POWERGRAMS

Saturday and to church on Sunday. On any given day, some of them gather at Gates, two blocks west of the center of Pickens County's biggest town, which is home to 2,400 people. Gates Restaurant across from the Alabama Power Office is usually packed, offering friendly service and a square meal for a good price. It's a homegrown business like many around a 109-year-old town that merges antebellum mansions with a modern high school, old- school hunting camps with a contemporary City Hall, a renewable energy pellet factory with traditional farms just 10 miles from the Mississippi line, as the crow flies. Lavender Inc., an industrial contractor whose work and reputation has spread from Alabama to Mississippi and Tennessee in just three decades, is the biggest truly local company, employing about 150 men and women. The Federal Correctional Institution that opened in 2013 employs about 200 more than Lavender, but most of the workers at the medium-security women's prison commute each day. Shark Tooth Creek is Aliceville's newest tourist attraction, offering visitors – many of them students – a trip back in time (by appointment only), where prehistoric shark's teeth can be found by the thousands from March to October. Everyone takes home some of the sharp black fossils, along with memories of a special day in the lush countryside that geologists believe was a barrier island on the Gulf of Mexico millions of years ago. "The creek runs through our family farm and I guide every group through myself," said owner Ken Owens, who years ago began opening his door to curious strangers who'd heard University of Alabama archeologists were uncovering fossils behind his house. "Most people appreciate it because everything's natural." Just off Highway 14, Shark Tooth is perhaps the main field trip competition for the Aliceville Museum at the intersection of Memorial Parkway and Broad Street. The primary exhibition – the reason most of the 3,000 annual visitors pay admission – is one of only two in the nation dedicated to an American World War II prisoner of war facility. The museum has three other separate and interesting segments, each worth the entry fee: • An intact Coca-Cola plant that produced 18 bottles per minute from 1948 until 1978. Coca-Cola of Meridian, Miss., donated the equipment and two of the museum's three large buildings. • The Pickens County-Aliceville exhibit, which houses many artifacts, including items owned by city founder John Cochrane, who named the town after his wife, Alyce. • An American military section that serves as a memorial as well as a salute to the county's brave men and women soldiers. It includes uniforms and items spanning World War I to the current battle against terrorism. The latest hero enshrined: Staff Sgt. Tommy Little, 45, who died in Iraq in 2005. Pickens County, with a 1940 population of 27,671, sent 2,030 soldiers to the front in World War II, with 63 making the ultimate sacrifice. But what draws people from every state, from China, England, France, Germany and other nations every year, is the Camp Aliceville exhibit, saving for history what no longer exists (except one building in the industrial park and a chimney in Sue Stabler Park). The largest section of the museum contains many of the remaining relics from one of the biggest American POW stockades. "It's what most people come to see," said John Gillum, who's been executive director of the nonprofit museum for three years. Wings are popular at Gates Restaurant. Shark Tooth Creek is on Highway 14 heading into town. 18

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