Sloss Furnaces

My husband and I celebrated our two years anniversary this past June. To celebrate we spent a weekend in Birmingham, visiting a long list of attractions. One of the great things about my husband is that, like me, he loves touring historical spots. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big hot spot or well known, as long as there is history there, we will go. A lot of our trip consisted of places that dealt a lot with the heart of the growth of the Magic City – iron. We visited Tannehill State Park and Museum, Vulcan Park, and the most amazing – and creepiest – the Sloss Furnaces.

Now when my husband first gave me the details of our weekend agenda – he is more OCD about planning trips than I am – I was a bit skeptical about the Furnaces. For one, I had never heard of them and really didn’t know what they were. And two, I thought, what’s so interesting about some furnaces at a factory? The tour turned out to be the highlight of our trip.

Imagine pulling into a nearly vacant gravel parking lot. A fence, tall and the gate a weird and almost unnerving design, outlines the huge vicinity that feels empty and more than slightly eerie – even if it is the brightest hour of the day. The only person working in the small office at the gate doesn’t have a whole lot to say, although they will answer any questions you ask. They hand you a brochure, numbers mapping out the path of your self-guided tour. You step out of the quiet building and head to the first marker on your map, only you are overly conscious of the towering faded black and red, rust plagued furnaces that remind you of how small you really are. It’s quiet. The only noise as you wind through the maze of dark passages and cluster 400-ton blast furnaces are your footsteps and the mingled sound of misplaced creaks and dripping of water. You are sure to keep the conversation with your party at a steady pace, just to be sure that you don’t hear anything more unnerving.

I describe it like this because the place – amazing, intriguing, and breathtaking in all its rundown and colossal state – is really actually quiet creepy. I’ve visited the Sloss twice this summer. Once with my husband and then with a group of girlfriends. Both times I felt amazed and unnerved. Just after my first visit, my husband and I decided to do more research on the closed furnace complex and I was shocked and rattled to discover that it not only listed as a historical landmark, but also listed to be "haunted."

In honor of Halloween, I’m sharing a bit of the Sloss History, real and haunted with you today.

A bit of background history: The Sloss Furnace operated as pig-iron producing blast furnace from 1882 to 1971. Colonel James Withers Sloss, one of the founders of Birmingham, formed his own company – Sloss Furnace Company – and built the first blast on 50 acres of land. Sloss retired in 1886, selling the company to a group of investors, who moved the furnaces through rapid expansion. For those who do not know much about the production of such metal, it is a dangerous – very dangerous – job. So, needless to say, there are countless stories that involve injuries and death at the furnace.

And just to show how famous the Sloss really is, the landmark has been the focal point in episodes of the shows “Ghost Hunters” and “Scariest Places on Earth,” and others.  Now, to be honest, I’m not really sure what I believe with the whole “paranormal” stuff, but in truth, this place will raise questions.

Back to the danger of working at the furnaces….The shifts are long and grueling. For the men who casted the liquid metal under the open pavilion, carefully maneuvering around the glowing golden liquid, they were hired to endure hours confined to the close proximity of temperatures well over hundred. In the summer it was unbearable and in the winter not much better – one side of your body felt almost on fire, while the other half was frozen from the biting cold. Men were cautious with each trained step, fearful to lose balance or misstep. How many times had they seen a friend make a simple mistake and topple into the barrels of the heated furnaces?

It's details like that that come with many of the stories of the Sloss Furnaces. One of a man who lost his balance and did plummet into the gleaming metal, more like lava. The only trace of him recovered was a shoe. In the Boiler Room – which is usually locked up, but on my second visit was not – men were burned to the point of unrecognition as machines and pipes exploded. Sadly, one man ate his lunch near one of the ginormous churning wheels, only for the hem of his coat to get winded through, dragging him along with it. The stories are endless. Quite sad, horrifying, unbelievable, but very true.

Creepy tunnel that gave me goosebumps!

Like embarking a ship with a dark past, if ever we could the Titanic, an overwhelming sense of the depravity and loss of life is almost overwhelming to soak in. The sadness, mysteriousness, and evilness is like a thick veil that swallows you as you tour the grounds.

Don’t get me wrong, the trip is well worth it. It’s really enlightening. But I will not deny that I ran out of the pitch black, cold and damp, underground boiler room when I heard a clang that could not be explained that mingled with the suppressed lung crunching frightening sensation. Yes, I left my sister and friends at the bottom of the rickety stairs while exclaiming, “Shut the front door!” as my only means of venting my startled fear. My brave younger sister got a good laugh out of my jitters.

Now, I did say the place is “haunted.” I have not seen personal proof, other than my unsettled fears. But countless stories are told by others who have experienced such ghostly encounters. The household name Slagg is just as famous as the pig-iron itself that was produced at the Sloss.

Slagg was the foreman that will always be known for his reputation to have worked his employees to death – literally. Stories say that he was hated so much that he was eventually pushed into one of the furnaces. Now he haunts the maze of pipes and can be seen at times walking the boardwalk down the heart of the boilers that rise tall like cathedrals.

In the end, I give my visits to the Sloss Furnaces an A+  for its plethora of history, awe-moments, and definite creepiness. If you seek to visit a place for thrill and education, it will not disappoint. Neither will it dissatisfy those who are eager to have the hairs on the back of their neck stand straight up.

Personally, I plan to go again. Not so much to get scared, but to dig deeper into the hidden crevices and unearthed stories that are waiting to be told. Who knows, maybe I’ll use it for a setting of a book one day. Oh, and if you do go, be sure to see if you can find any long forgotten pieces of coke (processed coal). My husband and I found a rather good size piece and brought it home.

View From My Front Porch

On days like today, I’m reminded why I love where I live. It’s the perfect, cozy spot for my family of three (my husband, myself, and our Westie) and honestly, I can’t imagine living anywhere else as of right now. 

What I see when I drive to work!

A year ago, literally to the day, my husband and I started house hunting with the idea in mind that we were just getting our feet wet. We had no intentions of actually finding and buying a home. Of course, no one can really “test the water” in house hunting. I remember my husband coming home from work one day and saying that his coworkers laughed at him when he told them that we were “just looking around” and “getting ideas.” I laugh too, because a month later we had put an offer on a house that had foreclosed earlier that year. Our offer was lower than the asking price and in no way did we suspect that the bank would actually accept our first offer, but they did. The tedious process of buying a foreclosed house is long and definitely will test your patience – which I am lacking of – but, three days before Christmas 2012, we were moving boxes and furniture into our new home (new as in new to us).

Years ago, before the man I married came along and even after we made plans to spend our lives together, I had this fantasy that I would always live in a big city. Growing up, I had always lived in a somewhat smaller town. Up until the 8^th grade I lived in the country on the Cumberland Plateau where it would take thirty minutes to get to Wal-Mart, longer if the 127 Yard Sale was going on. And then after moving down the mountain to the college town where my parents grew up, the area was still too small scale for me. Sure, I loved the farms that my grandparents and uncle owned, the fact that I could smell wild honeysuckle outside, and that my siblings and I could ride our bikes three 

miles down the road to the little corner gas station to get fresh scoped icecream. But, I longed for the tall skyscrapers, the busy streets, the professional atmosphere, and the coffee shops early in the morning.

Beautiful front yard view (all but the power lines).

Three months before I said “I do,” I found out that I would be moving three hours away from my home in Tennessee to a city for my husband’s new job. I thought, “Yes! Finally the big town girl I’ve always wanted to be.” Boy, was I wrong.

We got a two bedroom apartment in one of the nicer sides of town. I literally had two grocery stores less than five minutes away. Restaurants even closer. The houses were gorgeous, the shopping was great. And the traffic was terrible! And the railroad that literally was less than two minutes from our complex was driving me crazy. The train is extremely active where we live, there is no escaping the mile long trains – I think my husband and I counted 140 cars on one train when we got stuck at a railroad crossing.

So when it came time to choose a house, we debated long and hard on which side of town to move to. The developed, overly crowded west side, or the rural and spacious east side. We went with the east.

To a lot of people, our place might not have the most ideal setting. We live on the outskirts of town in a more rural, country area. However, we don’t find the twenty minute drive that bad, although some people dread it. We have an acre of land compared to the little squished yards in other parts of town and the Flint River runs not five minutes from our house. Some people might climb out of the car, see the view and immediately think with a grimace, “the outdoors,” but we love it! I actually don’t have to look out the window and see in my neighbor’s house! To some, close quarters is perfectly fine for them. But I discovered after living in a more city setting, the simple, country life is for me.                                                                      

Cotton fields cover the surrounding fields.

 

There is something in the simplicity of being able to wave at the people passing you on the road; the hills and farms that decorate either side of the street. The fact that when I go into the little diner in the town we live near, I see people who remind me of my late grandfather. At the school where I work, teachers and staff are friendly and a tight knit family, and the school’s events are practically the same as the communities. I love that I get to drive on the roads that are now less traveled. The gray ribbons that wind around the hills and valleys that are forgotten about when compared to the straight shot highways and interstates. It’s perfect!

I can sit outside on my porch in the rocker and just listen to the cicadas, smell the crisp sweet air, and soak in the colorful hills that are lingered with hovering clouds. Why and how can anyone not love it? I keep thinking that if people would just take the time to drive through the area or any area like ours, and they would discover that they too long to move to a secluded place. But then again, some of us do need to be lovers of the city, while a small portion of us need to be lovers of the space and outdoors. If everyone loved my home or ones like it, then there would no longer be the rural communities that are so precious and dear.

 

Wish I had gotten a picture of the early morning smoky fog.

To me, my home is a blessing. I have learned over and over, time and time again, that the plans that I have for myself – my old dreams and fantasies – are not at all what God has designed for my life. Instead, He has the perfect plan. Thankfully, He knew that I needed to be brought back into the simple lifestyle of rural living. And I am grateful that He knew to take control of some things and bring us back such a sweet life. I wouldn’t trade my front and back porch view for anything in the world!

Morning Wake Up!

When I was a kid I could never understand the lure of coffee to those habitual drinkers. Every time the Folgers commercial came on the television, parents smiling as they crawled out of bed from hearing the sound of the steady trickle of the dark drink filling the coffee pot, I would think, “Seriously, that doesn’t make you smile.” And the ending phrase, “The best part of waking up, is Folgers in your cup,” well I thought they were for sure off the mark.

Oh how wrong I was. Now, I don’t think Folgers is the best thing to fill my mug, I’d much more prefer the grocery store’s Starbucks, Gevalia, or Dunkins. But after I crossed over into adulthood, I quickly discovered that my distaste for any caffeine had suddenly became a necessity.

 

While in college, I avoided getting hooked on coffee, espresso, latte, or whatever. Occasionally, on the late nights while studying hard or working on lesson plans, I caved and ran by Poet’s on the Square to get whatever sounded good (something with a shot of flavor). But it wasn’t until I graduated, got married to a caffine-aholic, and started working that I realized “coffee is man/woman’s best friend.”

Now I understand the smile on those faces from the Folgers commercial. When my alarm goes off in the morning and I head to the shower, all I can think about is how I can’t wait for the aroma of the roasted bean to pierce through the veil of sleepiness. That invigorating odor is just as wonderful as the energy supplying drink.

It’s crazy to think that in just a short time I have gone from anticoffee to procoffee. And it doesn’t just end with one morning travel mug as I walk out the door to work. No, as soon as I leave school I’m heading home to either fix another pot or pulling through a drive-thru to get my second shot of caffeine for the day. And since I have become a coffee lover, my interest in the roasted-beans-drink’s history has grown.

Amazingly, the history of coffee goes all the way back to the thirteenth century. There are several “crazy” myths that surround the origins of coffee. One story in particular retells the tale of the 9^th century Ethiopian goat herder, Kaldi, who noticed his flock nibbling on some red berries from a bush. Interested, Kaldi tested them out for himself and decided to take the “berries” to a Monk nearby. But the religious men disapproved of berries and threw them into the fire. A tantalizing aroma billowed from the hearth, which drove the monks into investigation. Quickly the beans were raked from the fire and roasted into a liquid – the first cup of coffee. This story in particular is first known to appear in 1671, and is not known to be actual truth.

 

In 1582 the English word “coffee” enters the world. It is derived from the Dutch word koffee, borrowed from Turkish kahve, swiped from Arabic qahwa, meaning “wine of the bean.” I like that – wine of the bean. Fits perfectly, especially when you discover how the coffee bean is made.

When I first read the story of Kaldi, I was completely confused. Berries? I thought coffee was made from a bean. Well, actual both berry and bean are correct.

Coffee plants put off a red or purple fruit that resemble cherries. The “coffee bean” is actually the pit inside the berries, the seeds that are actually what we call the coffee bean. If you haven’t figured out by now, they are only called a bean because of their true bean appearance.

The most laborious part of the coffee bean production is harvesting. Coffee plants (trees) can  have both ripe and unripe berries at once, so the harvester must continually pick the tree. Before entering our coffee shops and grocery stores, the bean has to go through a second piece of processing. There are two options: wet processing and dry processing.

Central America and Africa are more known for using the wet processing. Similar to wine, the seed or bean of the berries is separated from the flesh and is left to ferment in water for around two days, dissolving any remaining pulp or sticky mess. Then they are washed and dried.

The cheaper and easier route is using the dry processing method. Brazil and Africa use this process on their lower quality seeds. For 2-3 days the berries are laid in the sun on brick or concrete. Afterwards, the dried pulp is then removed.

The last bit remaining is for the husks to be removed and the beans to be roasted. The finished product is what we see – dry, varying shades of brown beans.

Now, I know this is just a short bit of information for all you coffee lovers out there. But as I dug into the beans history, discovering that it is indeed a seed, it made me want to learn more about what I’m drinking two to three times a day. There is plenty of information out there to dive into. When my husband and I visit the coffee shop Kaffeeklatsch, the smell of its warm, comforting aroma bursting through the enormous roaster and brushing against my face as we purchase freshly roasted beans to grind at home, I’m going to have new found appreciation for the hard work put into restoring my energy with just a hot mug. And to all you baristas out there, like those at Angel’s Island Coffee, thank you for taking the time to prepare my favorite latte. Your service to restore my depleted energy is very much appreciate!