About Oakleigh Gardens
We have only lived in Mobile, Alabama, for a little over a year, but we have learned that the old city, founded in 1702 as Fort Louis de la Mobile, has dozens of historic districts and enclaves which we can explore. Incidentally, the first Mardi Gras was held in Mobile in 1703. We constantly find Mardi Gras beads almost everywhere we explore, and at first we often mistake them for marbles. They can also be see hanging in the legacy oaks and on telephone lines!
One hot day we decided to walk in the Oakleigh Gardens Historic District under the giant oaks. We parked at Oakleigh Mansion. Built in 1833, we enjoy everything about this old home. We visited it at Christmas and were enchanted with the gorgeous southern belles who hosted the visitors. We had never seen before the authentic shoulder cloak or cape (needed in draughty antebellum halls) which they wore. Civil War-era tricot capes were often crocheted.
The name Oakleigh is from the two words oak and meadow. The historic district around the old home place consists of sixty city blocks. While the home is the oldest building in the district, the age of some five hundred structures ranges from 1833 – 1956. We find the Queen Anne homes especially beautiful, and many homes are bedecked with Carpenter Gothic massing. But we enjoy the ancient legacy oaks most of all. Some are massive and a few allow their limbs to touch the ground. We have even seen limbs on the ground with several feet covered with earth before reaching for the sky again! After a rainy spell each and every oak displays a garden of resurrection fern which you can see in this photograph. These fern grow on trees but they do no harm. In dry weather they look dead as a door nail, but a rain will have them “resurrected” and looking green and lush.
Oakleigh Gardens: Look…There’s a Marble! And a Cigarette!
The Oakleigh Gardens neighborhood has wide six-foot public easements.* In these easements we have found all sorts of marbles: clay; stone; and glass of all kinds. While we were just rambling along talking and enjoying the sunshine, we did find six marbles. Generally, only a small curvature of glass was visible above the sand and dirt. At first, we thought the small clear marble is a decorator, but then we saw the pattern of fleas. It was shot or rolled; depending on the game played there were a number of uses for these smaller marbles.
“There’s one cigarette left in that pack, if you want it.” It sounded like a throwaway line from a B movie. When we looked up, though, we saw a very friendly man who was puttering around in his yard. “I don’t smoke,” he continued. We thanked him, said we didn’t smoke, either, and then looked down on the easement. Sure enough, there was a discarded opened pack with one cigarette left. We knew that he was very curious about what we were looking for, so we told him and in that moment we met a new friend! He shared that he often “came across” marbles in his house clearing business and sometimes brought marbles home. He then invited us to look in his yard; though this day’s search yielded none, he invited us back anytime to explore.*
Collecting Stories
We meet a lot of nice people while exploring for marbles, and as we explain in Chapter 10 “Connecting Through Collecting” in The Secret Life of Marbles, this is one of our primary joys of finding marbles. We also enjoy talking to other marble people about what we have found. These are the perks of collecting for us. One woman recently asked, after she saw us searching asked if we liked to cook! Well she gave us herbs to transplant to our own garden. They are now thriving, and we think of her when we cook with them.
Another time, in Old Dauphin Way Historic District, we met a woman who lived in one of the older homes who was out walking her dog. Of course, she asked what we had lost and we told her about looking for marbles. In a bit she headed home, but soon she caught up to us. This time she had a handful of vintage marbles, and she said that she had looked for years for someone to help her identify them. They were nice old Vitros, Peltiers, and one or two Alleys. She was so excited!
Others Share Their Stories
Often, people will tell us all about the marbles they had as children, and they almost always share whether or not they have found old marbles around their cottages, bungalows, and stately homes. In Church Street East Historic District a gentleman saw where we were looking and after our explanations he said that he had found marbles ( and one broken half) exactly where we were looking!
We belong to a number of online blogs, and we have seen some exciting marbles when people post their finds. We have no idea whether or not others go alone to search for marbles, but for us finding the lost treasures is as much a team sport as losing them in the first place! Mobile is a gorgeous community for searching and we plan to keep rambling just as long as we can!
- We have been very fortunate to meet a lot of friendly people while out exploring. However, you must not intrude into peoples’ privacy or trespass onto their land. Unless we have permission to enter private land, we look only on public easements, such as sandy lanes or paved streets.
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