Possumblog

A Mystery

I went to lunch earlier (after having to take a coworker over to the company garage) and was listening to one of the local talk radio duos. One guy called in with an interesting story.

Seems he does a lot of hiking and stuff, and had been out in an area near Trussville, and out in the middle of nowhere, came upon a lake, but not just any lake, one that had a nicely engineered concrete dam. And then he began stumbling over other stuff--concrete curbs. The place had streets under all the overgrowth. He related that he'd managed to locate the property caretaker, and the man related that the property had belonged to the family of the founder of the old Britling's Cafeteria chain, and somewhere along during the late 1930s, this man had gotten it in his head that he was going to develop a retirement resort for retired Hollywood movie actors. WWII intervened, the story went, and nothing ever came of it. The fellow told the hosts that the property was north of Highway 11, somewhere before the Carrington subdivision.

Now then--I've lived in the Birmingham area all my life, and in Trussville specifially for the last eight years, and had NEVER heard of such a thing, so as soon as I got back to the magic Google machine, I started seeing what I could see.

I typed in britling and trussville, and wouldn't you know, came back with several results, including one post I'd done on Possumblog about how spiffy I thought it was when I was a kid that Britling's had CLOTH NAPKINS! Obviously, not a lot of help to myself on that one.

I continued to type in several variations of the name, figuring that "Britling" was the family name of the owner.

Well, until I stumbled upon this 2001 article from Pitch.com. The article, ostensibly about a new old-style cafeteria planned for Kansas City, also included a short history of the cafeteria, including this bit of information:

[...] The cafeteria concept started as early as 1893's Columbia Exhibition in Chicago. It was meant to portray a Swedish-style "smorgasbord," although "cafeteria" is Spanish for coffee shop. But like every great idea, it needed a few years and some savvy entrepreneurs to kick it around. By the end of World War I, A.W.B. Johnson had started the Britling's chain in Alabama (Elvis' mother worked in the Memphis location). [...]

No WONDER I couldn't find anything--I had the family name wrong!

Armed with this, I went a'searching for Mr. A.W.B. Johnson.

I learned that the actual year of his restaurant chain's founding was in 1918.

That his father-in-law was a civil engineer and dam building from Illinois and named John Wilson who died in 1922, and in the same article that there is an A.W.B. Johnson, Jr.

That on December 11, 1914, a fire destroyed one of his buildings in Birmingham.

And that there's some guy in England by the same name who is credited with helping to develop the sport of squash.

And...

That's about it.

Time for a trip to the library. UNLESS, there's someone out there with a bit more information they'd like to share with everyone!

Have any clues? Leave 'em in the comments below.

Oh, and here's a postcard from the original, from back in the '20s.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at November 4, 2005 12:50 PM