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"Right now we're out of bumper stickers," says Chamber of Commerce president Anne Sweitzer, whose office is a museum of spiritual quotations, such as this gem: THE HEART NEVER RESTETH TILL IT FINDETH REST IN THEE. "But we're very proud to be the fire-hydrant capital of the world."
Lloyd Darnell says Mueller moved to Albertville in 1975 because operating costs were too high in California. It makes 500 fire hydrants a day, in an array of colors, and when stacked on pallets for delivery, the bonnets of the hydrants look like the tops of Sno-Kones. Houston orders them light blue with white trim. Indianapolis, Ind., likes them aquamarine.
"We're pretty much tied to housing starts," says Darnell. Las Vegas, the fastest-growing city in America, is a big customer. "Someone might run over one now and then, but other than that, they don't wear out. With new subdivisions, though, the orders keep coming in. Sometimes we'll do 600 in a day."
The annual payroll at Mueller is $14 million, and the money is earned. Tour this plant, and you get a reminder of what hard labor is. There is no easy way to forge a 500-lb. fire hydrant out of molten railroad tracks. It's hot, loud, dirty, physical work. In an eight-hour shift that begins at 7, you get two 10-minute breaks and a 15-minute lunch.
Royce Clayton, 60, who has worked at the same exact machine for 23 years, goes fishing in his mind every day. That hook he brings down off the crane, to load the underground elbow of the hydrant onto a machine that bores holes into it, might as well be the hook at the end of a line he drops into Guntersville Lake. No fewer than 256 times a day, every day, he drops his line.
There's catfish in the lake, Royce says. Bass and crappie too. When he doesn't think about fishing, he thinks about eating at the Catfish Cabin. "It's best hush puppies you ever ate."
And that's how Royce gets through the day. "People say I'm lying, but I like coming in here," says Royce. "I can't sit still. You can ask my wife."
Billy Watson, the man they call Opie because he looks a little like the kid from Mayberry, was drenched with sweat one day in the Mueller lunchroom, where he made himself a sandwich of white bread and vacuum-packed ham he'd brought from home. On the job since he got out of high school 15 years ago, Watson connects the aboveground portion of hydrants to the belowground portion, pushing iron logs around with the help of an overhead crane.
"Your feet hurt, and you'll be home mowing the grass on Saturday, and your hands will go numb on you," he says. All of which is relative; he's happy to have the job, the benefits, the $12 an hour. "After you've worked in a poultry plant," which he did briefly, "nothing's so bad you can't handle it."
Opie's got his mind on something else all day too, like Royce. After his kids Ashley, 12, and Caleb, 9, were born, he and his wife Rhonda started thinking about a bigger house. They'd look at magazines for design ideas and go and get books out of the library, books on how to build a place because it'd be cheaper that way. They paid off all their bills too, and when Opie fell in love with seven quiet acres several years ago on the shoulder of Sand Mountain, they bought the property.
They bought the dream.