Crestview. He loved his home, and when he was out of town, he left standing instructions: “The home is to be lit with electric light from sundown to sunup, and the gardens are to be maintained per my instructions.”
Twice a year, Edward opened up his home and gardens to all of his employees and always had presents for the children. A shy man, he observed the festivities from a chair in the attic. It had been very pleasant to watch all the children playing in the gardens below.
In 1928, little Ethel Louise Tatum, long before she became Ethel Clipp, had been taken up to Crestview for a Christmas party and, at one point, had looked up and waved at the man in the upstairs window, and he had waved back. But she didn’t remember it. The only thing she remembered was the present she received. All the boys got toy trains, and the girls were given dolls. She would rather have had the train; only eight years old and already a malcontent.
LATER AS MAGGIE walked around Crestview turning off lights and closing all the drapes, Babs Bingington was across town (recuperating from yet another face-lift) sitting up in her bed, with her head wrapped in bandages, and squinting at her laptop computer, reading an email from the spy she had sent to Maggie’s open house. And if she could have she would have smiled.
“No principals. Just lookie-loos and neighbors.”
Just as Babs had thought. That old dog of a house would never sell; certainly not before Christmas. She didn’t have to do a thing now. She’d wait and call the lawyer in New York after the first of the year with another proposal he’d be a fool to turn down.
THE NEXT MORNING, some eighty years after her first visit to Crestview, Ethel Clipp still had complaints. When Maggie came in the door, she started in: “I am so upset, I could just have a flying fit. You are not going to believe this.”
“What?”
“Saturday, I went to the loveliest wedding over at the Church of the Advent, and every one of the bridesmaids had tattoos and so did the bride. Can you believe it? Pretty young blond girls with tattoos. In my day, nice girls wouldn’t even date a boy who had a tattoo. What are they thinking? And to make matters worse, the groom had a head full of dreadlocks, and he isn’t even black. Can you imagine what the world is going to be like fifty years from now? A bunch of old ladies sitting around playing bridge with tattoos all over their big fat arms. I mean, Jesus Christ, who wants a grandmother with a tattoo? And I remember when boys used to be clean-cut.”
“Me too,” said Brenda.
“Now they all want to look scruffy. It was that TV show,
Brenda laughed. “Well, if that happened, I sure don’t want to see it. I don’t even like to look at myself naked, much less strangers.”
Ethel made a face. “I’ll tell you one damn thing. If that happens, and people start jogging in the nude with their altogethers dangling in the wind, I’m out of here.”
Time on Her Hands
Most of the coverage was about business, but she found a few mentions of Edward in several articles. An interesting one came from the
Dapper and neat, with a razor-sharp wit, Edward Crocker is an avid golfer. As friends say, “He is not too long off the tee, but his short game has devastated many an opponent.” While visiting Birmingham, legendary golf champion Bobby Jones was challenged by Edward at a hundred dollars a hole. Jones later declared, “We played a ding-dong of a game. I remember thinking how blamed stubborn he was. I was shooting pretty good, but this little fellow kept sticking and sticking, and every time I made the least slip, he won a hole from me.” When a reporter asked Mr. Crocker if he intended to keep the money he’d won, he answered in the affirmative. “Indeed I do; after all, sir, I am a Scot.”
Edward looked small and somewhat delicate in his photographs, but he was no weakling where business was concerned. Maggie read accounts of his stance in the thirties against the large influx of people who had been sent to Alabama to try to infiltrate and unionize his workers. In 1932, Edward had been photographed standing in front of one of his mines, holding a rifle, and underneath, he was quoted:
“I pay well, and I take care of my workers. Any Bolsheviks that come sneaking around bothering my men, I will personally chase them back to Russia. This is an American company. No slackers, no Bolsheviks. An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.”
From what she read, he seemed to have been a tough but fair man.
Although some companies in Magic City have reported rumblings of unrest, the workers at the Crocker mines have been immune to outside influences. With a first-rate company hospital and top-notch schools for the children and adult education for those who want it and free home nurse care for new mothers, Mr. Crocker’s workers have no complaints and have sent the troublemakers packing.
Most of Edward’s workers were poor sharecroppers who had come to town looking for work, or immigrant Greeks, Italians, or Poles who had ridden steerage to get there and had been assured a chance to move up in the company if they worked hard enough. All the workers seemed to like and respect him. As Maggie read on, she saw that many articles had been written about his business affairs, but almost nothing about Edward’s social life. She started looking in some old society columns for any mention, and luckily, she was able to find a few. One, from the
MAGIC CITY SOCIETY
BY
CALEB KINSAUL
Birmingham’s bachelor millionaire Edward Crocker’s reluctance to be drawn to the altar is legendary; however, his appreciation for the fairer sex is also well known and reflected in this sentiment: “At the end of a long day, I prefer to see a pretty face across the table and leave business behind.”
Mr. Crocker’s friends and business associates speak of him warmly: “a grand little chap and a good and loyal pal in time of need.” His numerous lady friends, by all accounts, find him attentive and delightful company. But so far, none have come away with a wedding ring. This has surely disappointed many a Birmingham belle gone on to marry another, but all have remained friends and received generous and lavish gifts on the occasion of their weddings. When queried about his famed bachelorhood, he has this to say: “I fear a lady would find me quite inadequate as husband material. I already have three wives: iron, coal, and steel. It would not be fair to ask a lady to play fourth fiddle.”
