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Family
Squirrels, Horses, and Marriage Proposals
Baldwin Square is not just another city park to me
Before it was a park in the middle of the now “heavily populated” Satsuma, Alabama, under a canopy of oaks and home to a few billion squirrels, there stood a small wood-framed house with a detached garage, or as I liked to remember it — our horse barn.
We didn’t have horses.
But we did have a few dogs who could pass for horses any day — at least to a four-year-old boy with lots of imagination.
There was no asphalt or cement for the short driveway — only finely granulated Alabama top soil baked in the afternoon sun.
It was ideal for mud pies.
Behind the house sat a little one-room barbershop and beyond that — train tracks.
My father would catch rides on trains from our personal train station. The train took him down to Chickasaw or sometimes into Mobile for work. I’m hoping it slowed to a manageable speed as there was really no depot in Satsuma at the time. I don’t know that there ever was one there.
The post office was across the street. I think that the house used as a post office is still there today, although the Postal Service relocated the mail office across Highway 43…
