POWERGRAMS

30 anything else one might think of buying inside the massive Bama Flea Mall & Antique Center. "We're 12 miles from the Birmingham-Shulesworth International Airport, we're not in Timbuktu," says Leeds Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sandra McGuire. "People tell me all the time they never knew how close we are to Birmingham. And they tell me we have a lot more in Leeds than they thought." Leeds' biggest annual community event is the Creek Bank Festival in May. The chamber sponsors downtown Halloween trick or treating in October, the Christmas tree lighting and pictures with Santa Nov. 29 and the holiday parade Dec. 14. McGuire says local businesses run the gamut from century- old Lehigh Cement to recent additions like Mum & Me Mercantile and the Three Eared Rabbit. Atrox Factory downtown is the Southeast's largest indoor haunted araction, just two blocks east of the Leeds Theatre & Arts Center amidst an entire business district that joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. While bravery seems to be second-nature for Leeds citizens, beauty doesn't play second fiddle. Deidra Downs was crowned Miss America in 2005, Paige Phillips was first runner-up in 1980 and Kaylyn Chapman was third runner-up in 1993. Other Miss Leeds who became Miss Alabama include Courtney Porter in 2011, Chandler Champion in 2013, Caitlin Brunell in 2014 and Jessica Proctor in 2017, who finished in the Miss America Top 7 and was the Quality of Life winner. "Miss Leeds has quite a record of success in the Miss Alabama pageant and beyond," says McGuire, who directs the local competition. The Bass House Susan Carswell's family has been in Leeds for seven generations. A former city council member, she is president of the Leeds Historical Society. Carswell is at home walking through the historic Bass House Museum (placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008), as she's related to or friends with many of the people honored in the museum. "I've been here so many times but every time I come in I see something I didn't see before," she says of the white structure on Montevallo Road. Jonathan Bass started building the white frame house along the stagecoach route before the Civil War, then finished it upon his return from bale in 1863. Its ownership stayed within his family until the mid-1990s, then it fell into disrepair before being bought in 2003 and renovated by the historical society through community donations. The only older existing Leeds house is the Henry Lile Cabin and mill (1820) just down the road, built by Carswell's great-grandfather and where her grandfather was born. The restored Bass House retains its wide, hand- planed heart pine floors, original painted faux-frost glass transoms, ornate metal door hinges, handmade brick fireplaces and mahogany wainscoting. The rarest aspect is a billiard table painting on the ceiling of the men's parlor done by a farmhand in payment for his Sarah Jalil waits on customers at Laney's Country Cooking. Bass House is one of Leed's oldest original structures. Men's parlor has billiard table top painted on ceiling. Santa and Mrs. Claus at Grand River.

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