Visitors to John and Emily Bruce’s farm in Coker, Ala., can hardly believe their eyes. Even in the dead of winter, vine-ripened tomatoes paint the tabletops of their greenhouse with hues of red while a nearby sign directs customers to weigh their purchases and drop their money in a black mailbox.

It is perhaps the best example of high-technology meets old-fashioned honesty, and the Bruces wouldn’t have it any other way. “As far as I know, I haven’t missed a tomato,” John said. “I think the people who will drive out here and find us, want tomatoes, and they are willing to pay for them.”

But how can they sell ripe tomatoes in April? Well, they’re not importing them from Mexico. John said the secret is hydroponics.

It all started a few years ago when Emily, then president of the West Alabama Day Lily Club, participated in a tour of Mississippi greenhouses. She came home telling John about a man who was selling ripe tomatoes in May. John called the man and soon was reading everything he could find about hydroponics.

Today, “Miss Emily’s Vine Ripened Hydroponic Tomatoes” is a thriving business. Customers drive from miles around to get their wintertime tomato fix and to stare in awe at the ingenious system that allows the Bruces to harvest fruit during some of the coldest months of the year.

John explained that the process starts with seeds that are planted in small cubes of rock wool. Trays containing 160 cubes each are bottom heated under florescent lights in the Bruces’ basement. A week to 10 days after the plants emerge, John moves the trays to the greenhouse, where he transplants the cubes into 3-inch pots filled with ground coconut hulls (also called coir).

The self-taught tomato farmer said the coarse mixture is the perfect medium for hydroponic plants because it has little nutrient value but will hold up to 30 times its weight in water. The same mixture is used to fill 5-gallon plastic bags, which John moves the plants to after they are several inches tall.

Two plants are placed in each bag, and the bags are lined up in long rows inside the greenhouse. Each is equipped with a spike that feeds the plants with a mixture of water, fertilizer (4-18-38) and calcium (which prevents blossom-end rot). The feeders are triggered by a solar cell in the ceiling of the greenhouse.

After a few months, John’s 1,000 or so plants transform the greenhouse into a jungle. The long rows resemble vine-covered walls as the tomatoes strain upward toward the sky. But keeping the plants growing requires a lot of hands-on attention—John’s hands.

Working 40-50 hours a week, John carefully breaks off any side shoots, so the vines will produce one main stem. As the vines grow, he uses plastic clips to attach the stems to twine he’s suspended from the ceiling. The plants, which require 20 percent less sunlight that garden varieties, grow in a predictable pattern. They put on three leaves, then a cluster of tomatoes, then another three leaves, and so on. John thins the young tomatoes, leaving only three per cluster. As the tomatoes near the bottom of the plant ripen, he prunes the dying leaves and lowers the bare trunk onto the greenhouse floor.

By the end of the season, this process creates towering plants that can yield up to 15 pounds each.

But there’s more to growing hydroponic crops than just thinning and pruning—a lot more. Because there’s no wind and few insects in the greenhouse, each plant must be pollinated by hand. John uses a hand-held massager that he’s equipped with a long spike to shake the pollen loose from the blooms. In addition, he routinely checks the calibration of the irrigation system and checks the solution for acidity and nutrient value.

“We test everyday because, if the you’re feeding them wrong, it’s all wrong,” John said.

Disease and insects also are a concern in hydroponic greenhouses. So, John uses a natural bacterium to control white flies and aphids and a special fungicide called OxiDate to control blight, powdery mildew and mold. Catching disease early, John said, can mean the difference between a good crop and no crop at all. “You’ve got an environment here that, if you get something, it will go through the house like fire,” he said.

When John suspects a feeding or disease problem, he sends leaf samples to his hydroponic supplier in Colorado, Hydro-Gardens. The company provides free, monthly testing to producers who use their products.

The Bruces plant two crops of hydroponic tomatoes each year. The first seeds go in the ground on July 23 (John’s birthday), and tomatoes begin ripening by Halloween. The second crop is planted on Thanksgiving and bears fruit from late March to mid June.

“We hope to have tomatoes into the third week of June,” John said. Once people get tomatoes in the field, we don’t want them because we can’t compete price wise. To come out, we need about $2 a pound.”

John sells about 500 pounds of tomatoes a week at his greenhouse. His tomatoes also are available at the V. Richards’ Market in Birmingham, and are used on salads at Tuscaloosa’s Cypress Inn Restaurant. When he has extra tomatoes, John sells them at the Tuscaloosa County Farmers Market. Marketing, however, has not been a problem for this farmer, who claims he’s never thrown away a tomato because it wouldn’t sell.

“The taste is fantastic because we let them turn red on the vine,” John said. “When the color goes in, the flavor goes in. The more color they have, the better they are. If you pull them green, they are no better than Mexican tomatoes.”

Even with their popularity, though, John is reluctant to expand his operation. “I can handle this house by myself, so I’m right about where I want to be,” he said. “If it were any bigger, I would have to depend on outside labor.”

John said his greenhouses are always open to customers or folks who are just curious about how hydroponic tomatoes are grown. From Tuscaloosa, visitors can take Hwy. 82 west until the road narrows to two lanes; then turn left at mile marker 39 and follow the arrows on utility poles to Miss Emily’s greenhouse—and don’t forget to ask for some of Miss Emily’s favorite tomato recipes. For more information, contact John at (205) 339-3318.

Lurleen B. Wallace

Lurleen B. Wallace (September 19, 1926 – May 7, 1968), born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was the 46th Governor of Alabama from 1967 until her death in 1968. She was the first wife of Alabama Governor George Wallace, whom she succeeded as governor. She was Alabama's first, and to date, only female governor. She was also the first and so far only female governor in U.S. history to die in office.Lurleen Brigham Burns was born to Henry and Estelle Burroughs Burns of Fosters, Alabama, in Tuscaloosa County. She graduated from Tuscaloosa County High School in 1942 at 15 by taking summer classes. She then worked at Kresge’s Five and Dime in Tuscaloosa, where she met George Wallace. At the time he was a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps. They were married on May 21, 1943 when she was 16.
Over the next 20 years, she focused on being a mother and a homemaker. She and her husband had four children. They were Bobbi Jo (1944) Parsons, Peggy Sue (1950) Kennedy, George III (1951), and Janie Lee (1961) Dye, who was named after Robert E. Lee. George Wallace's political career and neglect of his family resulted in his wife filing for divorce in the late 1950s; she later dropped the suit.
Mrs. Wallace assumed her duties as First Lady of Alabama in 1963 after her husband was elected governor. She opened the first floor of the governor's mansion to the public seven days a week. She also refused to serve alcoholic beverages at official functions. Among her major accomplishments during her brief tenure were major increases in expenditures for Mental Health including modernization of Partlow State Hospital for children and a big funding increase for State Parks. Lake Lurleen in central Alabama is named in her memory.

George Wallace had become very popular during his first term as governor (1963–1967), largely due to his opposition to racial desegregation. He could have easily won a second term in 1966 had he been eligible to stand for one. In Alabama (as in many states at the time), governors were not allowed to serve two consecutive terms. This provision was incorporated in the current state constitution in 1901.
Wallace got around this problem on two fronts. First, Wallace worked for the repeal of the term limiting provision. Second, Wallace devised a plan in which his wife, Lurleen, would run for governor while he continued to exercise the authority of the office behind the scenes, duplicating the strategy in which Ma Ferguson won the 1925 election for governor in Texas.
Wallace's attempt to change the succession rule before the 1966 campaign failed. He eventually succeeded in getting the term limit repealed, however, and would go on to serve three more terms, two of them consecutive. However, using his wife as his electoral surrogate succeeded, and Mrs. Wallace won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966. In those days, the Democratic nomination was tantamount to election in Alabama, and she was inaugurated in January 1967. To assuage voters who might have been concerned about the transfer of power, she stated that her husband would be her "#1 assistant".
Mrs. Wallace made her gubernatorial run carrying a tragic secret: she had been diagnosed with cancer as early as April 1961, when her surgeon biopsied suspicious tissue he noticed during the cesarean delivery of her last child. As was common at the time, her physician told her husband, not her. George Wallace insisted that Lurleen not be informed. As a result, she did not get appropriate follow-up care. When she saw a gynecologist for abnormal bleeding in 1965, his diagnosis of uterine cancer came as a complete shock to her. When one of her husband's staffers carelessly revealed to her that Wallace had discussed her cancer with them, but not her, during his 1962 campaign three years earlier, she was outraged.
In order to facilitate his plan to use her as a surrogate candidate in 1966, Mrs. Wallace cooperated with a campaign of dissimulation and misdirection as she began radiation therapy in December, 1965. This was followed by a hysterectomy in January 1966. Despite her ill health, Mrs. Wallace maintained a brutal campaign schedule throughout 1966 and gave a 24-minute speech – her longest ever – at her January 1967 inauguration.
Early in her term, Mrs. Wallace's condition began to deteriorate. In June 1967, an abdominal growth was found. During surgery on July 10, this proved to be an egg-sized malignancy on her colon. She endured a second course of radiation therapy as a followup. In January 1968, after extensive testing, she informed her staff (but not the public) that she had a cancerous pelvic tumor which was pressing on the nerves of her back down through her right hip. Even with the prior surgeries on her uterus and colon, and despite the radiation treatment, the cancer spread.
Her last public appearance as governor was at the 1967 Blue-Gray Football Classic, followed by a campaign appearance for her husband's presidential bid on the American Party ticket on January 11, 1968. Her illness was obvious and worsening. The pelvic tumor was removed in late February. This was followed by surgery to treat an abdominal abscess, and in late March 1968, more surgery to dissolve a blood clot in her left lung. By April, the cancer was in her liver and lungs, and she weighed less than eighty pounds.
Her husband, George Wallace, persistently lied to the press about her condition, claiming in April 1968 that "she has won the fight" against cancer. He continued to make campaign stops nationwide during her last weeks of life, but her doctors warned him she was in unstable condition on May 5, the day he was to leave for a Michigan sweep. At her request, he cancelled a television appearance May 6, when she was too ill to be moved back to the hospital. Lurleen Wallace died in Houston, Texas, at 12:34 a.m. May 7, 1968, with her husband beside her and the rest of her family, including her parents, just outside her room.
Lurleen Wallace lay in state in the Capitol building on May 8, and 21,000 mourners waited as long as five hours to view her silver casket. Despite her emphatic pre-need planning request for a closed casket, her widower insisted that her body be on view, with a glass bubble over the open part of the coffin. The day of her funeral, May 9, all public and private schools closed, all state offices closed, and most businesses closed or had abbreviated hours. She was buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
Since Alabama was lacking adequate cancer treatment facilities at the time, Mrs. Wallace had to travel to the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas for diagnosis and treatment. This underscored the need for improved cancer care in the state. Following her death, the Lurleen Wallace Courage Crusade was spearheaded by her successor, Gov. Albert Brewer, leading to fundraising for building a new cancer center. The University of Alabama Hospital at the University of Alabama at Birmingham was selected as the site for the cancer center, and a formal cancer center program was begun in 1970. Funding was received from the National Cancer Institute, and the center became one of the first eight NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers. Dr. John Durant served as its first director. Construction of the Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute at UAB was begun in 1974 and was completed in 1976. The Wallace Patient Tower, an addition to University Hospital, was built in her honor, as was Lurleen B. Wallace Community College in Andalusia, Alabama.

The Pickens County Courthouse in Carrollton, Alabama is a courthouse in west Alabama famous for a ghostly image that can be seen in one of its windows. The image is said to be the face of Henry Wells, who, as legend has it, was falsely accused of burning down the town's previous courthouse, and lynched on a stormy night in 1878.
What follows is the commonly told story of how the face appeared in the window. For the actual events see the section "Origins of the Story," below.
On November 16, 1876, the people of Carrollton, Alabama watched helplessly as their courthouse burned to the ground. The Pickens County Courthouse had been a source of pride for the people of Carrollton. Their first courthouse had been burned down by invading Union Army troops during the American Civil War, an act that seemed to serve no purpose other than to inflict humiliation on the town. In the difficult days of the Reconstruction, when materials were scarce and money was even scarcer, rebuilding the courthouse seemed to be an impossible task. Yet, through hard work and deep personal sacrifices, the courthouse was somehow rebuilt. It stood as a testament to the perseverance of the town, and a symbol of defiance even in the face of defeat at the hands of the Union soldiers.


A historical sign near the courthouse tells the story of the image in the window.
Yet, less than twelve years after Union troops had set fire to their first courthouse, the new one burned to a pile of smoldering ruin, apparently the result of a burglary gone wrong. Even as work began on a third courthouse, the townspeople demanded vengeance for the horrible act. Their vengeful eyes finally settled on Henry Wells, a freed slave who lived near the town.
Henry Wells was no angel. He was said to have a horrible temper, and there was no denying he had been involved in several brawls. Rumors went even further; people said he constantly carried a straight razor, and was not afraid to use it. Despite the rumors, however, there was only vague circumstantial evidence against him in the burning of the courthouse.
But it was Alabama in 1878, and Henry Wells was a black man accused of burning down a symbol of town pride. He was charged and arrested on four counts: arson, burglary, carrying a concealed weapon and assault with intent to murder. Ironically, he was taken to the sheriff's office, located inside the newly completed courthouse, to await trial.
As word spread through the town of Wells' arrest, the sheriff could sense trouble brewing. The mood of the town seemed as ominous as the dark clouds gathering in the late afternoon sky. As the first few drunken men began heading toward the courthouse, the sheriff took Wells to the high garret of the new courthouse, and told him to keep quiet. But as the angry mob gathered below, Wells' fear got the best of him. He went to the window, and looked down on the crowd. He yelled defiantly, at the top of his lungs, "I am innocent. If you kill me, I am going to haunt you for the rest of your lives!" Just then, a bolt of lightning struck nearby, flashing the image of Wells' face, contorted with fear, to the crowd below.
The lynch mob forced its way into the courthouse, and took their victim outside, even as he continued to proclaim his innocence. His cries went in vain, as the mob meted out its drunken vengeance, and dispersed. None of them even considered Wells' predictions of hauntings as they passed out in a drunken stupor. At least not until the next morning, that is.
Early the next morning, as a member of the lynch mob passed by the courthouse, he happened to glance up at the garret window. He was shocked to see Wells’ face looking down at him, just as it had the night before, when it had been illuminated by the flash of lightning. He rubbed his eyes and cursed his hangover, but when he looked back up, there was Wells. He screamed, and as others arrived, they all remembered Wells prediction. “If you kill me, I am going to haunt you for the rest of your lives!”
The face remains in the courthouse window to this very day. No amount of washing has been able to remove it, and on at least one occasion, it is said that every window pane in the courthouse was broken by a severe hailstorm; every pane, that is, except for the pane from which Wells continues to look down accusingly on the town that put him to death.
Another local version of this story is that while Wells was awaiting trial for being falsely accused of raping a white woman, a lightning storm brewed, and an angry mob gathered below to lynch him, and he told them, " If you lynch me, you will forever see my face." At this time lightning struck the very window in which he was standing. From that day forward, no amount of washing, or replacing that window, has been able to remove his face.

The Black Warrior River at Tuscaloosa

The Black Warrior River is a waterway in west central Alabama. The river rises flows 178 miles to the Tombigbee River, of which the Black Warrior is the primary tributary. The river is named after the Mississippian paramount chief Tuskaloosa, whose name meant Black Warrior in Muskogean. The Black Warrior is impounded along nearly its entire course by a series of locks and dams to form a chain of narrow reservoirs, which not only provide aid to navigation, but hydroelectric power and drinking water.

The river flows through the Black Warrior Basin, a region historically important for the extraction of coal and methane. The cities of Tuscaloosa and Northport grew at the historical head of navigation at the fall line between the Appalachian Highlands and Gulf Coastal Plain. Birmingham, though not directly on the river, became a manufacturing hub and one of the largest cities in the South through use of the Black Warrior for transportation of goods

Overall, watershed of the Black Warrior has an area of 6,275 square miles (16,250 km²).

Northington General Army Hospital

The decision to raise what remained of Northington General Army Hospital, a former home for injured soldiers in World War II, in 1979 gave Hollywood a prime location for a stunt extravaganza. The movie "Hooper," which starred Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, featured a scene in which a car darts under one of Northington's smokestacks as it is toppled.
The University Mall currently sits at that site today.

Filmed in Tuscaloosa released in 2004

ALABAMA LOVE STORY

When former rodeo cowboy Roper Wylie goes broke he kidnaps Goodie Blankenship - a wealthy Tuscaloosa Alabama socialite and holds her for ransom. Goodie's weasel husband can't believe his good luck- he and his mistress have been trying to have Goodie killed for months. He figures refusing to pay her ransom will be the end of her. But a friendship develops between Roper and Goodie that leads to love and revenge.

CAST: Mark Collie ("Fire Down Below", "The Punisher"), Bob Hess ("Ruby", "Hexed") and Coley McCabe.

Filming locations for
Hooper (1978)

Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Culver City, California, USA

Laramie Street, Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Malibu, California, USA

(Pacific Coast Highway scenes)

Stough Park, Burbank, California, USA

(Motorcycle stunt scene)

Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA

Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

(studio)