In his infrequent role as parking lot shuttle driver, Todd Flowers knows what’s coming.

“When we hit the gap in the trees, where they first see the mill, you ought to hear the gasps,” he says, saying it’s one of the favorite parts of his job managing Yellowleaf Creek Mill with his wife, Danyula.

It’s a similar experience at Christmastime, as people will line the little one-lane wooden bridge spanning the creek just below the 150-foot-long dam as they photograph the winter scene when the red wood building is covered in holiday white icicle lights. (more…)

It’s not fuzzy logic to guess that life could be peachy 120 feet below Clanton’s iconic fruit-shaped water tower.

Goats, geese and cows graze in the pasture beneath the creviced steel, red and yellow painted structure built for $1.2 million in 1993 at Exit 212 along Interstate 65. The road through town winds past Peachy Clean Car Wash, Peach City Pawn, Peach Auto Sales and many other businesses taking a peach stand.

At 7:45 a.m., people are waving across the street at each other, exchanging shouted greetings in the heart of the old downtown. Some sit on benches, others cross midblock between passing cars to hug old friends. There are smiles and kind words even for folks who don’t look familiar. (more…)

Had William Seaborn Johnson been like his nine siblings, countless people in the past 160 years might have led diminished lives.

Seaborn was deaf, which inspired his older brother, Joseph, to start a school in 1858 that years later became the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind (AIDB). Today, the wide-ranging programs on the huge campus in Talladega are renowned worldwide as the staff continues to break ground training disabled children and adults in 90 different buildings. AIDB’s motto is “Deaf. Blind. Limitless.”

When the school began teaching 21 deaf children sign language, reading and writing at Manning Hall, it was taking the first small steps toward a statewide educational network that today serves about 25,000 people annually. The building on the National Register of Historic Places was constructed in 1850 but no longer has classrooms. It is the managerial epicenter of Alabama’s largest employer of blind, deaf and deaf-blind adults. (more…)

To most of the world, Talladega is the big racetrack that opened half a century ago.

The 2.66-mile NASCAR tri-oval 14 miles from downtown Talladega is familiar even to people who care nothing about vehicles racing 200 mph as 175,000 fans scream while nursing their favorite beverages in the bleachers and infield.

Talladega Superspeedway is quickly becoming the “world’s most sophisticated fan experience” as its $50 million redevelopment will be partially complete by the running of the Geico 500 April 28 and fully finished by the big races in October. Billed as the “Transformation,” the rebirth of the famous facility has nothing on its namesake town founded 135 years earlier. (more…)