Story by Carol Pappas
Submitted photos | Archived photos

The saying goes, ‘Build it, and they will come.’ In Lincoln these days, they have already arrived.

Since opening less than a year ago, Lincoln’s Landing is now on the map as a destination point. Thousands of boats have already launched from this cutting-edge fishing park, and tournaments are already scheduled two years out.

Les Robinson, director of Lincoln’s Landing, has been “a real plus to this project and to our city,” Lincoln Mayor Lew Watson said. “He puts his heart into it, which is what you need if you’re going to have a successful project.”

Success? Just take a look at the numbers. Lincoln’s Landing has launched 50 tournaments since July, Robinson said. With tournaments and everyday use, it already has reached the 4,500 to 5,000 boats launched mark, “and we haven’t been open a year,” he added.

The prestigious Bassmasters College Series is coming to Lincoln’s Landing in June for a two-day tournament and in the next 18 to 24 months, Robinson predicts, a Bassmasters Elite or Bassmasters Open, which are major attractions in the fishing world, are in its future. But it doesn’t stop there. The tourist dollars it lures along with the notoriety for Lincoln will have a huge economic impact, not only for Lincoln but the surrounding areas.

In the next budget period, a pavilion, bridge and swimming beach will be on the agenda for the city and this 40-acre site. “Then we’ll catch our breath a little bit,” Robinson said.

The park already includes a 165-foot long by 60-foot wide, stacked stone grand pavilion with fireplace and 4,000 square feet of open space for other events, fishing piers and slips and a boat ramp that can launch 10 boats at a time. The first wedding at the park is already booked.

Parking also will be a consideration. While 250 parking spaces seemed like plenty when the park was on the drawing board. The Alabama Bass Trail event had every spot filled plus parking on the grass, Mayor Watson said.

Two other pavilions – both 30 x 30 feet – will be built near the shoreline and be rentable for events as well as everyday use. A pad is planned for a food truck area to serve tournaments.

“It’s more than just a fishing park,” Robinson said. “We have a lot to offer.”

In July, when construction was at its height, Watson could already see what was taking shape and its potential. He noted its accessibility – near Interstate 20 and U.S. 78. “It is right off the main channel on the lake, with year-round water,” Watson said at the time. “It is the perfect place for the park. It’s like, ‘If we build it, they will come.’”

Take a look around on any given day. They’re already here.

Heading to downtown Pell City June 4

Story by Linda Long
Submitted photos

What began as a class project of Leadership Pell City over 20 years ago has transformed into one of the biggest events of the year – Hometown Block Party.

Now presented by the Greater Pell City Chamber of Commerce, the block party has grown into an event that annually draws thousands to downtown Pell City to a free, outdoor festival featuring live music – all genres – food, games, vendors of all types and a whole lot of fun.

Held the first Saturday in June, this year’s event is set for June 4 from 3 to 9 p.m. and will stretch all around the courthouse square plus side streets in a party atmosphere that gets better every year.

The mission and vision of the block party has never wavered from its beginnings. It’s only gotten better. Its aim is to draw people downtown for all kinds of festivities with neighbors meeting neighbors, reminiscent of neighborhood block parties of years gone by.

Though the entertainment schedule is still being finalized, Chamber Director Urainah Glidewell says a crowd favorite, the WingNuts, are a go. “People love them,” she says. They play oldies from the 60s and 70s.

 Another favorite, Kudzu, is also on tap. “We’ll be showcasing a lot of local talent,” says Glidewell. “This is a typical neighborhood together. It’s just a great time for people to come out and have a good time. Kick back and listen to some good music.”

Three stages for live music will be set up at various street corners, so if you have one type of music you like better than the other, just keep strolling. You’ll hear it.

Folks also will have a choice from a wide variety of vendors, offering everything from food, clothing and jewelry to turtles and lizards.

“It wouldn’t be the block party without the turtle man,” laughed Glidewell. “He comes every year.” She says he sells his critters in a variety of sizes.

Just walking down the street during the festival is an experience unto itself. “The aroma from all the food cooking is wonderful — cheesecake, cookies, barbecue, sausage,” she says, naming a few on the menu.

An annual feature of the Pell City block party is the car show. Entry fee is $10 a car. Part of the proceeds will go this year to Mileena Painter, a local girl who is battling leukemia. Entrants can sign up as late as the day of event.

Vendor space is available at $50 per spot.

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Graham Hadley
Submitted photos

What’s in a name? When it’s attached to a place, it often gives a hint of its history. Take Coal City, for example. You might think it is or was a coal-mining town. And you’d be right. Later, a guy tried to change its name to Wattsville, and there’s a story behind that. In the beginning, however, it was called Broken Arrow, after the creek by the same name. And that name recalls its Native American origins, and even connects you with Broken Arrow, Okla.

According to legend, a Native American brave shot a deer in the area and in the animal’s death throes, it broke the brave’s arrow. When he saw the broken arrow, he yelled, “Theitka,” (or Thle Teka, depending upon which source you’re reading). That meant “Broken Arrow” in his language. Thus, that area became known as Broken Arrow.

Actually, the area’s Native American heritage goes back a few thousand years, according to Rusty Jessup, amateur historian and mayor of nearby Riverside. “Most archeologists believe there was a very large Native American settlement in the area of Broken Arrow Creek, where it goes into the Coosa River,” Jessup says. “We think it was 1,000 to 1,200 B.C. I’ve talked to some people who say it was one of the largest settlements at that time, with as many as 10,0000 to 15,000 people who lived at that intersection over a span of 200 to 300 years.”

As far as Jessup knows, no Native American burial grounds have been discovered in the area, but there could have been some that went underwater when the Coosa River was dammed to form Logan Martin Lake in 1965. “There’s good fishing there. It always was one of the cleaner tributaries into the Coosa, but also one of the shallow ones,” he says. “You can’t navigate a long way on Broken Arrow Creek.”

Fast forward to the founding of Broken Arrow, Okla. That Tulsa suburb was established in 1902 by a Creek tribe that was moved to Oklahoma from Broken Arrow in St. Clair County, Ala.

The brave, whose cry became the name of the creek, may have been part of a mixed band of settlers and friendly Native Americans hunting on the land of the area’s first white settler. John Bolton arrived in the 1820s. According to a Feb. 21, 1974, St. Clair Observer newspaper story by Mattie Lou Teague Crow, Bolton followed an Native American trail which ran from the Creek village of Cataula (Ashville) to Cropwell.

He established a homestead at the intersection of another Native American trail running from the Coosa River to today’s Friendship community. Bolton’s log cabin was approximately where Old Coal City Road crosses Alabama Highway 144 today. The area became known as Bolton’s Crossroads. Again, the history is in the name.

In 1839, Broken Arrow Post Office was established in the home of its first postmaster, Francis Barnes Walker. Before that, area residents walked or rode over Backbone Mountain to Ashville to get their mail. Walker held his post until the Civil War began.

Long before the Civil War, though, an Englishman named William Gould discovered coal in the area. “The small amount he mined was hauled by wagon six miles to the Coosa River, and from there it was floated to Selma or Wetumpka by flatboat,” wrote Mrs. Crow in her book, History of St. Clair County. He formed Ragland Mines Company in 1854 and owned other coal lands in Shelby County.

Eventually, four major mines were formed in the area: Dirty Dozen, Coal City, Broken Arrow and Marion. Mrs. Crow reports that some 600 to 700 miners worked at Coal City, often on overtime. At some point, other seams were dug at Rutille, Klondike, Cross-Eyed Seven, Glen Mines and Boozer.

After the Civil War, a gentleman named George Washington Daugdrill (one source spells it “Daughdrille”) moved his family from Demopolis. Although he had lost most of his fortune during the war, he scraped together enough cash and credit to buy land and invest in the mining business at Broken Arrow.

When the Daugdrills moved into their log cabin, they brought the rosewood and mahogany furniture they had purchased when they lived in France. Julia August Daugdrill also brought her piano and harp, entertaining settlers with Bach and Beethoven when they visited the cabin.

During the years that it was a rip-roaring mining town, the community had a big warehouse, barber shops, a commissary, a livery stable, a number of stores, a pool hall, a city hall and jail, and at least one hotel. An unattributed, typed paragraph with the date, March 12, 1884, appears in the Coal City vertical file at the Pell City Public Library. It states that the “Broken Arrow Hotel, (of) which Mr. John Laney is Proprietor, is second to no hotel in the county. This place (Coal City) has nine stores, two saloons, three physicians, two saw and grist mills with the best black-smith in the state.”

Apparently, the area had its bloody side, too. A Letter to the Editor of the Southern Aegis, printed July 15, 1885, bemoans the lawlessness of the area. It mentions a man killing the cook at the Broken Arrow Hotel, and says the proprietor of the place, “while drunk,” shot at another man a couple of weeks later. “It is a violation of law to sell liquor here,” the anonymous letter writer says. “Yet one John Lany openly sells it and in all above shooting scrapes, liquor was the foundation.” The writer mentions other shootings, along with gambling, and wondered why laws go unenforced in the area.

In 1883, the Daugdrill family sold its mining interest to John Postell, who built the East and West Railroad to haul the coal out. The E&W was a narrow-gauge affair that ran from Cartersville and Cedartown, Ga., to Broken Arrow. Seaboard Air Line Railroad eventually bought Postell’s rail lines as part of its new system that ran from Birmingham to Atlanta and points beyond and converted it to broad gauge tracks.

Another anonymous writer of a Southern Aegis article dated July 27, 1887, saysthat the timber around Broken Arrow was plentiful and equal to any. “Sawmills are eating their way into the forests, and St. Clair timber is transformed into handsome residences, factories, etc.,” the article states.

The  Aeigis writer brags on the number of acres of timbered pine lands in the area and says there were about a dozen mills along the line of the Georgia Pacific Railroad and the E&W Railroad, within seven miles of Broken Arrow. “Their aggregate output exceeds in value of $1,000 per day, probably $1,500 per day,” he writes.

Some of the area’s timber probably went into its churches, homes and businesses, such as Harkey’s Chapel, a Methodist church that began as a log building in 1830. It was named after its first pastor, the Rev. David Harkey. Another early church was Broken Arrow Baptist, established in 1890, and Refuge Baptist, 1860.Each of those churches are still meeting today, albeit in more modern structures. The Daugdrills donated land for the Broken Arrow Cemetery, which is now across the road from the church. The first burial was their infant grandson, “Little Jim” Daugdrill.

Another major player in the coal mining industry was Watt T. Brown, who had extensive land holdings in St. Clair County. He reorganized the Ragland Coal Company in 1896. But it wasn’t until early 1929 that Brown began a series of name changes, a feat that sticks in the craws of many old-timers who live in Coal City today. He managed to get the Coal City Post Office changed to the Wattsville Post Office. Soon afterward, the Seaboard Railroad changed the name of its station, and a state geologist re-designated the coalfield as Wattsville Coal Basin.

Nevertheless, most older residents of the area, and some younger ones, too, still cringe at the name “Wattsville.” They say the town doesn’t exist, except in the names of a post office, a volunteer fire department and a church or two. “Technically, there is no Wattsville,” says Amber Michael, office manager of the Wattsville Water Authority. “There are post office boxes, but that’s the only place you can get mail labeled Wattsville.” An internet search turns up evidence of Wattsville being a separate community from Coal City, but if they’re separate, they run together and maybe overlap at some point.

Two iron-ore mines opened in Coal City in the early 1900s, bringing more people into the area. Coke ovens were built somewhere near the Edward Layton homesite and Shiloh Baptist Church, according to Mattie Lou Teague Crow. They belched “evil-smelling, lung-choking black smoke,” she says.

Some sources say John Postell changed the town’s name from Broken Arrow to Coal City in the late 1800s, while others say it was unofficially called that as far back as the 1850s. Either way, it wasn’t until 1910 that the town, comprising a mile radius from the old Broken Arrow Bridge (St. Clair 234), was officially incorporated. Wattsville was never incorporated, and Coal City later became an unincorporated hamlet again.

The Wattsville/Coal City communities had a succession of eight schools, according to Jerry Smith in the October 2012 issue of LakeLife’s sister magazine, Discover the Essence of St. Clair. The first few met in various buildings and went by several names. The first Coal City School, built on a hilltop in 1919, taught all 12 grades. Its last graduation was held in 1929.

After that, Smith says, Coal City School, also known as Rabbit Hop, served only elementary grades until it burned in 1951. The last Coal City School building is on U.S. 231 near Shirley’s Mainline Barbecue, where it houses the St. Clair County Head Start program.

Coal City schools produced some major sportsmen, including Eddie Martin of the New York Yankees, Darrell Pratt of the Detroit Tigers, and Clyde Warren, a 1925 All-American for Auburn University.

Electricity came to Coal City/Wattsville in the 1930s, when the only fully paved roads in the entire county were U.S. 78 through Pell City and U.S. 411 through Ashville. According to one source, the mines started drying up around 1915, with the last one shutting down in 1919. But another source says that Watt T. Brown operated a coal mine on Pope’s Chapel Road in 1919 or 1920.

 “All of Coal City was tar and gravel (roads) until five years ago,” says Walter Callahan, manager of the Pleasant Valley Quick Stop. “Originally they were just dirt roads. Now they’re paved with asphalt.”

Callahan, 70, remembers swimming in the Mining Hole, a seemingly bottomless pit that filled with water over the years after the mines closed. It was located off Highway 144, one block north of Broken Arrow Creek. “As kids we’d jump into the Hole with a big rock to see how far down we could sink,” he says. “But we never got past 17 feet before dropping the rocks. It was ice cold at that depth, even in the heat of summer.”

The Mining Hole has been on private property for several years, according to Callahan. He says when the hole was being drained so it could be filled in, several old cars were found at the bottom. Folks figured they had been stolen, stripped and dumped into the hole.

On a recent tour of the area, Callahan, whose family settled there in 1827, pointed out various places of interest. “My grandad, Alma Reid Alverson, farmed 20 acres just across the street from the Quick Stop, and my Uncle Tom Barber had 50 acres on the hill just before you get to Broken Arrow Church. Much of it was planted in watermelons that he gave away. Folks would stop and ask whether they could pick a few melons, and he’d say, ‘Sure, just don’t crush any.’”

Callahan motions toward the former home of Roy and Helen Pope, still in the Pope family, on Depot Street. “They had cows and everybody got their milk from them in the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s,” he says. He stops at a little hole in the ground called Arnold Springs. He says it’s one of two springs in the area that have never run dry. “People brought their water jugs and filled them here,” he says. “Lots of watercress grew around it.”

Pleasant Grove Baptist Church (formerly Possum Trot Baptist, which is what many old-timers still call it), also on Depot Street, is bordered on one side by Police Camp Road. “It used to end at a police shooting range,” Callahan explains. “It’s on private property now.” He remembers traveling down nearby Sugar Farms Road about a mile, then having to cross through a swamp. “There was no bridge, you literally drove through a swamp,” he says.

The concrete bridge crossing Broken Arrow Creek on Refuge Road (St. Clair 234), just off Center Star Road (St. Clair 45), is still known as Broken Arrow Bridge. Before it was paved, it was made of railroad cross ties. “There was a big hole on one side, and you had to drive right through the center to keep your tires out of it,” Callahan says. “When I was six or seven, my mom took me fishing right beside that bridge. I remember she caught a nice mud catfish that she cooked for dinner.”

On Old Coal City Road, about half a mile before it reaches I-20, are the remains of the original Coal City Water Works. All that’s left are a small, red building that looks like a backyard shed, a small pond and some pipes. Across the road is Florida Street, named after Stovall Florida, who had a sawmill there in the 1940s. “His was the only business in the area during the Depression,” Callahan says.

There was an area bootlegger in Callahan’s younger days, when St. Clair was still a dry county. He lived on what is now Stone Road, which turns off U.S. 231 South across from the present Wattsville Free Will Baptist Church and meanders behind C & R Feed & Supply. “As long as you could drive a car to his place, you could get a six-pack of beer for $3.50,” Callahan says. “He’d meet you at your car, then walk back and hand it to you. He also had moonshine.”

And what of Broken Arrow Creek? Although no one seems to know where this five-mile-long stream begins, it ends at the Coosa River, next door to and just below where Broken Arrow Creek Road dead ends. Russell and Shane Locklear are building their parents a house on that promontory and can point out the creek’s mouth from their yard.

“There used to be a restaurant down there by the mouth of the creek, but it has been turned into a lake home,” Russell says. His friend, John Barry, says the restaurant was known as The Cafe, and operated in the 1950s and 1960s. “It was at the end of River Ranch Road,” Barry says.

Locklear says the fishing is good on Broken Arrow Creek. “It has been listed among the top ten crappie-fishing places for last 10 years,” he says.

Bass fishing is good there, too, says Zeke Gossett, a rookie pro B.A.S.S tour member and a fishing guide. “Broken Arrow Creek, located just above historic Lock 4, is filled with stump flats and shoreline grass during summer pool,” he says. “It provides both deep and shallow water for fish to live in. It generally holds fish year ‘round but my best experiences in Broken Arrow have come in late summer/early fall.” He says the back portion of the creek water usually stays a little cooler in the late summer months, which attracts baitfish along with the bass as well. 

Arrowhead searching used to be profitable along the Coosa near the mouth of Broken Arrow Creek, according to collector Roger Pate of Pell City.

“I moved here in 1970 and started hunting the creek, walking the riverbank and creek bank and crappie fishing,” says Pate.  “Native Americans in summertime used to come off the hills and places and would live on the river because it was a good food source. They ate the mussels, and you could sometimes find piles of the shells. Sometimes you could find some artifacts, too.”

Pate says he doesn’t see the mussel shells or arrowheads much anymore, though. “You have to wait until wintertime when they let the water down,” he says. “When it rains and gets real cold, ice forms and rain washes the ice and dirt away. But you’re now walking in other people’s footprints, so hunting isn’t as good as it used to be.”

The coal mines may be gone, the train depot demolished, the arrowhead hunting just a memory. But Broken Arrow Creek is still fishable, and Coal City isn’t going away. It’s worth the time to drive some back roads and try to picture how things used to be.

Logan Martin to remain two feet higher in winter

Story by Carol Pappas
Submitted photos

What goes up on Logan Martin Lake this year isn’t coming down – at least not all the way. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a Record of Decision for Alabama Power’s request to permanently increase the winter pool levels at Weiss and Logan Martin lakes.

That means that when Logan Martin Lake begins its seasonal rise in April from winter level to summer pool of 465 feet, it won’t return to its traditional winter level of 460 feet come December. Instead, the lake will remain at 462 feet during the winter from now on, giving residents and lake enthusiasts two extra feet and in a number of cases, year-round access to the lake.

Lisa Martindale, Reservoir Management manager at Alabama the decision means that residents who spend time on those lakes will enjoy higher water levels beginning in winter 2022-2023.

That’s welcome news to residents like John Junkins of Pell City, whose boatlift is a few inches shy of enabling him to launch his boat from December to early April. “I can’t wait,” he said. “You know how the weather is in Alabama. We could wear shorts on Christmas Day, and it would have been awesome to be able to take a pontoon cruise. We are ecstatic about this decision.”

So is Eric Mackey of Mackey Docks. “I will love a higher level of water as it will make the lake more usable for more people with shallow water. I wished they kept it full pool nine months and drained it to winter level three months, but that is my opinion.”

For his pier-building business, it means “we will be able to access more sites with a barge now with higher water levels.”

And then, there’s the aesthetics of it all. “The lake will even look better than when it’s low and you can only see dry lake beds,” Mackey said.

It’s welcome news for residents up and down the lake who had been lobbying for it for years. During the Coosa relicensing process, there were overwhelming requests by stakeholders to increase the winter pool levels at Weiss, Neely Henry, and Logan Martin for recreational purposes.  Alabama Power worked with the FERC and the US Army Corp of Engineers to incorporate these requests, a spokesman for the company said.

Through engineering studies, Alabama Power made the determination that with operational changes, the lakes could be operated at the higher winter pool elevations, and the US Army Corp of Engineers agreed.

Neely Henry is a bit different. It has had a higher level for years. Neely Henry once had a three-foot fluctuation from summer to winter pool, but studies showed that with operational changes, the lake could be operated at the higher winter pool elevation and the US Army Corp of Engineers agreed.

Neely Henry operated under a variance with the USACE for many years allowing for a 1-foot fluctuation between summer and winter and during the USACE Water Control Manual Updates in 2015, the rule curve with the 1-foot fluctuation between summer and winter pool for Neely Henry was incorporated.

Historic legacy and new traditions all in one

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by MeghanFrondorf

Meander around the one-lane road that winds through Red Hill Farms, passing the cows, the hogs and the goats in this pastoral setting, and you can’t help but notice the water as the ideal backdrop to make the scene complete.

“We didn’t come to the river,” said Vaughan Bryant, who owns the farm with wife Christa. “The river came to us.”

But there it is, a panoramic reflection of glistening sunrises and sunsets bordering a 150-acre farm that has been in the family for three generations now.

When his grandfather bought the land in 1941, it was because the Army had decided to expand Pelham Range near Anniston, which needed the land where his Ohatchee farm stood. He found suitable land in Cropwell and while there was a stream that flowed nearby called Fountain Run, it would not be until 1965 when Logan Martin Lake was created that water would surround it.

For the Bryants, it has become the best of both worlds – lake living and farm life all rolled into one perfect package.

Most Saturday mornings, lake residents and others from around these parts have a new tradition – getting a glimpse of farm life and an unrivaled taste of it they can take home with them. That’s when they open the door of their garage to market what they’ve raised – USDA grass-fed beef and free-range pork – packaged in freezers that line the interior walls.

Pull up in the driveway of their lakeside home, and you’re immediately met by the farm’s official greeters, dogs Koda and Piper. The wag of their tails is a pretty good indicator they’re glad you came. They’ll even escort you all the way into the garage for a browsing session.

Beef and pork roasts, ribs, kabobs, steaks of all descriptions – filets, strips, T-bones, flank and bone-in ribeye – await. So do liver, cubed steak and ground beef. When the pork is in, usually in the spring, look for sausage, bacon and cubed ham – ideal for any table.

The concept isn’t much different than his grandfather, James Michael Bryant, who raised cotton, honey, pork, poultry, cows and vegetables and peddled what he could on the square in Anniston. The modern-day Bryants concentrate on beef and pork. But instead of selling at market, they sell directly to the customer – they take orders online (but don’t ship), they sell by appointment and through their Saturday morning markets.

And they ensure satisfied customers by providing healthier, better tasting eating choices.

In the “About Our Farm” section of their website, redhillfarms.com, they say: “We believe that contented animals produce a superior product, so we strive for a low-stress environment emphasizing the humane treatment of our livestock.

“When you choose to eat meat from animals raised on pasture, you are improving the welfare of the animals, helping put an end to environmental degradation, helping small-scale farmers, sustaining rural communities and giving your family the healthiest food possible.”

It’s not a big money-maker, they said, but direct-to-consumer helps them capture a little bit of the market while creating a win-win situation. “It’s good for the public,” said Christa. There are no antibiotics or hormones used. “The meat is much healthier than grain-fed beef,” added Vaughan.

Noting that Red Hill’s livestock are raised in a natural, healthy and humane way, Christa pointed out that with all the preservatives used in traditional markets, “we don’t know what we’re putting in our bodies.” Customers have responded. Some even get the rest of their groceries in a regular store but opt for Red Hill Farms for their meat.

They choose their breeds wisely to produce the best possible meat. They have gone from Hereford to Black Angus to South Poll, which is a composite breed developed by Teddy Gentry, bass player of the country music group, Alabama.

Gentry’s aim – as is the Bryants – was to raise a more heat-tolerant animal with a gentle disposition to produce tender beef by feeding on grass. Their newest breed, South Poll, finishes on grass and is a cross between Red Angus, Hereford, Senepol and Barzona.

“The South Poll breed is easy to raise, has a docile temperament, slick-haired, fertile, and mama cows stay in production longer than straight-bred English cattle,” Vaughan said. “Finishing on grass, their meat can be as tender or more tender than commodity beef.”

It’s a more natural way to raise cattle. They call it, “Keeping the Creator’s design in mind.”

Raising a farmer

Livestock isn’t the only thing raised on the farm. Vaughan and Christa talked of raising generations who know the value in the land and the joys of raising them to appreciate those values.

He vividly remembers one of his first chores on the family farm in Cropwell. He would dutifully gather eggs each day and make sure the chickens were watered and fed when he got home from school.

One of six children, he was second to youngest. His older brothers “saw to the cows. As time went on, I moved up to cow feeding, too,” he said. But his fledgling aspirations were a little loftier, he recalled. One day his brothers were loading hay, and he would hear them “shouting and carrying on” in what he perceived as more of a fun time than he was having rolling the bales of hay into a single line. “They wanted it in one line so they wouldn’t have to walk as far.”

He thought that would be a much easier route than rolling all those bales. An older, wiser Bryant surmised: “When you get there, you understand why they were shouting and carrying on. It’s hard work, rolling, tossing and baling hay.”

But hard work never deterred him. “I always felt like I wanted to be on the farm,” he said. “I was the only one who stayed. I always wanted to do something on the farm.” Initially, he stayed on the farm to help his father, David Bryant. The elder Bryant left a good portion of the farm to him, the younger Bryant and his wife, Christa, added to the acreage and now farm about 150 acres.

“I would like to think he’s happiest with me, but the truth is he’s happiest on the tractor outside,” Christa said with a smile. “I didn’t see it as work,” her husband added.

Christa’s no stranger to farm work herself. An educator by trade – who served as coordinator of Federal Programs and personnel director the Pell City School System before her retirement – grew up on a 10-acre farm in Coal City, she said. “But this was definitely a different life for me.”

Her father worked at Bynum, was home every day at 4, and they ate dinner together as a family. When she married Vaughan, she quickly learned that farming meant “staying until everything gets done,” so it may be well after dark before he was able to make it to the dinner table.

She was a quick learner, Vaughan noted, recalling the time she “took a trailer loaded with cattle and headed over the mountain with Daddy.”  

A solid work ethic, perseverance and dedication to the job at hand are but a few of the legacies handed down to Christa and Vauhan’s generation from life on the farm. And they, in turn, passed them on to their children – Martin and Meredith. “It taught both children good skills,” Christa said. “It built their character. It wasn’t always easy.”

Sharing the good life

Vaughan and Christa recognize their good fortune in farm life and lake life, and they share both with travelers from nearby towns and places around the world. Vaughan’s father had sold a small parcel of land to a man who wanted to build a cabin on the lake.

So, he built a 400-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bath cabin. When it came time to sell, it was too small a parcel for the cabin so the land could sell, and the Bryants bought it back. “I jacked it up (the cabin) and dragged it across the pasture and set it right here,” he said, pointing to the quaint little wooden cabin nestled under a grove of trees on a bank of Rabbit Branch.It’s an ideal setting.Farmland stretches out in front, cattle grazing nearby, and the lake is its backyard. 

They have been sharing it as a rental since 1992, and it has been the setting for peaceful getaways, weddings and other gatherings.

A longtime resident there was Joey Nania, who wanted to learn to fish Logan Martin and dreamed of being the youngest Bassmaster champion. He was from Washington state, and the lake had hosted a couple of Bassmaster Classics. Nania’s father called Vaughan and asked if he could rent the cabin while learning to fish the lake.

Nania met his wife-to-be in Pell City and stayed. They held their wedding at the cabin, and Nania earned some championships along the way to becoming a noted fishing guide on Logan Martin and other Coosa River lakes.  

“Through farming and the cabin,” Christa said, “we have met some really neat people and established friendships along the way. It has really been cool.”