A
Change Comes to Sloss
It
happened in super slow motion, so none of us kids in Sloss saw it
coming. One day you could play stickball right in the middle of Sloss
Road, but then came “progress.” The next thing
we knew our little community had changed forever.
We were all pretty miffed when a crew from Birmingham came in and
hauled away our railroad tracks. One warm summer day they came
clattering slowly down the Sloss spur line on flatbed cars pulled
by a tired old freight engine. They pulled up the rusted railroad
spikes by the thousands and they hauled our tracks off for scrap.
The railroad no longer had a use for the old tracks, since the coal
had already been scratched out of the hills and hollows, and burned
in the furnaces at U.S. Steel in Birmingham
But
the kids of Sloss used those rails all the time, for home base, and
rail walking contests. We really hated to see them go. Even
today, I can close my eyes and smell the creosote, and the bitterweed
that grew between the crossties. The tracks were perfect speed bumps
for the community. Any car that hit those tracks too fast could blow
a tire or break an axle!
Sometime later, a state survey crew came into our neck of the woods
with a chain gang and a man with a telescope. I later learned that
the device was a transit, which surveyors use to accurately lay out
tracks of land.
We peppered the workers with questions, and they told us they were
building a new road to replace the tar and gravel pig trail that
ran through Sloss. They were also paving the red-rock section of
road that connected Sloss to highway 78.
That sounded OK at first, until they walked deep into our yard and
drove wooden stakes with handwritten numbers in the ground.
They went even deeper into Mama Watson’s yard and the yards
of our other neighbors.
As soon as they left, we pulled the stakes up and threw them in the
creek.
The next time they came through the crew chief threatened us with
life in Atmore Prison, if we fooled with the stakes again. We
were pretty sure he was jacking us around, but we didn’t bother
their stakes anymore.
Men in suits came to visit all the families on the west side of the
old tracks and made offers to buy their homes.
We had property in the back of our house, so the state simply moved
our house a few hundred feet. Neither my grandmother, the Plunkett’s
nor the Castleberry’s had any land behind their houses so they
were forced to find other places to live.
As time passed, more state trucks, road graders, dump trucks and
Caterpillar bulldozers showed up.
The construction foreman said, “Progress will be good for this
place.” I wanted to say, “If progress is so fine and
dandy, why don’t you do some progress in your community.” But
I kept my mouth shut and endured the sadness I felt as I watched
my childhood friends pack their things to move away.
We stayed in touch with our friends, but our community was never
the same after the new road came through.
I was looking through a box of pictures recently and came across
some faded photographs taken in front of the old home place. The
houses weren’t much by today’s standards, but they suited
us just fine. The old thoroughfare wasn’t much wider than a
driveway, but these days when I stroll down memory lane, it’s
always on the old road.
Rick Watson lives in Empire. To contact Rick, visit www.homefolkmedia.com
or email rick@homefolkmedia.com. |