Words by Jim Rooks | Photo courtesy Jim Rooks 

It all started in the summer of 1949. My parents moved my sister and me from Gadsden, Alabama, to Jasper. I do not remember much about that year other than I was starting school and had a whole new world to explore.  

Walker County was booming. Jasper was then and is today the county seat of Walker County. The surrounding towns were mining coal—and coal was king. Money flowed like water through a garden hose and folks were buying cars, homes, and were riding in taxis. We had a J.C. Penney and a Sears and Roebuck clothing store. The Rexall drug store was on the corner and Speedy's Luncheon was the place to go. 

I remember as a young boy carrying newspapers after school, going downtown to S and F Restaurant with the big root beer barrel on top of the building and getting a cold frosty root beer mug and a pack of potato chips before delivering papers. 

Schools were well kept and kids were being taught their ABC's and about the ways of life as our nation had just come out of a world war. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was President and I remember a television being set up in the school cafeteria to watch his inauguration. From 1949 to 1959, I grew up with enough memories and experiences that have lasted a lifetime.

We lived in a tall, two story building on 19^thStreet. Dad was a barber and set up shop in the Greyhound Bus station. As I recall, folks entered the station from 18^thstreet side through a huge hallway. In the back of the building was the ticket office, and through the swinging doors going outside, you boarded the bus to many different destinations. In the middle of the hall was a big pot-bellied stove used in the winter to heat the building. It had a big coal bucket sitting next to it and there was a trap door in the floor that opened to a cellar where the coal was stored. I only saw it opened a few times.  

In the hall on the right side was a big red Coca-Cola machine, and for a nickel, you could buy a bottle of Coke. I remember my uncle from California coming home for Christmas to visit my family. He would get an empty 24-bottle case and fill it up. I thought Christmas had come early since I had never seen that many Cokes at one time!  

Behind the Coke machine was a room used as a café, and Dad had a room on the other side of the hall where he set up his barbershop. In the early fifties this was a very busy place since folks would come and go by bus to all parts of the United States. When they came in, they could get a haircut; a shave and a shoeshine for their journey or buy food and a Coke to eat along the way. The bus station was a central place while folks traveled in and out of Jasper. 

"What has this got to do with coal mining in Walker County?" you say. Well, it all starts with the Alabama Central Railroad and Engine Number 29. The Alabama Central track ran right by the bus station. I remember in the afternoons as the old steam engine would arrive with steam blowing from her smokestack with those gigantic wheels on the front. The wheels had huge spokes in them and a transfer arm connected to other wheels as she rolled past the station huffing and blowing. The vibration shook the building and my bones.

The station house was located just a block up the rails on 19^thstreet, and there ol’ Engine Number 29 would come to rest.  The engineer would release the steam; as he set the brakes the steam whistle blew—loud enough to be heard all over Jasper (I came to realize in later years the old steam engine worked the coalmines in the area of Sunlight and Marigold Coal Companies). The train would leave in the morning, hauling empty coal cars, only to return in the afternoon loaded full and running over as they were left on side tracks to be carried to Birmingham and the Gorgas steam plant. There, the coal would be used as fuel to operate furnaces and steam boilers that generate electricity for a large area of Alabama.  

The Alabama Central Railroad was a very vital part of the economy of Jasper. There are a lot of folks who worked for other rail companies that remember the Alabama Central. Jasper was a vital connecting hub for the train industry, both then and today. A train could be caught to anywhere in the U.S.A. from there. I remember riding the train as a young man and the adventure it was. The Frisco Railroad was running east and west and the Southern Railroad was running north and south. Today, the Burlington Northern and the Southern run those routes. 

As time changes everything, Jasper changed and kids became adults and adults became men and women of a brand new era. Ol’ Twenty-Nine was retired and the coal industry changed from underground mining to what is known today as strip mining. Some folks stayed at home while others traveled far and wide to start a new life and find adventure. 

Jasper and Walker County are near and dear to thousands of folks who have lived, died and reaped the fruits of this little corner of the wonderful state of Alabama. 

This is my story. Thank you, Jasper, for the memories, stored deep within my heart. 78

Author’s Note: As a final thought, I want to pay my respect and great admiration to Dr. Jerald Sherer. He once told a young man who had quit school and was going into the Air Force, "It is a Foul Bird that messes up his own nest." Well, I had the great honor and pleasure of sharing with my dear friend many years later how I had cleaned up my nest. I will forever cherish the friendship I had with him and the impact he had on my life with just a few words of wisdom that I learned later came from his life experiences. So it is with life. We are born, we live, we work, and then we die. It is the things that we do in the middle and the folks who touch our lives that are the most meaningful part of loving and living life, just like Dr. Jerald. I want to paraphrase a saying I have heard over the years.