Belle Camp Blog

Mobile Bay Magazine is a popular local publication. This summer I was asked to stop by their Government Street offices for an interview to reflect on my twenty years of my column, Ask McGehee. I was shown into a conference room and it was suddenly filled with the entire staff of the magazine including publisher, T. J. (Jocko) Potts, and Executive Editor, Maggie Lacy.

I was surprised with a framed thank you for my contributions to the magazine with an image of my first column which included a photograph of the Murray Forbes Smith home on Government Street. How appropriate, since the brick from the demolition of that house was used to construct the Bellingrath Home.

In the process I was asked how the column came about. When I was originally approached to be a contributor I had to be honest and say that I really did not like the content of the magazine and had canceled my subscription. I was assured that the publication was going in a totally new direction and they wanted this area’s history to be a big part of the new format.

We patterned Ask McGehee after a popular column in Memphis Magazine which focused on all sorts of local history. So I started my column with a piece about the Vanderbilt connection to Mobile, hence the photo of the house where Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont had been born.

It has been fun researching some familiar topics, such as long gone restaurants, department stores and buildings. Those bring back a lot of fond memories for our readers. But it is the details I uncover which often result in a “Wow, I have lived her my whole life but never knew that before.” That has been a pleasure for me in writing the column over the years.

And just as our tours of the Bellingrath Home include many wonderful stories I have collected from relatives and former employees of Bessie and Walter Bellingrath, my columns are often infused with tales I have collected from Mobilians now sadly long deceased. And the majority of these stories were never sought by previous historians, so I am glad I captured so many over the years.

Twenty years of a monthly column equates to 240 columns. I was asked if I thought I would run out of topics. My answer was “In Mobile? Never.”

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