Big business off the field
LINEVILLE — Just past Lineville High School where Alabama 9 curves, a picture of a glaring football player greets motorists. “Win big with a new career at Wellborn Cabinets Inc.” is stenciled on the billboard in big letters next to the player's helmet. The player stares down, football clutched to his chest. His torso and that fierce face fill the left-hand side of the billboard. He has greasepaint under his eyes, and his helmet is stained with red Alabama clay. It's football season in Lineville and Ashland, and Wellborn Cabinets, Clay County's largest employer, is in on the action. The road curls past fields and hills on the way to Wellborn Cabinets. It winds through downtown as Main Street in Lineville, where the police station displays a banner that reads “Lock 'em up Aggies. Shut 'em down.” Signs fill many of the storefronts in both these Clay County towns, just five miles apart. Ashland establishments root on the Panthers, and Lineville stores proclaim Aggie pride. It's always been that way. Clay County is nestled in a rural region of hills and fields where cows graze and kudzu weaves into elaborate shapes along the roadside and sometimes across, depending on how far the vine stretches up the power lines. The median household income is $28,765, and 14.2 percent of the county residents live below the poverty line. Wellborn Cabinets, a family-owned business in Ashland for more than 45 years, draws employees from throughout Clay and the surrounding counties. The Center for Demographic Research at Auburn University-Montgomery shows that 11.5 percent of Clay County residents have college degrees, while 68.1 percent graduate high school. The county population is about 14,000. There are 23.3 people per square mile, and plenty of open space. Lots of those people, up to 6,000, a standing-room only crowd, turn out for the Clay Bowl each year. The game is “a big event for a small town,” says Tony Moore, owner of Moore's, a convenience store and deli that sits on the highway right before downtown Lineville. “It improves everyone's business a little bit.” Moore says that the Clay Bowl is a “business booster.” His store sees more traffic before the game, and the competition serves to draw crowds downtown, he says. The fact that the schools and communities are so close together make the rivalry “more interesting.” There's a lot of pride tied up in the game, Moore says. Business at his store slowed a bit for a few days “after the whupping Lineville got” Friday. It took a few days for folks to recover their pride and reach for their wallets. At Wellborn Cabinets, Keith Smith and Scot Gates, product engineers who share an office, take pride in their work, and in their teams. They talk in the easy way of people used to each other's camaraderie and collaboration. Both played in high school band and can tell stories about Clay Bowls past. They have been egged, booed, cheered, and witnessed or heard about pranks ranging from planting turnip greens in the end zone, to painting the schools the opposing team's colors. Smith's first date with his wife was a Clay Bowl. He bought her a Coke and a Blow-Pop. Both men attend the game each year. Smith is a graduate of Clay County High School in Ashland. Gates graduated from Lineville. That can make things interesting around the cabinet factory. “There'll be a lot of people talking a lot and a lot of real quiet people with every excuse in the book” on Monday morning, Smith says. The quiet people then have to contend with being on the losing end until the next Clay Bowl. “You won't hear the end of it until next year,” Gates says. The engineers sit around a polished wood table in the training center building at Wellborn. Behind their heads, gleaming examples of the artistry crafted at the factory ring the room. The cabinets are smooth and they glow with a ruddy sheen. Smith is soon outnumbered when David Staples, a manager in Wellborn's shipping department, joins the two engineers at the table. Staples wore red and black as a high school player. He continues to be a dedicated Aggie supporter and follows their record avidly.
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Staples, a splitback and cornerback for Lineville, can talk about his high school days like he is still guarding an Aggie receiver, even though he graduated in the late 1970s. He remembers Clay Bowls past with particular vividness. “We were just thrilled to beat up on Ashland,” he says. “They were the hardest fought games. Very competitive. More so than other games.” That sense of competition draws a big crowd to the games. Mylo and Me Restaurant and Bakery on the courthouse square in Ashland stays open late on the nights when either Clay County or Lineville has a home game. Football means business, says owner Rebecca Mathews. The Clay Bowl “had a very positive impact,” on her restaurant, she says. Friday night was “very successful. We did well.” Mathews was pleased to see students, athletes and family members from both towns “come out and enjoy” a meal after the game. “It was very pleasant,” she says. “A good atmosphere.” The proximity of the schools and the size of the communities mean that team loyalties can often be a delicate matter. Churches have been known to square off over sides, and relatives are careful to pick a seat that clearly shows their allegiance. Mathews' restaurant was not festooned with too much partisan pride, although cheerleaders put some blue and white ribbons on the poles outside, she says. One reason for that is that the restaurant draws patrons from both sides. “I have to stay neutral,” Mathews says. She doesn't want to alienate either team. And Wellborn Cabinet employees are no exception to the familial nature of the rivalry, which Smith, Gates and Staples say is, for the most part, good-natured. On Friday, those who can, take the day off, Smith says. They want to get to the stadium early to get a good seat and tailgate. It's not a surprise to see a lot of red and black or blue and white at Wellborn on Friday as fans suit up in their colors. Before the game, both sets of fans can brag. The game belongs to everyone in both towns, says Smith, whose father hasn't missed a Clay Bowl in nearly 50 years. “Everyone is included in it,” he says. When those players take to the field, they're not just playing the 11 other guys on the field. They are playing for and against the grandmothers, parents, brothers, sisters, cousins and neighbors in the stands. “I say 'we're playing,' not 'they're playing,'” Smith says. “The team belongs to us.” As the talk of football drifts off and Staples and Gates take their leave, Smith stands in the garage bay doors of the training center, which is a giant, very red barn down a gravel road and up a hill from the main plant. He looks out over the factory buildings spread below. Mountains of wood pallets are stacked on one hill. Water towers stretch toward the sky and pickups and cars move slowly through the plant's roads and parking lots. The long, low building where the cabinets are manufactured stretches before him. Smith surveys it all and talks softly a bit about the process of making cabinets, of living in Clay County, of what his home means. Start to finish, from raw wood harvested in neighboring hills, to the pieces on display in the training center, it's done right here in Ashland, he says, and shipped all over the world — a piece of Alabama gracing kitchens and baths far from home. His eyes sweep over the scene below. “You wouldn't expect to see a big place like this in such a small town.” Contact Mary Jo Shafer at mgshafer@ua.edu or 241-1948.
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