Dirt Cheap, Bettye Fine, Granola, and Gambling in Disguise

Bettye Fine Collins

Anyone who knows Bettye Fine Collins knows how much she loves a bargain. If she had bought stock in T.J. Maxx or Mazer’s years ago when she first started shopping at discount stores, she’ be living in Palm Beach today. She simply likes to collect things, especially clothes. Her wardrobe grew so exponentially over the years she was in public life that she had to convert the guest bedroom in her home into a closet. (Elton John’s is just a few feet smaller). If she started today wearing two outfits a day, I doubt she could wear everything on the racks, some with new tags, before the Lord calls her home. I’ll leave it to psychologists to answer why people collect things they don’t need or use, though I suspect in Bettye’s case, it has something to do with her very modest childhood in Cullman County and rivalry with her brother Joe Fine, one of the most financially successful lobbyist in the history of the State. Before she was Bettye Fine Collins, she was “Betty Jo Fine”. She married Bill Collins who was a great guy with an easy going personality but did not have an ambition to match hers. Highly intelligent and energetic, she set about making her fortune in the real estate business while Bill was content to run his gas station. On the side, she did politics and along the way went back to college to earn a degree. I thought she was unfairly criticized for this when she used the County’s fund for employee development. There was no law against a commissioner being treated like any other employee and she was a role model for many older employees who went back to school, post age 50.

When I mentioned to her my fondness for Hudson’s Dirt Cheap over in Mississippi and showed her some of the things I had found there, she was chomping at the bit to make a trip and check them out. I discovered Dirt Cheap while traveling back and forth to the New Orleans area to visit close friends, Frank and Sheree Stuart. I would stop in Meridian, then Hattiesburg, and then Picayune where Hudson’s had stores. I was so impressed by their business model, I met with their senior management to talk them into coming to Birmingham. Mayor Langford also met with them and assigned them to his economic development department for assistance. This was just one of the things that got lost in the cracks when Larry was removed from office. Hudson’s liked to rent space in buildings that had gone through a couple of cycles of use; like a K-Mart that descended into a cheap clothing store and now was standing empty and blighted. Unfortunately, Birmingham had a number of locations that fit this model and was a perfect market for them.

The parent store of Dirt Cheap was aptly named Hudson’s Treasure Hunt. It was. Over the years, I had found all sorts of things from baby grand pianos from a flooded music store in Florida and a toy Noah’s Arc, to office supplies and computer parts from closed OfficeMax stores. I was shocked when after 9-11, I discovered there the entire stock from Century 21, a store that stood in the shadow of the World Trade Center that I often visited when in New York. I bought a Concord ladies watch for $20 bucks that turned out to be 18k gold and listed for $1200. Not everything turned out this well. Once I bought a carload of granola cereal that was ten cents a box. It was too good a bargain to pass up and I had so much of it, I decided to repackage it and send it to friends around the Country as Christmas presents. I even gave some to my pest control man. After Christmas, he was spraying my office and asked if I were having any pest problems. I told him that as a matter of fact, I was puzzled over these tiny moths that were flying everywhere. He said he knew the problem. “We were having the same problem at home.” he said. “You know that granola you gave me, doctor?” He didn’t need to say more as my heart stopped. I immediately called my friends to see if they had any left and encourage them to discard it. Much to my embarrassment, every one of them bragged about how good it had been and asked if I could get more. Since they were all still breathing, I decided to let it go and save the story with the truth about the larvae invested granola for our old age. It’s arrived; so now they know. It’s a lesson in life: Beware of half-Greeks bearing gifts of granola.

 

The day of the big trip came and we left Dirt Cheap in Meridian with bags of junk. Then Bettye asked how close we were to the Choctaw Casinos in Philadelphia. I suggested we were no more than an hour away. She said nothing as I resumed our tour of Meridian where my friend John Robert Smith was mayor. I wanted her to see their brilliantly restored opera house. But she spied a shop on the corner of 26^th street and suddenly ordered me to stop. I waited in the car until she emerged twenty minutes later with long black hair and brilliant red lipstick. She donned a pair of oversized glasses and asked if I thought anyone would recognize her. “Not unless they are used to seeing county commissioners dressed like aging streetwalkers”, I thought, but before I could answer, we were off to the Silver Star.

We had only been there a short while when Bettye won $500 on a 50 cent slot machine. I had the feeling she felt very much at home spinning the reels, but the official Republican position in Alabama was to oppose gambling in any form. So much so, that Governor Riley was able to blithely ignore the monies he received from the Choctaw political PACs, distributed by Jack Abramoff, while he declared unholy war on Milton McGregor and others like Greentrack, operating in the State. As the Republican National Committeewoman, it would have been unseemly for Bettye to even be near a casino. She complained about how uncomfortable the wig was but persevered. I laughed when the head of security for HealthSouth who was there on a trip with his wife, approached me and asked if she was my mother. “My mother is blonde,” I replied. He said he knew who it was as I suggested he keep it to himself if he valued his life.

It was getting late, so we spent the night…..in separate rooms. Politics makes strange bedfellows, but not that strange.