Rita Light, Carolyn Calvert and David Vines inside the Beat 8 Community Center.
CULLMAN COUNTY – Southwest Cullman County has been a coal mining district that includes parts of Walker and Jefferson Counties for a long time. Stories circulated through the region as early as the 1820s of rocks catching fire around travelers' campfires. By the late 1830s, small-scale commercial mining operations were underway. A century later, the Drummond Coal Company was founded in Walker County, to tap the still rich resources of that area. Over the years, Drummond and its Shoal Creek and Twin Pines mining operations worked their way through northwest Walker County and found themselves eyeing a ripe field just across the Cullman County line, in a community so small it didn't even have a formal name, just a title derived from its census/voting district: Beat 8.
Beat 8 is a community of around 500 people, in the Cold Springs school district and Arkadelphia fire district, and southwest of both along the Walker County line. The area saw non-native travelers and hunters as early as the 1830s, but large-scale homesteading began in the 1880s, when President Chester Arthur issued land grants to the Howles and other families. Prominent early families included the Howle (later Howell), Stuart, Dion, Myers, Drummond and Williams families.
From its earliest days, the Beat 8 community's economy was driven by agriculture, with substantial numbers of cattle and poultry farmers. The coal industry put an end to that: Drummond, through Twin Pines Coal, bought the mineral rights to possibly as many as 1,500 acres of land around the community. The company strip-mined the area, with the promise of a three-phase land reclamation project afterwards. Pasture lands were dug up, and chicken farms fared poorly as well. As community member Carolyn Calvert explained, "Blasting and chickens don't go together!"
The coal mines are closed now, at least around Beat 8 (Drummond is still active in Walker, Jefferson and Tuscaloosa Counties.), but their effects live on. Reclamation efforts have been hit-and-miss, and one mine site just down the road from the community center was simply abandoned.
Beat 8 Committee member and Community Center Director Calvert said, "They pretty well got all this community. It had good coal under it. It's been stripped all back in here (down County Road 15 toward Walker County), and down through Arkadelphia a lot. They got our (the Calvert family) land. The guy that ran the coal company (Jimmy Myers, president of Drummond subsidiary Twin Pines Coal) got a lot of land, and he's made a lot of pasture. It had to go through three phases reclamation; they were supposed to put topsoil, and it looked like a piece of bread with some peanut butter spread on it. There wasn't no topsoil. You might grow some trees later on, but you couldn't have had a pasture on our land. It was bad, so we sold ours."
Today, a few cattle and poultry farms still operate, but most working residents make the weekday commute to Cullman, Jasper, Sumiton or Birmingham. The community does have the Bug Tussle Gas and Grocery, Jeremy Rollo Logging and Darrell Williams Paint and Body, as well as a flower shop and bait and tackle shop. Recently, the Bug Tussle area at the north end of the community became home to a Dollar General.
The cultural heart of the Beat 8 community is its small community center near the intersection of County Roads 15 and 91. The original center, dating to the early 1950s, was a one-room cinderblock building with a slab floor. It had electricity, but no water. On voting days, poll workers had to bring food and water, and make arrangements to go elsewhere to find a bathroom.
In 1982, Charlie Drummond joined the Beat 8 Committee, and became a driving force behind the development of the facility. With his leadership and the help of numerous volunteers and donors, he oversaw a floorplan expansion, installation of water lines, a kitchen and bathrooms.
Over the years, though, the improved center fell into disrepair and was the victim of thieves. A 2015 grant of $8,000 from the Cullman County Community Development Commission (CCCDC) helped with repairs to damage caused by moisture and the theft of the center's A/C unit. The money also paid for a wheelchair ramp.
When the money ran out, there was still work to do; so, in December 2016, the CCCDC approved an additional $12,000 to complete repairs and upgrades to the rear portion of the building, and to pave a portion of the gravel parking lot to make access to the wheelchair ramp easier.
In a small community like Beat 8, the community center is a multi-use facility. According to Calvert, "It is rented for showers and anniversaries. We have a beagle club (hunting club); they have land they hunt across the road, but they have their meetings here. The Neighborhood Watch meets here, too. And it's a voting center. Then we try to rent it all we can."
Beat 8 is a small community, but its people are close-knit and happy to be in the same place that was homesteaded by their grandparents and great-grandparents. The grants show that it is catching the attention of the powers that be in the county: not just a spot with some history, but a place with a future.
Calvert said, "I'm proud of my community. I've been down here (at the community center) since 1982 a lot of hours, because I want it to be nice. And I've had a lot of help from my friends Rita Light and Martha Johnson."
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