It’s at the corner of Carter Hill and McGehee Roads and where I banked. Back as far as the “Roaring 20s”, out on the outskirts of town, there was this notorious dive called the Green Lantern on this site. It was “gangster built”, dark inside, had a dance floor, served platter-sized steaks. Out back was a row of tiny bungalows where patrons could rest for a few minutes. When Gay Meadows Subdivision overtook it in the 1960s, the Green Lantern had become somewhat respectable, but it none-the-less picked up and moved 15 miles further southeast. Union Bank bought the property, built a branch there, hung the original green lantern on its pylon, and named it the “Green Lantern Branch”. Why not? –Everyone in town knew where that was. Even the adjacent Post Office was named “Green Lantern Branch” by the US Postal Service.
-
- The original Green Lantern as it existed in 1966, shortly before it relocated out US 231. Look above the sign, and you can see the actual green lantern that was used to signal the dive was open.
-
- 1967 – Interior of Union Bank and Trust. Courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History
-
- 1967 – Union Bank and Trust. Courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History
-Charles Humphries