A Tennis Racket
Employment opportunities have never been abundant for 13-year-olds in Point Clear. After my position as fly killer at the Grand Hotel snack bar was eliminated, I found other...
Ask McGehee
Although converted to a recirculating fountain in 1967, this Downtown fixture was originally designed to be a trough, providing water to passing humans, horses and dogs....
Ask McGehee
Since one fall day in 1973, Alabama’s only coastal lighthouse has stood forlornly alone on Sand Island. The first lighthouse here was originally built in 1838 to mark...
The Ghost of Zundel’s Wharf
A typical Point Clear morning in October finds light, cool east breezes filtering through the pine trees, brushing Mobile Bay into a glassy calm. Occasionally, the breezes...
Ask McGehee
Construction of the Bragg-Mitchell Mansion began in 1855, but it was not built by the famed general. It was actually erected by his brother, Judge John Bragg....
Ask McGehee
“Mobile’s Finest Department Store” thrived in a building that previously housed the largest laundry and dye works in the nation. It...
Integration Remembered
On June 11, 1963, the eyes of the nation watched, through the black and white lenses of news cameras, as Gov. George Wallace stood in...
Ask McGehee
Eugenia Levy Phillips, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, came to Mobile as a 16-year-old newlywed in 1836. She had married fellow South Carolinian Philip Phillips,...
Ask McGehee
In 1838, following a series of yellow fever epidemics, a Catholic orphan’s asylum was established in Mobile on Conti Street across from the Cathedral Basilica of the...
The Battle of Mobile Bay Revisited
Every Old Mobile family worth its salt will claim a blockade runner somewhere in the family tree. Heaven knows plenty of daring men attempted to run the formidable Yankee cordon into...