I was brand new as music director at the First Methodist church a few blocks north when I started roaming around the neighborhood. The brick front and the plants outside the windows on Gurnee drew me in. I went in curious. We had just bought the farm.
Early afternoon. Big open windows. Sunlight coming in. Baskets of seed for sale, garden tools. A few people in the store. R.D. was in a straw hat and apron. He asked if he could help me. I told him I was the new music director at the church down the street. Looking for a stirrup hoe — we'd just bought a farm out in North Anniston, behind the Walmart. "I know that place," he said. "That was Johnny Bullock's place. He sold it?" "Did you get the big greenhouse with it?" We did. He smiled in recognition. He introduced me to Lewis right there. Lewis mentioned they knew several people at the church, something about his sister getting married around that time. I bought a stirrup hoe.
The $600 Store
The building at 1030 Gurnee Avenue has been in the Downing family since 1963. Lewis's grandfather walked across the street to buy a gallon of paint. The owner of the Mary Carter Paint Supply store offered to sell the whole thing for $600. He bought it.
A gallon of paint that became a family business. What happened after: the Mary Carter chain went bankrupt in the late sixties, and the Downings had to figure out what they were selling. They stayed with hardware and garden, picked up a True Value affiliation. Then Lewis's grandmother added sewing notions and fabrics. It made no sense on paper. Seed packets and upholstery fabric in the same building. It also made them impossible to replace.
When Lewis took full ownership in 2017, the store had been on Gurnee for fifty-four years. He doubled its growth in the years that followed. The inventory runs to European upholstery fabrics and leather hides alongside organic fertilizers and bulk seed. He cuts polyurethane foam forms for the regional upholstery trade. He sets plants out at a quarter of eight every morning.
He started at the University of Alabama. Then Jacksonville State. The store pulled him back both times. He grew up in it. The smell of fertilizer. Heavy upholstery fabric. The ink from the Anniston Star's print shop next door, where his mother worked.
Downing and Sons on Gurnee Avenue.
The Alley
The address is 1030 Gurnee Avenue. Next door, across an alley, is 1031.
On May 14, 1961, a Greyhound bus carrying Freedom Riders pulled into Anniston. A mob was waiting. The attack happened in that alley. That building is now the Freedom Riders National Monument.
I walked past that alley every week for four years. It was just part of downtown.
Lewis Downing has run his family's business in that shadow his whole adult life. He supports the work of preserving what Gurnee Avenue was and acknowledging what happened there. The "Model City" is what Anniston called itself once.
The "Model City" is what Anniston called itself once.
R.D.
His father Robert served sixteen years as a Calhoun County Commissioner, from 1994 to 2010. His colleagues called him the "resident tree hugger." He took it as a compliment. He pushed energy-efficiency programs for county buildings, saved Calhoun County roughly $50,000 a year in operating costs. He helped found the McClellan Joint Powers Authority after Fort McClellan closed in 1999, arguing for a redevelopment plan built for people fifty years out, not the next election cycle.
He also walked into Downing and Sons most days it was open.
He would come to the farmers market when we were selling flowers. He was just perusing. The market was a few blocks from the store, around twenty twenty-two at the Coldwater Mountain Brewing parking lot. He'd already been a county commissioner by then. But he'd make his way over and walk the booths.
It may have been on a later visit that I bought some pruning shears. Lewis told me he used to work for a landscaping company in high school and those were his favorite shears. That led to Sacred Heart. He went to Sacred Heart Catholic School, and I was a member of that church in high school. He knew a lot of the same people I knew from there.
The Farm Years
The second year we were vendors at the farmers market, the market was out behind R.D.'s in his alleyway. They would both come and buy flowers, and Lewis would buy eggs. They always stopped to chat with Heather and me. They patronized us. We patronized them.
I'd come in asking about Purple Hull pea seeds. They showed me what they had, put them in a brown envelope. Normal store service. I'd see Lewis around too — at Aldi, at Domino's a couple times, at Camp Lee dropping the kids off for summer day camp.
After the farm closed, he helped me with seeds for the vegetable garden. He'd say hello and ask how things were going. We're about the same age.
The Bible
In December 2024, the Anniston City Council appointed Lewis unanimously to fill the Ward 1 vacancy left by Jay Jenkins. He was sworn in with his hand on his great-grandmother's Bible. The Bible dates to the early 1920s. His father had used it when he was sworn in to the Calhoun County Commission.
R.D. was in the room. His first official act as councilman was to move to adjourn the meeting.
He ran for a full term in August 2025. He won in a landslide. He is now Vice Mayor, serving alongside Mayor Ciara Smith-Roston, the city's first Black female mayor and its youngest ever.
He grew up on 10th Street. He and his wife Katie eventually bought the same house and raised their first two children there.
Ward 1 includes downtown Anniston and a large piece of the former Fort McClellan, 18,000 acres of former military land that the city has been trying to figure out since 1999. Lewis chairs Main Street Anniston. He served on the Downtown Development Authority when his own store doubled in growth. He talks about roads in terms of traffic volume and resident density, not politics. He has said he ran because of a milestone birthday, because he wanted to be an asset and not a liability.
Heather works as program manager at the Longleaf Event Center at the Anniston Museum of Natural History. A couple of weeks ago Lewis came through to organize a town hall meeting. He asked about the farm. He hadn't known we'd sold it. He was sad when he said it.
She told me about it while we were out for a walk, the next day. We were walking down Little John Road in Pleasant Valley, where we live now. Looking at the cows, talking to them like we usually do. Watching the sun go down.
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