Shoeshine Kits, Snow Shovels and a Projector: Mobile Remembers the First Job
As a new class of graduates went looking for work, novelists, doctors, lawyers and legislators from the Mobile area recalled the jobs that taught them what work was, at a…
Bernie Dittman, the Man Who Made WABB the Sound of Mobile, Dies at 79
For nearly 50 years Bernie Dittman ran WABB as an independent family station, turning down offers from the giants of corporate radio. Colleagues remembered a fierce competitor and a loyal…
Mon Louis Island and a Servant’s Reward: The French Roots of a Mobile Family
The second installment of a Mobile family memoir traces a French line back to Bienville's settlers, to land between Bayou La Batre and Coden, and to how Mon Louis Island…
Lessons From a Hospital Bed: How a Mobile Stockbroker Learned to Stop Chasing the Last Dollar
The concluding installment of a Mobile memoir: a foul-mouthed doctor diagnoses a pulmonary embolism, a broker survives, and a man decides that a million-dollar year is not what he will…
The Bottom Came in December: A Mobile Broker on the 1974 Crash, Recovery, and a Diagnosis He Did Not Expect
In the gloom of late 1974 a Mobile stockbroker drew up two models of the future and labeled them Doom and Boom. The market gave him his answer on December…
Six Broadcasts a Day: A Mobile Broker’s Life on the Radio and in the 1974 Bear Market
A longtime Mobile stockbroker recalls the years he read market reports over WLPR, the punishing bear market of 1974, and the new options game that helped keep his family afloat.
Passed Over at 48: A Mobile Broker’s Account of Losing the Manager’s Job He Had Earned
In the next installment of his recollections, a Mobile stockbroker described reaching the top of his profession in 1968, then being displaced as office manager the following year by a…
A Mobile Broker Remembers the Week His Firm Walked Out and Took the Clients With It
In a January 2005 installment of his recollections of a bygone Mobile, a retired stockbroker described the frantic fortnight in which he and his partners opened a new office and…
‘You’re in Deep Trouble’: A Mobile Broker’s Rough First Year Under a New Firm’s Rules
A retired Mobile stockbroker recalled the punishing first year at a new firm, where unfamiliar exchange rules, an unhappy back office and a parsimonious owner made for slow going and…
Bring Wall Street to Main Street: A Mobile Broker’s First Licensed Years
Part three of a memoir of a bygone Mobile: a Christmas bonus paid in whiskey, an NYSE exam graded by the boss, and a tape so slow a quote took…