."

Indeed, I was already thinking about jumping (somewhat) into this world of local campaign politics.  Politics was, after all, my professional field (or so I was believing at the time.)  Also, I considered myself quite knowledgeable about such matters, especially having lived in the middle of that dynamic at the national level during my five years in DC.  And so I started work with some of the staff, helping (minorly) to think through some campaign strategies.

Then something happened that really jolted me, something that would end my travel down the "local-politics" road.

I really was not keeping up that closely with things developing at the grass roots in the sheriff's race, until I heard that I should be on the lookout for an article scheduled to appear on the front page of the Sunday's Republican Herald newspaper (someone on the campaign staff got it put there).  This was scheduled to appear just a couple of days before the election itself, and it would be a campaign clincher!

When the article finally appeared, and I was able to read what the campaign staff had placed there, I couldn't believe it.  They were accusing their opponent, the rather noble and well-liked 20-year sheriff, of major corruption.

But I knew enough about things that I was aware that none of this was true.  And certainly the staff I was working with knew that to be the case as well.  And yes, eventually the old sheriff would be able to prove that none of this political "gossip" was true.  But he would not be able to clear himself publicly of this supposed scandal before the election itself, only two days hence.  That was the whole point!

And indeed, my student-friend went on to be elected the county's new sheriff.

I don't believe that he himself dreamed up such a shady strategy, though I never brought up the issue to him (actually I really never talked to him again after that, except to say hello on a number of occasions).

Could a candidate actually not know of such doings within his own staff?  Believe me, yes.  I knew that moral self-restraint was not a major virtue to be found among those who could get themselves all worked-up in their effort to bring a beloved leader to success.  Staffing a political campaign was a world unto itself, which the candidates had to carefully keep an eye on – lest some of that staff enthusiasm should carry the candidate himself off to political disaster!

Anyway, that was the last of my political campaigning locally.  Besides, a new world was opening up to me there in Mobile.  And I found it less dangerous and much more inviting personally.

AT THE SAME TIME ... THE WATERGATE SCANDALE

This does not mean that I veered away from the world of politics.  The study of a society's political dynamics remained front and center in what I had dedicated my professional life to.   And there was a lot going on at the time in my nation's capital to keep me deeply engaged, not just personally but also in much of the discussion going on in my classes.

What I saw going on in Washington I cannot say turned me cynical.   I think I was already there in that matter!   Nothing that happened in DC would ever surprise me.  But I still found what was going on there at the time hard to digest.

I rather liked the way Nixon had opened up relations with China and Russia, to work some "linkage" with these other major powers in his determination to pull America out of Johnson's mess in Vietnam, and yet leave something of a workable political legacy behind in Saigon, some kind of reward for all the effort (and blood spilled) to get things to go the "democratic way" in that country.

But he was up against a Democrat-controlled Congress determined to undermine everything he was accomplishing.  The Democrats were humiliated by the enormous defeat in the 1972 elections of their own presidential candidate, a dreamy intellectual that was loved deeply by the Boomer-generation crusaders and their intellectualist academic, media, and public-office-holding mentors.  They hated Nixon, as a matter of the highest principle.

And a political campaign stunt that went horribly wrong, something undertaken by Nixon's own campaign staff, gave them what they saw as the opportunity they needed to bring him down.

What was particularly galling to me was that behind this push to go at Nixon was Ted Kennedy.  It was Kennedy that put together the Senate committee to look into the "Watergate" matter, the same Kennedy who, four years earlier, had left a very pretty young woman (not his wife) to die alone in his car when, heading to Chappaquiddick Island, it went off a bridge and turned upside down in the water.  Kennedy somehow got out, she did not.  And he did not even alert the police or a potential rescue team about the matter, but spent the night with his family trying to figure a way of covering over this new incident (one of many), so typical of his life.

And now here was "Chappaquiddick Ted" leading the Nixon assault, from behind the scenes of course.  Was he doing so for the obvious reason of his own lack of admirable moral credentials, which seemed, however, to have had no negative effect on his standing with his Massachusetts supporters – or with his Democratic Party either?  Or was he going at this political lynching operating from behind the scenes because he was thinking of running for president in the upcoming national elections and did not want his role in the inquest to appear to be purely politically motivated, which it was indeed, as everything is in DC?

So yes, Nixon was finally caught trying to cover up the affair.  A taped conversation with his chief-of-staff Haldeman revealed him discussing how to make this Watergate event go away, evidence that Nixon had indeed broken the law in trying to head off a more extensive criminal investigation into the matter.

Yes, the post-event cover-up was wrong, very wrong.  But it hardly stood out from the behavior that went on rather regularly in DC, including among some of those serving now as his accusers.  Indeed, how did the Nixon crime stand out so much more strongly than Kennedy's cover-up action after Chappaquiddick, so-much-so that the day would come when Kennedy would be toasted as one of America's finest politicians, and Nixon would be remembered in our public schools as the "evil president"?

Wow, the depths of political hypocrisy this all entailed!

Of course there was nothing I could do from Mobile about DC political behavior, except comment on that same hypocrisy, and then watch in helpless horror the following year as the American legacy in South Vietnam collapsed so violently (there and even more violently next door in Cambodia), due to further Congressional ideological tampering to undermine what little Nixon had been able to accomplish there.  Nixon's enemies were determined to "get Nixon," no matter what the social cost might be.  And for the Southeast Asians, that cost was horrendous!

Nonetheless, despite what was unfolding in DC and Southeast Asia, life went on pretty normally right there in Mobile!  


The Senate holding hearings ...
even before the House has presented its articles of impeachment.
But this was too opportune a political moment to be passed up



Nixon's legal counsel John Dean abandoning ship to save himself
by testifying against Nixon at the Watergate hearings


Nixon announcing his resignation ( to save the Republican Party from more damage) ...
  also making the American press and the Democratic Party very happy at their success
 in bringing down "the evil president."

MARTHA AND I SETTLE IN WITH MOBILE SOCIETY

Restoring an old house in the Oakleigh Garden District

Martha, meanwhile, was eager to put us in the heart of our opening Mobile world, pressing me to look at the possibility of moving from the university area to the center of "Old Mobile."  So, one Saturday in early 1974, we drove downtown to visit Martelle and John (an older couple who had become very deep friends by this time), who drove us around the Oakleigh Garden District – where they themselves lived.  This area once was a beautiful neighborhood of rather majestic turn-of-the-century homes, many of which had been turned into boarding homes (or worse) and allowed to run down.  However, the area had recently been declared a national historic area, and was just beginning to be "gentrified" by young professional couples moving there and beginning the process of a serious makeover of these once-splendid homes.

I became interested, and contacted a real estate agent who showed us a house in the District at the end of a street, Georgia Avenue, next to a park.  The house was magnificent, but in terrible shape.  However, it had great promise: fireplaces in 6 rooms, 11' ceilings downstairs and 10' ceilings upstairs, a beautiful staircase, and lots of room.

But admittedly, you had to have lots of imagination to see past the filth and decay.  Close friends of ours, Richard and Millie, told us that when they first saw the house, they thought we had lost our minds!

But that spring, I tore out the walls of one of the four bedrooms upstairs to open up the stairway and to create an airy openness about the second floor. I built a new bathroom upstairs and fixed up one of the bedrooms with a large closet.  And by the summer I was going hard at it, working on the kitchen and an adjoining breakfast room, created by glassing in a back porch.

This activity occupied me totally until we decided to move in in August, when we received a very nice offer to purchase our university home and felt we could not pass it up.  Indeed, the really great thing about this venture was that we incurred no extra debt in restoring the Oakleigh home.  Indeed, we had enough money from savings and from the equity in the sale of our university home that we were able to pay cash to the plumbers, the electricians and the central-heat-and-air people.

Of course, the house was far from complete when we moved in.  Indeed, Martha and I would find ourselves living amidst a lot of construction work (and dust!) over the next couple of years while I worked away at the house.  But step by step we finished the kitchen, upgraded the dining room, built a library, and completed the makeover of the three bedrooms (and yet another bath that I installed) upstairs.  And we furnished these rooms with some great antiques that we were able to buy locally.  One of these was even an antique father clock, over 7' tall, dating from the late 1700s, whose case I refinished myself (14 coats of lacquer, hand rubbed between each coat!).

We now had a beautiful setting to entertain our friends, which was a most frequent event.  Parties and other gatherings happened there often.  And we were into the "gourmet thing" with a number of our friends, and found that putting together some extravagant meal was a delightful way to spend a Saturday evening.  Indeed, looking back, it seems hard to remember when during those days Martha and I had dinner home alone with just the two of us.  But that's the way we wanted it.  

Our interest in the Mobile Community soon led us to leave the university area and in  1974 move to an old Southern home in a downtown neighborhood (the Oakleigh  Garden District) just beginning to undergo "gentrification" (mostly young lawyers, bankers and businessmen working downtown now moving to the neighborhood).



The exterior ... before and after



It would turn out to be quite a project … for the house needed lots of work.  
But architecture and hands-on construction I loved.



The inside was in dismal shape when we first started out.

And the neighborhood itself was awesome … not only with its classic homes … but with neighbors helping neighbors rebuild the community. 



Our block on Georgia Avenue

We not only knew virtually everyone on the block, but in the surrounding area as well … through our participation in the Oakleigh Garden Society.

Concerning the house restoration, I designed and did all the work myself.  


The kitchen … in a state of early development … and upon completion.



The  Library – before and after



More of the library, the living room and the dining room.



The breakfast room before and after … and the entry hall.



A special project of mine was a grandfather clock
 – dating back to the end of the 1700s or beginning of the 1800s –
14 coats of lacquer hand rubbed between each coating!
 

Not having any children to distract us, our home was very often a gathering place for other young couples.



Here we are (1976) at dinner with people who played a large role in our lives:   1) Jim (left) a former student and my first Model United Nations organizer (by this time now a lawyer, first in Washington, then in Texas; 2) Rodger (far right) who brought me on as sailing crew to John Van Aken and who was at that point an architect (somewhere in New England?); and 3) our neighbors across the street, Tish  and Tony ... whom we would team up with in the house-restoration business.

And then there were just parties held at our home as well.




   What's this?  Dinner with Brenda and Paul ... out of aluminum pans? 
And Bootsie helping Martha play the recorder?

Still at it with Tony and Tish! (1981)
   


The Oakleigh Garden District itself

Oakleigh was by this time a vibrant community of young professionals much like ourselves in interest and activity, lawyers, bankers, shipping agents, etc.  There was only one other professor in the group, Woody (a true New Englander) – a young history professor with whom I carpooled to the university most every day.  Everyone worked closely together in bringing the neighborhood forward, virtually all of us serving as members of the very active Oakleigh Garden Society.  And it was through participation in this organization – and the way that we shared insights as to effective restoration strategies and which plumbers, electricians, etc. were the best to go with – that we came to know our neighbors quite well, and quite far and wide in the Oakleigh district.

And there were a number of activities that added to that sense of neighborliness. Besides the Garden Society, every October there was the annual street dance put on by the first block of Georgia Avenue (the street we lived on, just off the town's main street), an event attended by masses of people, complete with band, refreshments, and just a lot of dancing and socializing.

And there was the Oakleigh Marching Society, just a "fun thing" when we would put on second-hand Mardi Gras costumes, and on the morning of Mardi Gras, gather in front of someone's home (ours in fact in 1979) and join the day-long Mardi Gras parade, for our part, marching from our district down to the center of town (our group usually led by a New Orleans marching band), where we would end up at the Malaga Inn's courtyard, and where we would continue to party (with yet another band), until most of us had to go off to more formal Mardi Gras balls elsewhere (later that afternoon and evening).

And there was the annual Halloween event, in which we would set up one of the houses still under deep reconstruction as the Haunted House, fix it up with "haunted" rooms, dress ourselves up in all sorts of weird Halloween costumes (once I put myself on drywall stilts, becoming about 8' in height) and then scare the living daylights out of the neighborhood kids, particularly the Black kids of the neighborhood, who would typically circle around to go through the visit a second and then a third time, they loved it so much. And we all had great fun doing this for them.  

We had the annual street party on our own street to look forward to each fall.




And  there was Mardi Gras (usually taking place in February or March).  Here the Oakleigh Marching Society gathers at our house … to begin its march down Government Street during Mardi Gras.



Needless to say … we all had a great time!



It could also be very tiring!  Here we are resting up after one or another Mardi Gras Day!



The social dynamic of Oakleigh included also our annual Haunted House in which we decorated a house still under reconstruction (scary enough in itself) … and opened it up on Halloween to the neighborhood kids … to scare the life out of them.  They loved it … and would circle back to go through the tour several times!


Sailing becomes a serious matter for me

It was when a friend Rodger invited me to join him in crewing with John Van Aken, that my world of sailing really took off.  The owner and captain of the 30' sailboat I came to crew was a generation older, Dutch-born shipping inspector for Lloyds Bank of London, and also South African consul for the port of Mobile.  He raced his boat constantly through the very long Mobile regatta season.  So I found myself serving regularly as crew (it seems most weekends during much of the year), slowly making my way forward as winch operator, then foredeck crew (jib and spinnaker), then finally navigator (plotting racing strategies from the maps and electronic gear).  And we generally were very successful in these competitions!  For seven years I would sail under his captaincy. 

Saturdays and Sundays were spent (for seven years … nearly year-round) crewing for a Dutchman,  an outstanding yacht racer.  I learned to love sailing from him.  (No, I did not go to Church on Sundays.  Actually, I didn’t even really think about it.)



In case you didn't recognize me, I'm the guy with the mustache!
The captain's son, Tony, is the guy in the striped shirt.
We would become close friends.

Business partnership with Tony

As an interesting side result, I was to become very close (certainly closest of all of my friends) with his son Tony, who joined us as fellow crewman after graduating from college and then taking a job in town as an international banker.  In fact, Tony and his wife Tish were to buy a house just across the street and down three houses from our own home on Georgia Avenue, where he too learned the art of renovating an old Mobile home.

And very importantly, Tony and I were to go in together to create the Mobile Restoration Company, and begin the purchase and redevelopment of other Mobile homes, earning some historic restoration awards from the city for our work.  But more about that later.

Eventually, Martha and I were to go on and buy our own sailboat (another 30' beauty), of which I would do considerable upgrading, and which we would cruise rather than race, and which would become a major setting for the entertainment of friends.  Also, more about that later.  

1976 the startup of the housing restoration business with Tony and Tish

Having done such work on our own homes, we took an interest in continuing this work. We started out doing much of the work ourselves ... but quickly took on contractors to help out




Our first project ... in the Dauphin Way District (we received an historical award for our work)



Another project we took on was a small house on Mobile Bay
 ... which we opened up the back to a full view of the bay
This work we did by ourselves.

Summers at home and abroad

Of course, I was not sailing every weekend of the summer, because Martha and I, both being teachers, had our summers off, giving us a great opportunity to do what we loved best: explore.  And most normally, we found the object of our summer explorations to be Europe.

Our first summer back in Europe was in 1972, when we returned to Belgium, supposedly for me to do some follow-up work on my doctoral research.  I had actually finished my doctoral research and writing the previous year (1971) in the spring, was able to offer my doctoral defense that fall, and finally just that June had officially been awarded the PhD (one of three receiving their Georgetown PhDs in political science that year), sent to me in the mail!  Anyway, our summer in Belgium proved to be more social (with our friends Victor, Pierre and Anne) traveling and relaxing at the Belgian shore, and of no great consequence academically.  We returned briefly to Belgium also the next summer (1973). But the summer after that (1974) was spent in Mobile, fixing up our new Oakleigh home.

Then the summer after that (1975) we found ourselves again back in Europe, this time living in Paris for the summer.  The work I had been doing with the Mobile Sister Cities Program had led to a contract offered by the counterpart French organization (Cités Unies), in which they wanted me to put together a study describing and comparing the development of both the American and French approach to town twinning. This not only had me busy doing a lot of interviewing (including someone in the US State Department, because Sister Cities was actually a part of official American diplomacy), but also doing a lot of traveling around France.

While we were there we were visited by Brenda and Paul, who lived up the street from us on Georgia Avenue, whom we did not know very well yet, but who, when they heard that we were headed for Paris, took up the challenge to come visit us. This was their first trip abroad, so we gave them the special.  After showing them Paris, we headed down to Innsbruck (Austria) on an overnight train and then spent the next day climbing the mountain behind our motel.  From there we crossed the Alps to Venice, and spent a couple of days seeing the sights in that lovely town.  Then we returned to Paris and spent some more time together – in incredible heat (Paris was not used to this heat and air conditioning was rare) before we put them on the plane to go home.

After they left, things just seemed very dull.  "Bored in Paris" was not something we had ever expected.  Anyway, we suffered the heat for a couple of more weeks, then headed up to Antwerp, to meet my father, who was there on business.  The next day we took the train to Luxembourg and headed home.

For no particular reason we stayed at home the next summer of 1976.  It did, however, give me the opportunity to undertake and finish the very complicated library project in our home.

But that summer we did get a Sister-Cities exchange visit from France, and became hosts at our home of the youngish (and quite stylish, and yes, a member of the French Communist Party, would you believe!) mayor of Arles and his wife, who were leading the large group.
America having a hard time celebrating its bi-centennial

It was July 4th at the time of their visit, and supposed to be a time of great celebration, for the day marked 200 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  But despite the fireworks and grand effort to make the most of the event, it was a sad time in America.



As a political swipe at the Republican President Nixon, a Democratic-Party-controlled Congress had foolishly declared to the world that it was ending America's "imperialist" role in Southeast Asia, and was cutting off all further support, even just financial support, of our allies in the Saigon government, an invitation for the North Vietnamese to do their worst!  Consequently, after Nixon had been chased from office in August of 1974, his replacement Ford had to preside over the humiliating escape of the last of the American personnel from Vietnam in April of the following year.

Furthermore, what we Americans left behind in that country as our legacy was the horror that the Communists then unleashed on the many Vietnamese who had supported the American presence in their country those many years.  They would pay heavily for that relationship, either killed on the spot or dragged off to prison camps where they were treated to a very brutal "re-education" of their social thinking (brainwashing), the process so harsh that many died there as well.

And this horror was accompanied by an even greater one next door in Cambodia where the collapse of the American-supported political status quo in the region led to the Communist (Khmer Rouge) "Killing Fields" that brutally depopulated Cambodian urban society.

And most Americans suspected that behind it all, our cowardly retreat had brought all that on.

And that's where things stood as we supposedly celebrated two centuries of American greatness.  But things weren't feeling so great at this point.

Nonetheless, we in Mobile made the most of the visit of these new French friends, timed with what was supposed to be a wonderful 4th of July celebration.

And indeed, Martha and I enjoyed their company enormously. And we would be invited by the Arles Mayor and his wife – and accept the offer – to stay with them in their summer home in the Jura Mountains the next summer when we returned to Europe.
Back to Europe

So, yes, the next summer (1977) we were back in Europe. Very conveniently for us, my parents were now living in Antwerp (my father was continuing the work that had brought him there previously), and we made their beautiful and spacious home there something of a base camp to work from.  Again, Brenda and Paul joined us in Europe, meeting us in Portugal, where we enjoyed enormously the country's wonderful seafood dishes!  We then headed through Spain to Morocco, and spent a number of days in the quite medieval (but also very Muslim) city of Fez.  Then we headed back to Antwerp, where we all got together with Tony and Tish, who joined us there.

Tony and Tish were at that point finishing up their summer visit to Europe and it was time for Paul to get back to work.  But Brenda was able to join Martha and me for an ongoing visit to England, a country which Martha and I loved deeply and which we had visited numerous times when we ourselves were residents in Belgium.  We then returned to Antwerp, hung out there a bit longer, and finally headed home.  No, this time we were not "bored in Paris"!

One more trip would follow the next year (1978), when again we were joined by Brenda and Paul, who had recently moved to Atlanta, Georgia, but stayed in close contact with us.  My parents (still living in Antwerp) lent us their car, and we headed off to the French wine regions of Burgundy (Eastern France) and Bordeaux (Southwestern France), trying to become wine "connoisseurs" through our many visits to the wine cellars of Burgundy and the great wine estates of Bordeaux. It was a very enjoyable summer.

It would also be our last trip together to Europe, although we did not know this at the time.  But events were about to unfold that would change the very patterns of our lives, deeply. 

Meanwhile, both being teachers, we also had the luxury of fantastic summers abroad.  And with my parents' move to Antwerp in Belgium in 1977, we had a home base to work from.



Here we are in 1978 touring the wine country of France
with Mobile friends, Brenda and Paul (Paul taking this picture)!

 

Miles H. Hodges