May 24, 2024

I have written many times about this lovely couple who bought and rehabbed the scary run down bar across from the community center and turned it into High Cotton Gallery.

https://www.facebook.com/StephanieM.Kassem60/

They run Art classes for kids, planted a community garden, and High Cotton serves as a place for kids and adults to drop in and hang out. But right now, they are busy taking care of a couple of foster kids. The five-year-old girl takes a break from games on her tablet to look at my camera. I ask her if she wants to try it out and she shyly runs and hides behind Jay, grabbing one of his legs.

Stephanie works as a nurse for a number of schools in the area. One of the teachers asked her to take a look at one of the kids. Underneath the mask she wore she found bruises. An physical examination revealed some more. “I’ve worked in a prison. Most of my career I spent working in emergency rooms. I have worked in a lot of schools. I have never seen anything that disturbed me as much as that.”

The two children wound up with the couple. “We just took them on an emergency basis. There was no place else for them to go,” said Stephanie.” Jay laughs, “I was telling her, ‘Steph, they’re not puppies. You can’t just take them home with you.’ ” That was in February. The couple is still trying to get licensed as foster parents, but until then, they are receiving nothing from the state. Once they get licensed, the state is not going to pay anything for the past three months. Their big concern is whether the court will move the kids now that they are settled. “She’s little. She’s just five.” Referring to slightly older brother, she said, “He’s quiet. He stops and thinks about things a lot. They have settled in. They just know that they are safe and clean.”

“I was planning of retiring,” said Stephanie. “We were not planning on raising kids at our age.” I reminded he of the joke about How to Make God Laugh – Make plans.

While we talked, I did a little editing to this blog and used their wifi connection. Like most straight out of the box routers, the network has an entirely unrecognizable name and the password is a bunch of random numbers. I told Jay I could set it up for them so that the network was easier to find and the password was easier to remember. “No, I don’t want it to be easy to find. The drug dealers are always looking for stuff like that.”

We had our community dinner at a former house/restaurant right behind the community center. We finished dinner just before sunset, at which time sleepy little Tutwiler was becoming a whole lot more lively. Directly across the street from the community center are two nondescript cinderblock buildings with no windows. They look like they may be abandoned. They are not. They are booming businesses. Those are two of the town bars, right next door to each other, both directly across the street from the police station. It is getting dark, and parts of Tutwiler come to life. Wise people find somewhere else to be.

Next to the police station there is a crumbling wall and a burned spot from what was once a gas station and more recently a liquor store. It burned down. Tutwiler has a volunteer fire department and a truck, but the only person who had a key was in Greenwood, about an hour away. The one fireman in town did his best to settle things down and then informed the police station that the roof of the building next to them was on fire. The police said they thought that was out already.

Tutwiler has 2400 people and more than its share of ones who are up to no good. It has thieves, gangbangers, drug dealers, and other miscreants, as well as some people who are just unhappy with life.

It also has people like Jay and Stephanie.