Baldwin Square

Before it was a park in the middle of the now heavily populated Satsuma, Alabama, under a canopy of oaks and home to a bazzion squirrels, there sat a small wood framed house with a detached garage, or as I liked to remember it – our horse barn.

We didn’t have horses.

But we did have a few dogs who could pass for horses any day – at least to a four year old boy with lots of imagination.

We had no asphalt or cement for the short driveway – only fine granulated Alabama top soil baked in the afternoon sun.

It was ideal for mud pies.

1966 might as well as have been 44 years ago or something.

OK, it was 44 years. Funny how that seems longer when I type it out like that.

Behind the house sat a diminutive one room barbershop and beyond that – train tracks.

I’m told that my dad actually caught rides on trains sometimes down to Chickasaw or Mobile for work. I’m hoping the train slowed to a manageable speed as there was no depot in Satsuma in the late 60s. I don’t know that there ever was one there.

Across the street from our little house sat the U. S. Post Office for Satsuma, Alabama. I think that the house is still there today, although the Postal Service relocated the mail office across Highway 43 to a sterile brick building besides what used to be a neighborhood store. I liked the old house better.

Once, as a three or four year old, I wandered away from the homestead and into the parking lot of the post office. I heard galloping. There weren’t many buggies left in circulation, but some still non-conformists chose to travel by horse.

I would call the horse Mr. Ed because Mr. Ed is whom I think of when I remember this scene, but that young rider now has a son with that name so I’ll call him Speedy.

I don’t know why I was there, but it was only 100 feet from our front door and I assumed that wandering the neighborhood was required for boys my age. I watched with amusement as this traveler dismounted his horse, looped the rope over a chain-linked fence, and walked inside.

Turns out, Speedy was not interested in checking the mail or for that mater waiting for its rider.

Speedy tilted his head a few times, un-looped the rope, backed away from the chain-linked fence, and smiled at me.

OK, maybe he just winked. Regardless, one second later he was galloping down 4^th Street towards East Orange.

Soon thereafter, the rider exited the post office with his mail, but with no visible horse on which to return home.

For only a brief second, the horseless rider glanced at me.

Did he think that I had freed Speedy?

He didn’t wait around to ask. The last thing I remember about him was his own galloping after his horse on 4^th street towards the high school.

The only way I know – or am reasonable sure – of the rider’s identity is that I recounted this story to a friend about a year ago.

And he told me that he was most likely the rider who failed to properly secure his horse when he went into the post office.

Years later after we’d moved to the slightly larger city of Saraland, Mr. Baldwin (for whom the park is named) demolished (or moved) that old house. In 1982, the Baldwin family gave the land to the city of Satsuma and it now serves as a public park – although they call it a square.

In 1992, I brought a young Russian Princess to this place where I had a kind-of “beginning” (i.e., my parents had moved from Louisiana to Alabama when I was four – so this was my beginning in Alabama. I know it’s a stretch but work with me!).

I kneeled and asked her to begin a new journey with me.

She said yes.

My children don’t care too much for this story – especially after the 100^th time.

But I like it.

It reminds me of home.