May 5, 2016 Minutes
Submitted by Tommy Fulton, Contributing Editor
Call to Order: The meeting was called to order by President Robby McClure. Garrett Williamson gave the invocation, followed by Tom Martenstein, who led us in song, accompanied by Bill Oppenheimer at the piano. Tommy Blankenship introduced our guests along with visiting Rotarians.
Announcements: Members were reminded to submit NEW photos or Roster Changes to Peggy Bugg. Tommy Fulton made a plea for donations to the Cart Project to fund Alzheimer’s Research.
Program: Cart Blackwell introduced the speaker, Watt Key, an author and winner of the Southern Fiction Award.
Watt began his talk by describing his time in the Mobile Delta. He procured a lease on some property in the Delta and began building a camp. Throughout his 15 years of life experience at his “swamp camp”, he compiled a series of essays telling stories of the people he encountered. Eventually, that collection of essays became a book titled, “Among the Swamp People.”
As a life-long story-teller, Mr. Key used pictures to show the personality of many of the surrounding camps. One picture captured the “trailer park”, which was an old Airstream camper and a broken down dock. He talked about some of the personalities, including his mentor, Bart, and Bart’s wife Pam. Apparently, Bart taught him everything he knew about corn, and swore that he could live a lifetime off of a single bag of corn.
Another neighbor was “George”, who spent the majority of every day drinking and fishing, beginning early each morning. Watt told about Crazy Dan, who would “howl” all night, and “Randy”, considered the unofficial Mayor of Chuckfee Bay.
Finally, Mr. Key told the story about his book, “Alabama Moon”, which was made into a movie. Unlike most authors, he was allowed to attend the film production. He soon realized why that rarely happens, as he became a distraction for the director.
Mr. Key then entertained questions.
The meeting was adjourned at 1:00 pm.