Trey Oliver, co-owner with his wife Laura Kennedy of the Lupercalia Art Society, shares his background growing up in Jackson and Mobile, serving four years in the Coast Guard in North Carolina during marijuana-smuggling days, and completing a 47-year public safety career culminating as warden of the Mobile Metro Jail before retiring three years ago.
He recounts early jobs, joining the junior volunteer fire department, and working nights as a dispatcher and jailer in high school. Oliver explains how walking the beach Dauphin Island and seeing the driftwood inspired him to create driftwood assemblage art. He describes Lupercalia as an art society with a gallery that is focused on providing top notch customer service.
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Transcript:
Trey: Hi, I'm Trey Oliver. And my wife Laura Kennedy, and I are the owners of Lupercalia Art Society.
Marcus: Yay. It is exciting to get you on the podcast, man. I'm really excited about about this.
Trey: i'm excited to be here. Yeah, thanks the invitation.
Marcus: So, um, to get started, let's get you to tell a little bit about yourself. So, where are you from?
Did you go to school here locally? High school and college. You said you're married, so maybe give us some backstory there and then we'll kind of get into it here in
Trey: Okay, so I was born in Mobile, like most everyone else in this area, the old mobile infirmary.
Was raised up in Jackson. My dad was a, a paper maker with the paper mill there. Mom worked for the newspaper, so I grew up in, in j in Jackson. And, um, but have spent most of my life here in Mobile. Uh, I have four children and, uh, seven grandchildren. And, um, I, I retired about three years ago. I, I've wrapped up a 47 year, um, law enforcement public safety career.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: The last 14 [00:01:00] years I was the warden at Metro Jail. And you
Marcus: can say hi to everybody.
Trey: Yeah. Still to this day, I run into customers and clients from
Marcus: Yeah. I was like, that's gotta be an awkward, like, Hey, I know you from somewhere. You know, like,
Trey: oh, no, you don't. It can be, it can be mixed reactions. Yeah.
But for the most part. Uh, because I was sitting in the corner office up front, they, they didn't associate me with all the bad things that happened in the
Marcus: back. Yeah, I hear you.
Trey: Yeah. I was the one that gave them breaks or I was the one that helped them get a, a job when they got out or, yeah. Or whatever.
Marcus: I, I just kid, you know.
Trey: Yeah. But no, but still there's people that would, would threaten me if they saw me out there today.
Marcus: I'm, I am sure that there are a few, as there are for, I'm sure for me as well, so for different reasons, but, um, no, it's really cool. Did you go to school here?
Trey: No, I went to Jackson Academy, Jackson Academy
Marcus: in
Trey: college and went to, uh, went to Faulkner University and to College of the Auburn Mall in North Carolina when I was in the Coast Guard.
Marcus: Really?
Trey: Yeah. Cape Hat's. I was there for, uh, three and a [00:02:00] half years.
Marcus: How long were you in the Coast Guard?
Trey: Uh, only four years. I gave, I tell people, I gave them the four of the best years of my life.
Marcus: I bet.
Yeah.
Trey: I really enjoyed it. It was, it was fun. It was law enforcement. It was public safety. It was rescue, search and rescue.
Marcus: Yeah. My uncle was, uh. A commander, if I remember correctly. Oh,
Trey: really?
Marcus: Forgive me if I've got that wrong. Uh, yeah, John Laier, he was stationed in South Florida, so I can imagine the things that he's, he's seen. Um, but yeah.
Trey: Well, what's really neat is I'm a history nerd and the outer banks of North Carolina is where the Coast Guard started.
It was called the Life Saving Service.
Marcus: Interesting.
Trey: And their motto was, we have to go out, but we don't have to come back. They still take that serious to this day out there. Wow. They'll tell you that until after you sign the recruiting paper.
Marcus: I'm sure. Well, it's a pleasure to have you actually sitting in here instead of, you know, and yeah.
That's amazing. So what were you doing? What did you do in the Coast Guard?
Trey: I was a radio one.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: But that meant that when marijuana bails, this was during the, uh. The height of the marijuana wars, that meant, oh
Marcus: my gosh.
Trey: Whenever bells of marijuana started washing up on the shores, the outer banks, [00:03:00] it was all hands on neck.
You grab the shotgun, you get the Jeep, and you go out there and you guard these bells of marijuana with the tourists taken off.
Marcus: I just saw a documentary. It was, I, I guess I got feted on YouTube. And it was the documentary about the um, south Florida town where they went in and they arrested like 80% of the men in the town because the whole town, it's down near Naples and I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it was hilarious 'cause they were talking about we're gonna go out and get some Square grouper.
Square grouper, square grouper. And they use heard terms square grouper for, and they, they would just. Um, they, they were fishermen and they would just go out and they would get these bales of marijuana easy money, and they were talking, you know?
Trey: Oh
yeah.
Marcus: It wasn't just one or two, it was boatloads. Right.
They were buying like,
Trey: and there's an interesting story behind that. Uh, well, first of all, that little town in Florida, we're thinking of the name of it in a minute. Sounds like Phoenix City, Alabama.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: Which, [00:04:00] um. Allowed gambling and then prostitution, then organized crime came in. Yeah, I just read a, an updated article on that just the other day.
It's, you check it out, Phoenix City. It's an amazing piece of history. It was the number one most dangerous city in the world, in the country during the thirties and forties, I think.
Marcus: Wow.
Trey: Yeah, I mean, I mean, there was a, a, a guy that won the election for Attorney General. He was murdered a couple nights before he took office In the current sitting.
Attorney General was in on it. I mean, it was deep corruption, but you know, here's the thing. In the seventies, the, the drug dealers were always a step ahead of us.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Because I was, I was at the group office, so we were headquarters for like 300 miles. The outer banks. Okay. We were, our motto was Guardians of the graveyard, because that's the Atlantic graveyard out there where hundreds and hundreds of shipwrecks are.
So these, these, um, smugglers would hire motherships to come in the, uh, inland coastal [00:05:00] mafia. People would still, uh, shrimp boats. Shrimp boats would go out to the, uh, mothership, offload 'em to the, uh, shrimp boats. Shrimp boats would come in, uh, on shore. Undercover of darkness. Mm-hmm. Then they would offload it into U-Haul trucks.
And then so the law enforcement the next day would wake up and find, uh, abandoned U-Haul trucks ditched in on the side of these, uh, far away places next to runways or rural airports that they would burn the shrimp boats, destroy all the evidence. And I'll never forget, I had, I had the SBI was a state bureau of investigation.
DEA, I had a lot of big wigs in my radio room and we had like five coast guard stations under our command and we were about to catch these guys and all of a sudden a mayday came across well
Marcus: and everything
Trey: so that we got to drop what we're doing and go and go to that. And it was, it was a false mayday.
It was so, and you know, there had to be corruption somewhere, so, yeah. Yeah, those days of. [00:06:00] Of the bail. I
Marcus: didn't realize it was that. So it was before the eighties. 'cause the eighties was cocaine, cowboys and
Trey: all that stuff. Right. Of course. Reagan, what was it, 83 when Reagan started the war on drugs. War on drugs.
This was leading up to that.
Marcus: I was, I was one of the kids that went to a White House for a drug free America back in DC When that, uh, when that whole started,
Trey: what year was that?
Right,
Marcus: that was probably around 80. Five or something 80, somewhere in that. And
Trey: that all started because that DE agent was assassinated.
Mm-hmm. Right. You know, and it was just,
Marcus: it's, you know, it's wild to see, you know, think back in all the things that, uh, that used to transpire. I mean, now marijuana's legal most everywhere, you know, except here. Might as well
Trey: be.
Marcus: Might as well be, you know, so, I
Trey: mean, we smell it every day, every night. 3 58 Dolphin
Marcus: Street.
Yeah. I mean it's, it's uh, you know, it's at least, you know, uh, looked the other way. So, but, um, anyway, let's, first job, what was your first job and are there any lessons that you remember from that?
Trey: Oh, absolutely. So growing up in a small town, [00:07:00] um, a. 14-year-old boy could ride his motorcycle anywheres. Mm-hmm.
And my very first job was at Billy's Burger house.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: And I think I made a dollar and something cents an hour. I did that for about a year. Rode my motorcycle up there. No, I think, no, after, I think I rode my bicycle up there first, then later rode my motorcycle. So I might have been, I was, I was, it was illegal for me to be working,
Marcus: but you
Trey: could ride
Marcus: a
Trey: motorcycle, whatever you Yeah.
Didn't get paid. He paid you cash. It was fine. And, um, that got old, you know, customer service. Is a tough job. And yeah. And I found out quickly that even as a kid, this is just, you know, people would be ugly at something wrong. This hamburgers, yeah. Along this milkshake. And then, so I was unemployed for a couple of months, about three months.
And then when I turned 16, uh, I was on the Junior Volunteer Fire department in Jackson, Alabama.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: It was probably the most. Well equipped, well organized Junior Fi, we were under the Boy Scouts Explorer program.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: This was [00:08:00] 1975. We had a 1963 international harvester. Mid pump, six wheel drive Firer.
Nice. It was a one of a kind, the fire chief himself, um, ordered it.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: From International Harvester. His name was George Skipper. He was in the insurance business. He was the fire chief, and we would actually go to fires. You couldn't get away with that today either.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah.
Trey: And so once you started working with the fire department.
You got in with the police department. Mm-hmm. And my best friend at the time was a dispatcher and he says, Hey Trey, I'm gonna quit. Go do something else. You want my job? I said, yeah. So I met with the police Chief Bill Taylor, we're friends to this day. So I was a dispatcher and a jailer. My last two years of high school,
Marcus: so that you,
Trey: I worked the midnight to eight in the morning shift, got off work, ran home, changed clothes, took a shower, went to school, got out at one o'clock, went home and went to sleep six days a week.
So I tell my kids and my grandkids, I've been working since I was [00:09:00] 14 minus two months, and of course it's three years I've been retired.
Marcus: Wow.
Trey: Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, it was, it was just, and I had law enforcement. My, uh, uncle was a retired or. He retired as a Lieutenant Mobile Police department. Another uncle retired as a, as an FBI agent.
So I heard all these stories and then, you know, working in a, in a small town behind the microphone, you gotta see everything, you know? Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, the Allman Brothers. Uh, were arrested back in 70, early seventies or late sixties, and there's, they etched their signature and on the jail cell, Alman brothers are still there.
To this day, you
Marcus: put a bulletproof oath piece of glass over that man. That's,
Trey: and that caught a dark, the dark side of society, even in a small town. And politics too, I
Marcus: mean. You get a view of all of it. I would imagine that that, so that radio position makes sense for your radio position with the Coast Guard.
Trey: Exactly. It just, it
Marcus: was, everything just kind of went,
Trey: mapped out. You know?
Marcus: That's really interesting. Uh, I, I didn't know that about you, so I'm, [00:10:00] that's, uh, good to fill in the, the blanks, but you're a far cry from radio or jails with your current. Uh,
Trey: no kidding
Marcus: business.
Trey: You talk about a dichotomy, I mean, wow.
Marcus: Yeah. So, uh, how, so Luca, tell, tell us about, tell them about Luca. Okay. Alright. And then, um, you know, tell us about what Luca and also how, like, how did you get into this?
Trey: Okay. I'll make it as short as I can.
Marcus: Sure.
Trey: I, I was a late bloomer, however, when I was, uh, 10, 11, and 12 years old, back during the late sixties and early seventies.
The dolphin, the island lighthouse was still working.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: And my family would go camping at that little campground, private campground, two or three times, four times a summer. In those days, they just let me roam the beach.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: At night. And I can remember many of. Almost midnight nights on the beach on Dolphin Island.
With that lighthouse
Marcus: light [00:11:00] pollution is non-existent,
Trey: right? It was that an oil rig. The only lights you saw were shrimp boats and cruise and, and ships, oil tankers and things and that lighthouse and, and those boats. And being on Dolphin Island. Just sort of, it, it was very romantic. It, I mean, it was just, it made an impression on me and I was sort of a nostalgic kind of guy anyway.
Always wanted to be a poet or writer, that kind of stuff. Yeah. But I, I never got, never was good at it. So I'm out there one night late at night, and all this driftwood on this particular night was on the beach because of the, the tides normally the beaches were clear.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And even as a kid at 10 and 11 and 12 years old, I said, man, this is beautiful.
This is made by Mother Nature. You know, it's got barnacles on it. It's been twisted, high wind, strong tides. It's even then I said, you know what, if I could sell this stuff and make money, I'd be a rich person. Fantasizing. Yeah. Fast forward to 16 years ago, uh, where it was, it was Mardi [00:12:00] Gras 16 years ago, and we were at a, uh.
A beach house on, uh, Fort Morgan Road, spending a week, Mardi Gras week. Mm-hmm. Want to get the heck out of town. Yeah. You know, and I, I took, uh, I didn't take my motorboat or my sailboat, so I took my, uh, canoe.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: And I launched my canoe in the back bay, a box secured. And, and that was sentimental in nostalgia too, because my grandmother, my dad's mother was born and raised and bought secure.
Still had a lot of contacts and kin folks in there.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And just canoe and, and the areas you can't get to by motorboat, you run across the old civil war, uh, dugouts and, and canon batteries and things, you know, and it, the ties were changing. There's driftwood on the beach. So I, I said, you know what? I can remember when I was 12 years old, fantas.
So I picked up a canoe load of. Driftwood.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: A bad storm. I mean, a bad storm came out, my wife almost called a coast guard out on me and [00:13:00] I finally made it back in by just walking and dragging my, my canoe up. 'cause you couldn't pat on against that wind. And she said, what in the hell are you gonna do with all this junk?
I said, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah.
Marcus: I, I'll figure something out.
Trey: Yeah, I'll figure something out. And so during some downtimes over the next week, I started, you know, just playing with it. Took it home. We had two vehicles, thank God. 'cause she wouldn't had all that stuff in her vehicle. I got home, started tinkering with it, and I started making collages or assemblages of driftwood.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: With the challenge of not altering the design or the shape, just finding pieces that
Marcus: that would go together naturally.
Trey: Exactly, exactly. And it was, it was amazing. I had made about 50 of those pieces. Never once thought about it being art. Never once.
Marcus: Right.
Trey: I had it all at, lived in one of those little shotgun, uh, gun houses over in con, um, church Street East.
And my, actually, this was was before I was married, so my Buckman comes through one day. I'll never forget it. He, [00:14:00] we became sort of friends and we were always chit-chatting and he said, Trey, you really come a long ways with your art.
Marcus: He used a word that you had not associated with it before.
Trey: Never.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And I said. Well, thank you. I, I think it's a compliment. Thank you. Oh, no. Then he said, hell, I wouldn't mind having a one of these pieces in my house. That's what he said. He said, this ARC's really? So that planted the seed. Two weeks later it was Art Walk and I got on the corner there at the cathedral. A third of a block from, from where Luca is today.
Yeah, I was
Marcus: gonna say. Yeah.
Trey: And I set up three tables. And I staged them nicely. I bought some, some tablecloths and things that looked really neat, but I was scared as Hades 'cause you know, um, people knew my face.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And a lot of people knew who I was and I wasn't about to claim me, knew that was mine. So I put my straw hat on my, my, uh, Panama jack cat, my uh, my sunglasses, my clipboard, and put it, [00:15:00] and that was across the street.
It was still daylight. The first 21 people that walked by my art display and didn't stop. I said, okay, I'm just gonna get in my truck and drive away. You know? Yeah. This, this is embarrassing. Then the first person stopped. Then the second person stopped and the one, a lady touched something and I said, it's either now or never.
So I walk across the street and I said, I just came up with something. I said something speaking to you that sounded pretty artistic to me. Is something speaking to you, something speaking to you, talking driftwood. And she looks at me and, and she said, as a matter of fact, yes. And she said, and she starts talking about it.
She said, would you mind if I take a picture of it? And I'm thinking, well that's like shoplifting. You're gonna take a picture of it and walk outta here then Yeah. I said, sure, go ahead. Two people later bought, bought that that night. I sold nine pieces.
Marcus: Nice.
Trey: I took off my straw hat, I took off my sunglasses and I got there and I owned that.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And I, I found out, and, and any artist listening to me, they know when you take that [00:16:00] first step, it is a huge leap of faith.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: Even if. I mean, we all fear rejection or criticism, you know? But what you soon learn is you can't take it personal.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Because like you and I could go next door over to lip Alia, and we have blank checks, and you could be told, you can have any piece in here you want.
Mm-hmm. That probably wouldn't be too hard for you, even though there's 679 pieces of art over there.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Because there's gotta be something normally that you could afford, but that appealed to you. That spoke to you or your soul. And it would fit your motif in your house or office,
Marcus: right? Yeah. Yeah.
Trey: Those stars have to line up before someone buys it.
So I saw nine pieces of art and then it was, that's free. Yeah. You couldn't stop me. Yeah.
Marcus: No, that's really cool. Especially for first time out. 'cause I know, I mean, I'm, I'm kind of, I'm kind of in that spot now 'cause I'm, you know, been doing this woodworking thing and a lot of people have been making comments and so I'm starting to kind of go down that path.
So I've got. A [00:17:00] new domain name. I've got a new website. I've got like Facebook pages and Pinterest pages and all kinds of stuff that I've created in to, in order to support the woodworking, uh, thing making. What do you I haven't told anybody about it.
Trey: What do, what do you like to make?
Marcus: Um, well, I've made, uh, full, uh, patio furniture set for our house.
I did a big. Um, seven foot. Um, it's made out of, uh, black, uh, Poplar. Um, it's a live edge table with a black, uh, epoxy center. Um,
Trey: you did the center?
Marcus: Yeah, I did. All I did I mailed, I think maybe I've
Trey: seen something on Facebook. Yeah.
Marcus: I mean, I'll show you some pictures afterwards, but I mean, like, I've done everything from that.
I've done cabinets, uh, for, I mean, when I say cabinets, I don't think people understand, like I started with plywood, right? I didn't start with cabinets and then just install the cabinets, right? I started with. Plywood. And so, um, so I did some cabinets for, you know, our office at the house and then did a big, um, it's [00:18:00] 10 feet.
From one wall to the other by two or so feet, two and a half feet, uh, deep. And I'm, everything in our house is made of Cyprus, or a lot of, oh, the, the woods that we use. So our cabinets are Cyprus, the pergola on the front of Cyprus. So when I made our bed for, for us, our bed is made outta Cyprus. The, um, I bet that's
Trey: gorgeous.
Marcus: Yeah. I mean it's, you know, like I look at things as an artist, so I look at it and I'm like, damn, I really wish I could redo that.
Trey: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You can't, you can't
Marcus: ignore. But at the same time, other people look at it and they're like, oh my God, that's amazing.
Trey: So,
Marcus: you know, you know,
Trey: we, we joke among ourselves, some of the best artists are scavengers.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And dumpster divers.
Marcus: Yeah, for sure. We saw one lady at Art Walk and we were kind of laughing, laughing, but it was, it's ingenious like. You know, they, she was like using skeleton remains from like, carcasses of like rodents and stuff.
Trey: Yes.
Marcus: And you know, we're into kind of those weird kind of things. And so, uh, but it was just, you know, it's [00:19:00] interesting 'cause it's, you're right, it does have to kind of line up with who you are as a person.
The motif of your house, you know, the size has to be correct. Yeah. You know, 'cause if it's a big wall, you can't put a tiny piece. If it's a tiny wall, you can't, you know what I mean? Like, so there's a lot of things that have to align
Trey: and so many people. Over the last six and a half years will say, I love art, but I don't have room for one more piece.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: But they'll, they'll buy something anyway. But still, that's why I tell people if you, if you create a large piece, you sort of limit your market.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: Because it's too expensive to ship. Yeah. Or too big to ship. And most people don't have, unless there's someone just starting out or they, they're. Are redoing their whole house.
Most people aren't gonna invest in one large piece.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Later in life. Like a baby boomer.
Marcus: Right, right.
Trey: For some exceptions. But
Marcus: yeah, now there's been a couple of PE and I just don't have the ability to do it right now. But there's been a couple of pieces in your shop and also at Art Walk that I've just been like, man, I really want that.
But you know, one of these days so well, [00:20:00] um, so Lu is an art gallery?
Trey: It is. Well, it's more, it's an art society with a gallery. Okay.
Marcus: Explain that.
Trey: Sure. Well, let's see. Um, about seven and a half years ago, well, I, so I was a street artist mm-hmm. At Art Walk for about three or four years.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: When it was winter, I froze.
When it was summer, I sweat it and it was a lot of work to load everything up, haul it down here, unload it, set it up, hide your vehicle. Then take down just repeat. It was, it was just a lot of work.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And, uh, and
Marcus: it's only one opportunity to sell every month
Trey: and it's, exactly. And so finally this person came by and said, Trey, don't you get tired of doing this?
I said, yeah, but you know, I love it. And I'll always, I'll be the first person there, the last person to close, because I sort of picked up on, uh, when people are on their way back from partying from downtown or from taking in art walk when they're going back to their vehicle. Since they're going straight back, that's a prime time for them to [00:21:00] buy something.
But I also learned, once you kick in, well now I'll deliver for free for you. That helps make the sale too.
Marcus: Okay. Pause for just a second.
Trey: Yeah,
Marcus: because I, I think you just laid out two things that are so simple, but a lot of people won't think about them. So staying late, because after people have had dinner or whatever, when they're coming back, few drinks they want to buy, and then.
Ship it for 'em. It's such a simple thing, but
Trey: Oh, I'm, I'm telling you, I, I just, I, I, I just sort of accidentally happened across that.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And this lady was gonna buy this big piece of driftwood, uh, art that I had, and she said, that won't fit in my car. I said, no problem. Yeah. I said, where do you live? I'll deliver it within 24 hours to
Marcus: you.
Trey: And I did that a couple times. I said, well, okay, that's a magic formula. We do that next door. If, if I see someone looking at an expensive piece and they want it, they can afford it, but they say, well, we were, we're just now getting downtown. Or I said, no problem. I said, you pay for [00:22:00] it. You can pick it up later.
Or I, I'll deliver it to your hotel, we'll ship it to you. Or if you live within 60 miles, I'll deliver it to you. Here's my record. Marcus two years ago, a couple from Delaware came to Mobile for a wedding. They bought $3,000 worth of art from us.
Marcus: Nice.
Trey: They took some of it home. Yeah. They said we'll worry about the rest later.
Okay. They said, we're going to the key West here this summer and, and we'll hook up with you, sir. Hey, I'll, I'll meet you somewhere's halfway. Well, she called me about a week before I was supposed to meet them on, and we FaceTimed. She bought $5,000 more worth of art. Here's what she told me when she was there the first time.
She said, if I had a U-Haul van, I'd buy every damn thing in here. I said,
Marcus: pump the brakes, ladies.
Trey: Yeah, I
Marcus: gotta have something
Trey: to sell. I said, are you in the black market or something for art? She says, no, you don't understand. In the northeast, all people paint are landscapes and barns. Landscapes and barns.
She said, here I see [00:23:00] a magical unicorn, something you call the cre and leprechaun and, and, and, uh, Joe Kain over here and starfish over here, the crisis and
Marcus: leprechaun
Trey: and, oh, that's another story I gotta tell you about in a second. And she said, and your prices. A fraction of what we had to pay for art in Delaware.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: So here's what we did. I said, I'll tell you what, since you're buying so much, we're gonna do a free delivery. I'm gonna donate my time, but I will ask that you pay for my gas. Yeah. So I drove $8,000 worth of art from Mobile, Alabama to Jacksonville. The, um, what's, what the, the Beaver place, what do you call them?
Bucky Beaver. Bucky Beaver Bucky's. Yeah. Bucky's Bucky's there just south and north of Daytona, I guess. And we swapped. We swapped, oh my gosh. Like a drug deal. You know, that's, I mean, everything was wrapped up in black paper.
Marcus: Wow.
Trey: And, and so, and then word spread. And like I said, last year was the best year we ever had because we'll do anything.
Marcus: I was walking around, uh, earlier and just went over to a [00:24:00] coffee shop to get, uh, some coffee and I was walking by the singer and they had, of course, in that meeting hall next door, they had a bunch of artists up in the Yes. In the window. And I was just remarking. I was like, you know, this area is so. Um, culturally saturated and I just don't know how to impress that on people that don't live in this area, but when think they don't
Trey: understand it, 'cause they come down here, spend some
Marcus: time, but don't.
Yeah. When you think about the concentration and I would also lump, you know, new Orleans and this, uh, as well. There's just something about these two cities, although I think Mobile and New Orleans are very distinct and very unique. Mm-hmm.
Trey: New
Marcus: Orleans is a little bit grittier and dirtier. Right. And mobile is just kind of like, I don't know, it's just this really cool gem, but there's so many artists here and they have such different styles and mm-hmm.
Um, you know, ways of looking at the world and, and stuff. It was just, I don't know, it was just really interesting because whether it's music or, you know, painted pieces or, you know, people finding, you know, driftwood on the beach, you know, it's like everybody kind of has [00:25:00] that. And I don't know if it's maybe just we're slower at, you know, pace of life.
So we have the ability to think about
Trey: Yeah.
Marcus: Artistic things.
Trey: That's gotta be a fe, an ingredient. So we have a toast round here that goes like this, Marcus.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: We're not the big apple. We're not even the big easy.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: We're just a little quirky without being sleazy.
Marcus: Yeah. Cheers. That's great. I love it.
Trey: I mean, you, you think about it. You, you, you take it for granted 'cause you're used to it. But I talk to people, I talk a lot and I, and I get to, we're like a welcome center. Sure. Because we stay open late on Friday and Saturday nights,
Marcus: Uhhuh
Trey: and we sell the stew outta art to sober people. Locals who just had a fine meal.
They don't wanna go to a smoke field bar. They come in there or tours. I've had several people, one lady, you, her Uber, Uber stopped and she said, just put my luggage here on the sidewalk. I can't believe there's a gallery open. This kind of light As she walked in [00:26:00] and I, I welcomed her and I said, have you been in before?
She said, no, I just got off a, a plane from California. I said, okay, and my luggage out there. I said, well, bring it in. Bring it in. And, and she said, you know what? She said, this is my second time here and this place is just different.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: I had a guy from. Another guy from California, he walked in and he was like, he was shocked.
He just was looking like that. And I said, sir, welcome to the gallery. Everything okay? He said, yes, sir. I said, he said, I feel like I've stepped on a different planet. That's exactly what he said. I said, you have, yeah, you have welcome
Marcus: mobile.
Trey: Exactly. I mean, people from Montgomery and Birmingham said, will say, y'all people, y'all are just quirky down here.
Y'all are weird people.
Marcus: Something in the water.
Trey: Something in the water.
Marcus: You mentioned the Creighton Leprechaun.
Trey: Oh my God. Do you like history?
Marcus: Yeah, absolutely.
Trey: I love history and And that's what Lu Kelly is too. It's a fusion of history and art or art and history.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: And cultural experience. So March is just a couple weeks [00:27:00] away?
Marcus: Yep.
Trey: I got three IDs of March stories for you.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: Tell me what happened during the I of March. The year 44 BC Caesar was assassinated.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: One month after. That's
Marcus: right. I am,
Trey: yeah. I'm sorry. I got you off guard. That was,
Marcus: I'm a, I'm an English lit major. How did he pull that one over on me? I was like, where's he going?
Okay. Yeah, Caesar got it. Okay.
Trey: So, um, that was in the, uh, odds of March, right? Well, in the odds of February is Luca.
Marcus: I did not know that
Trey: that was the third time. The, the month before he was assassinated, the third time that Mark Anthony ran through the streets of Rome. Some reports say naked, and some people said that's how the marathon got started.
I mean that
Marcus: for, he would've been naked.
Trey: Yeah, sure. And back then the crown was a, a Laurel wreath.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And he offered the laurel wreath, the crown to Caesar. Caesar being the savvy politician, denied it.
Marcus: Of course,
Trey: of course. Now, whenever he [00:28:00] off, whenever Mark Anthony. Offered it to him, the crowd in the town square, public square booed.
But when, uh, Caesar declined it, they clapped. And so that should have told him that she should, he should have read the right of the ground. Read the crowd. Right. Read the crowd. Read the crowd. Okay. So that's, that was the eyes of March.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: Guess what else happened in the eyes of March?
Marcus: I'm not even gonna try to guess.
Trey: Go ahead,
Marcus: COVID. Okay.
Trey: March 15th, 2019.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: We have been open five months. I have never done anything in the private sector. At that point, even though we were only open for five months, we had almost a year invested in that.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And um, I said, well, that's it. You know, I just,
Marcus: yeah.
Trey: First time in the private sector,
Marcus: it was a great idea, but
Trey: Great.
What was I thinking?
Marcus: Timing was well,
Trey: yeah, well off. That was my first thought. My second thought was that poor lady at Mo Bay Beignet. 'cause she had just opened up too. Yeah, yeah. Put her life savings in it. But we both were covered and bounced back. Eyes of March, 2026, the 20th [00:29:00] anniversary of the Crit and leprechaun.
Marcus: Oh my gosh. Is it the 20th anniversary?
Trey: The 20th anniversary? Can you believe that?
Marcus: Wow.
Trey: 20 years.
Marcus: So I have a friend who says that he tracked down the painting to a gentleman in New York City. The original Creighton Leprechaun painting and offered him money and the guy was like, Nope. He was like, name your, I'll give you $10,000.
The guy was like, no, I know what I got. It was just like
Trey: a lot of people missed the boat on that. Yeah. Wants should have got it. And had it copyrighted.
Marcus: Oh
Trey: heck yeah. And, and I mean, they could have made a fortune.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: So one of the most entertaining things that we do, not the only, but one of 'em is when these guests come in and they'll say, what's this little fuzzy looking person on a, a yellow memo pad?
I said, have you got five minutes?
Marcus: Yeah,
Trey: and I technically, we have a number of artists they just specialize in making, uh, Paul Campbell, uh, makes ceramics of a tree with the leprechaun sitting to the tree and all sorts of spinoffs. It's just hilarious.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And we've got that thing where they can scan that and watch that news broadcast from 20
Marcus: zero.
Oh, that's [00:30:00] too funny.
Trey: And they almost whipped their pants laughing. They said, you folks that here in Alabama are crazy,
Marcus: aren't you? The legend of the leprechaun. I tell you what, there is something in the water down here, so, well, you've been at this for a couple of years. If you were talking to someone who was getting started in, you know, who wanted to get started in running their own business, what's one bit of wisdom that you would impart to them?
Trey: Well, this is a little bit embarrassing to admit publicly, but I, I have admitted it publicly too.
Marcus: Sure.
Trey: Um, vet your partners well.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Vet your partners well. Vet your partners Well,
Marcus: yeah,
Trey: so
Marcus: I remember the story.
Trey: You know, I used to run the streets of downtown and, uh, knew a fair amount of people.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: I was, oh, I didn't finish that.
So when, when on the streets someone came up and said, Hey, why don't you join us at the Cathedral Square Art Gallery?
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: Aren't you getting tired of dealing with the elements? I said, absolutely. So I joined the Cathedral Square Art Gallery for about four years. It was right across from Winslow's. [00:31:00] Okay.
That's
Marcus: what that was.
Trey: I remember that Linda, Linda Pennfield was, was the, uh, main person. So that gallery used to be on Cathedral Square. And that's hence the name Cathedral Square. Yeah. They had a 23 or 26 year run, which is Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's fabulous. But that building owner said, um, you know what, instead of going year to year, we're gonna go month to month.
Well, that's a bad sign.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: So we were going month to month, and finally he said, you know what, y'all, I'm gonna do something else with this building. I said, okay, so we had 36 homeless artists.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And I said, well, I'm just getting started. I mean, most everyone was older than me. And, um, I said, well, I don't wanna quit now.
And, um, another artist, hunter c And I said, well, we'll just open our own art gallery. And we tried and we couldn't find anything downtown. We really wanted to, we knew we had to stay downtown. 'cause Art walk, if you don't have Art walk, you're not gonna make it
Marcus: Right.
Trey: This person walked up to me and she said, Trey, I hear you gonna open up an art gallery.
And I had known [00:32:00] this person just from mutual friends and everything. I knew she was a CPA. She said, I know, quote. She said, I know nothing about art, but I'm A CPA. I could help you run that business. I said, oh, that's an answer about prayers. Great. I said, I know nothing about running a business, so we'll, we'll do fine.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Well, there's an old adage, don't expect unless you inspect.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And um. After about three years something and we, I hired her daughter as our manager. Another mistake.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: But they were on the out, so I thought we were safe.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And I noticed a few discrepancies in the books and I let the manager go and, um, everything got real quiet, real fast.
And I told my wife, I said, we're okay. We're gonna have just to roll our sleeves and jump into this.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: I went to the bank. I said, I need to write commission checks. I need to get a account balance. She pulled the thing up. She looked at [00:33:00] me and she, she said, I'll write it down for you, Mr. Oliver. I said, okay.
She wrote down 1 1 6 decimal one three, and handed me that piece of paper.
Marcus: Oh my gosh.
Trey: I said, no, ma'am. You've got the wrong account. She said, no, sir. This is the right account. I said, no, ma'am, that's impossible. And then everybody started gathering around behind that computer. They wanted to tell me, but they couldn't.
I said, well check the savings account. There's nothing in it, Mr. Oliver. I literally had to sit down. They got me some water and the manager, everybody was there and they said, you can ask us questions, but we can't tell you everything. I said, where did the money go? Well, apparently your partner attached their personal account Wow.
To your savings account, and it was going out as fast as it was coming in. So vet your partners, be sure you know 'em inside and out. And inspect.
Marcus: Yeah,
Trey: inspect.
Marcus: I have to say, you know, one of the most difficult [00:34:00] things about owning a business is that it is becoming less and less, um, it's becoming. Less and less reliable that people do what they say they're gonna do.
And uh, you know, like even signing, you know, like I, we had a contract that we signed recently, did the work and got to the end of the contract and the client, whom I won't name 'cause we're, you know, we're trying to work it out, but, um, but you know, admitted that she didn't have any money. And I was like, well, you know, we're talking like almost 20 grand.
And, you know, uh, so, and regardless of the reasons when something like that happens, as a business owner, that's a huge, uh, that's a huge thing because cashflow is impacted, you know, and that starts a cascading effect. So. [00:35:00] You know, if you don't have enough cash reserves, then immediately you panic and you're like, how am I gonna make payroll?
You know, blue Cross and Blue Shield comes out on this day. Am I gonna have enough money in that day? Mm-hmm. You know, if I don't, if I'm gonna leave anything, then maybe you don't pay one of the credit card bills or something like that. Okay, well what happens then? Well, maybe they lower your
Trey: cascade
Marcus: effect, your spend, your spending limit.
And so now you have. Less capital to work with. And not only that, but you've now gotta pay off more of your debt in order to get to a point where you have the margin that you need in order to operate. And so, you know, like people don't realize, like, you know, it isn't just about coming in and selling art or selling websites or you know, social media manage.
This is like, I mean, it, it's a, every day is a different problem. And the problems oftentimes are not something that you caused, but that you are required to.
Trey: But yeah, sometimes we do make business bad decisions and mistakes. Yeah. [00:36:00] But when something like that happens, it's uh,
Marcus: yeah. I mean, you can't
Trey: devastating.
Marcus: Yeah. It really is.
Trey: But that's what I learned. I learned that valuable lesson. Uh. So we've got three business partners now. One is retired Air Force and retired FBI and the other two are people I've known for over 25 years. So
Marcus: yeah,
Trey: that makes a huge difference. People that are reliable and you can account with them to,
Marcus: no, absolutely.
So
Trey: it's a big step though, a leap of faith whenever you open up a small business. 'cause I'm used to working for the government and whether I'm sick or on vacation, I still get that paycheck.
Marcus: Yeah,
Trey: not so in the. You're, you know, that's so in the private sector,
Marcus: and if you're out there and you don't own a business, like, just remember that when you're dealing with small businesses, like, you know, if it's a, your landscaper or you know, a guy that mows the grass or plumber or whatever, these guys don't have tens of thousands of dollars sitting.
Well, maybe they do, but
Trey: maybe they
Marcus: do tens of thousands of dollars sitting in a bank to like, you know, cover things if you don't, you know, to
Trey: absorb any, to absorb downturns or, yeah. And all these people that come. [00:37:00] And, and again, I used should be one of those, you know, Hey, you wanna sponsor a team? Hey, you wanna sponsor an ad?
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Or
Marcus: nickel and dime for $500 a piece.
Trey: Yeah. Or you know, you'll get some exposure. Okay. I don't need any exposure.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: I need some sales.
Marcus: Sales. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about some actual sales and then we can talk. Um, so I'm gonna ask, so are there any books, podcasts, people or organizations that have been really helpful in kind of moving you into this?
Uh, role.
Trey: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because, uh, as you well know
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: You, you, you have to be on your A game.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: You know, I mean, start, start at the top. And so you have to stay positive.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: You have to stay engaged, you have to truly care about your customers, and the customer comes first. And in our case, our first customer are the 75 artists that we have showing art in our, that's our first customer.
If they're not happy, if they're not selling art, they're gonna find another art gallery.
Marcus: [00:38:00] Yeah.
Trey: So I will jump through my hat to help them make sales close, or we close sales for them. We, we do everything we can to promote their sales. Uh, and so customer service is, um. It's topnotch. So anything I see on customer service and, and I mean, there's no one particular source.
Yeah. I mean, I've read books on how to run an art gallery. I've, I watched podcast and, and I've talked to other people. I there for a while, I was picking the phone call in galleries all over the, the southeast.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah.
Trey: And I learned a lot just by doing that even before we came to Luca.
Marcus: Interesting. Yeah.
It's, I, I would imagine it, it's not, um. It seems like a fairly straightforward business, but I also know that like any business there's, you know, ins and outs to it that,
Trey: well, we're not an international city yet.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: In New Orleans you can make a, a living selling art, but to be a full fledged, full-time artist in Mobile, Alabama and, and you have no other source of income, those are very rare birds.
I can only think of a [00:39:00] couple of them, and they're phenomenal at their job. But
Marcus: yeah.
Trey: You know, I think like if, if a teenager learns how to play the guitar, he sees himself. Playing in honky tonks in Nashville and making it big. Well, only a small percentage of people make it big.
Marcus: Right. Yeah, I, I know what you're saying.
'cause it's, while exposure is great because you can be online and do all the other stuff. Yeah,
Trey: yeah.
Marcus: The actual process by which somebody would actually buy a piece, you know, like typically they're gonna wanna be in its presence and see it, you know, and
Trey: well see these people say, listen, we're have a fundraiser.
Can you donate some art?
Marcus: No.
Trey: Well, I usually say, yeah, we will, but here's the thing. Is, um, no one's going when someone at, at, at a silent auction mm-hmm. They're not going look at the artist and say, oh, I'm gonna follow this the rest of my life. You know, I mean, I'm, I'm gonna try to get this piece as cheap as I can.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: I'm not gonna bid over this much because I, I mean that's
Marcus: just,
Trey: everybody's out
Marcus: for their own pocket book to trying to get a deal.
Trey: Yeah.
Marcus: Um, alright, so I've got 12 rapid fire questions, [00:40:00] just one word, two word answer or whatever, but so favorite type of music.
Oh, come on.
Trey: I know it. Uh,
Marcus: favorite band?
Trey: Country. Country. Country.
Marcus: Country. Okay. What's your favorite type of food?
Trey: Seafood.
Marcus: Favorite restaurant in lower Alabama.
Trey: Ooh, no. Johnson.
Marcus: Favorite city outside of Mobile?
Trey: Nche, Mississippi.
Marcus: Natchez. Okay. City you want to travel to but have yet to visit?
Trey: Oh, um, the Vatican.
Marcus: Okay. Yeah, I can imagine that would be, I want so
Trey: bad.
Marcus: Yeah,
Trey: go ahead.
Marcus: Um, what comes to mind when I say guilty pleasure?
Trey: Guilty pleasure would be, um, gardening. I have a, uh, a garden in the back that's a rock garden, a container garden, a flower garden, a bird sanctuary, and I have spent a. Freaking fortune, but I don't care.
You.
Marcus: Oh my gosh, it's amazing. Um, [00:41:00] I don't even remember what the, I lost my point. Spot. That's great.
Trey: I'm sorry I couldn't hardly it go, but one or
Marcus: two minutes. No, I love it. 'cause I, you know, like I'm sitting here thinking like. Uh, Chrissy and I, uh, partly because, uh, McGregor was closed, but also just because, I mean, I guess we're at that age, but it's like birdwatching and, and plants and stuff like that has become like thing.
It gets worse the
Trey: older you get. I got bad news for you.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Know. And I love your doc. I love your reports
Marcus: on McGregor. McGregor. Gosh, yeah.
Trey: That was hilarious.
Marcus: Um, dogs, cats, or none of the above.
Trey: Um, my wife will listen to this, so I love dogs. I
Marcus: hate cats. Summer or winter. S
Trey: fall.
Marcus: There you go. Uh, favorite movie or TV show?
Trey: Well, I, I enjoyed Downton Abbey and Yellowstone, but my favorite movie was probably other than Old Brother, where Art Vowel was Glory starring Matthew Broder. Yeah,
Marcus: I don't remember that one. But O Brother Wore was Oh,
Trey: and Lady Hall. Lady Hall.
Marcus: Phenomenal [00:42:00] soundtrack.
Trey: Another
Marcus: Matthew Robert movie. Yeah. The soundtrack to o Brother wore out.
That was just,
Trey: you know, they got decals and pens and coffee mugs and, ha I mean, it's a whole different merch now. That's
Marcus: hilarious.
Trey: After all these years.
Marcus: Uh, favorite holiday other than Christmas,
Trey: Thanksgiving.
Marcus: Okay. Favorite color.
Trey: Battleship Gray.
Marcus: Okay. Favorite cereal, I guess that goes back to prison cells or something.
Trey: Um, corn checks.
Marcus: There you go. And outside of, there's no more rapid fire, but what are you most thankful for?
Trey: My health. My wife, my family, and my kids, my grandkids. And this opportunity to be, to be retired. I used to never think about retirement because I never really wanted to retire.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: But I, I'm glad I did.
When I did, I was burned out and didn't know it.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And, um, the, it is just every day is a holiday. I mean, these past three years, I'm so thankful it is heaven on earth.
Marcus: Nice.
Trey: Being retired.
Marcus: That's really cool. I'm glad to hear that.
Trey: Well, you know, some people and men [00:43:00] especially, and, and maybe. Me especially, you really identify with your job.
I mean, I was a police officer. I was a police chief. I was, I was a director of public safety. I was a warden in metro jail and um, all fairly high profile jobs.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And I can remember being a young police chief saying, man, I could do this 60 hours a week. I got a divorce because of that too. You know? I mean, you got a balance.
And that's what I've learned is everything's gotta be balanced. Even though you're in a profession that may be all consuming and overwhelming, you gotta resist that urge.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Because that is not the most important thing.
Marcus: The only person that's gonna be a gatekeeper is you.
Trey: Exactly.
Marcus: And if you don't do it, then the life, life will completely run rhod all over.
You
Trey: don't become a workaholic.
Marcus: No,
Trey: don't become a workaholic. It ain't, it's not worth it.
Marcus: No, it's not. Um. Alright, so tell people where they can find you.
Trey: 3 58 Dolphin Street.
Marcus: Alright,
Trey: Luca Art Society, and next time we get together I'm gonna explain to you. What Lu C is.
Marcus: Oh, I'm not. I got one. I got [00:44:00] one more question for you.
Okay, well, one more thing that I wanted you to talk about, because I think this came up with a friend and I don't think they, they knew, which I couldn't believe. But you guys have something special about your space and that is that you have a speak, not speakeasy, speakeasy, but you know you have a tunnel down below the, the building.
That was what,
Trey: okay. So, um. My partner before my partner stole from me.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Helped me find out, because I told my par, my partner at the time, I said, there's no way we can afford downtown. She said, gimme two weeks, I'll find something. And she did.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: I walked in that building with, uh, a real estate agent had been closed up since it was John words.
It was empty. There was no utilities, no plumbing, nothing.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: Just a hollow, nasty smelling brick building. But that brick.
Marcus: Yeah,
Trey: an artist.
Marcus: Yeah, you can
Trey: see, have vision, we can see possibility. And I said, okay, I don't care what it takes. We gotta get this building. We got it for a [00:45:00] song and a dance per month.
And I said, but something's weird. What's this down? I said, these boards, they give a little bit and, and I won't say his name. It may not wanna, he might. But anyway, he, the real estate agent said, oh, you wouldn't be interested in that. I said, well, I might, what's, what's down there? He said, oh, just an old tunnel.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: I had to bite my lip. I said, well, we don't call 'em tunnels, we call 'em skinny galleries. I said, I'd like to see down there. He said, we'll come back in three days. I'll have the contractors cut out a hole in the floor for you. Exactly what he said. There
Marcus: wasn't even an access for it.
Trey: Mm-hmm. So came back three days later.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And there's, there's no light in this building right. Than three windows. In fact, the windows are right there.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah.
Trey: I had my Stetson hat on and, um, a suit. My flash, my, my phone, and I literally had to crawl in that dang hole. It was only like three and a half feet by three and a half feet, and I was immediately on a set of brick steps.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: [00:46:00] So I got my flashlight feature on my cell phone. I start walking down that 50 foot tunnel, skinny gallery.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: There were cobwebs, there were Roches, there were Mies. I mean, it was,
Marcus: yeah.
Trey: I felt like Indiana Jones on the history channel, you know, and the other side was dark. And I hollered back to him.
I said, how much you want for this? Because you'd already quoted me a price for upstairs. I said, how much more do you want per month for this? He said, I don't know, 500. I said, we're artists, we can't afford it. 400 sold.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: So I got the whole thing like $1,900.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah.
Trey: We were thrilled with that.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: And so why would you build a tunnel in the middle of a building that was a shirt factory, a general store, and a skinny one? I mean, you've been through
Marcus: it. Yeah, yeah. No, it's tiny.
Trey: It's tiny. Well, I started doing my, my homework and my, my archive searches.
Marcus: Mm-hmm.
Trey: The lot was purchased in 1851 from the Duval Estate, a Spanish land grant family, and there was a Spanish cemetery very [00:47:00] close adjacent to that property.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: Built the building in 1852. It is one of the, one of the oldest commercial building. What, what year was this building built?
Marcus: You know what? I wish I knew at one point in time I had done the research and found, but I don't remember off the top of my head.
Trey: So in 1864, when Admiral Fargate came up the bay
Marcus: mm-hmm.
Trey: After the battle of Mobile Bay and the general came across the Delta and the Confederate army retreated to Mississippi, the mayor said, I surrender. I don't want my city quote
Marcus: level
Trey: blown up or burnt down or leveled.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah.
Trey: And so they said, well, okay, uh, mayor, we're gonna occupy your city. Until the end of the war.
That's what you do. That's what we did to Japan. That's what you do. He said, okay. They said they ordered him though. Order your citizens to confiscate. All ammunition, all gunpowder, anything that would explode and put it in this magazine, which is an old word for warehouse.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: So on the third or fourth day of doing that, something happened.
The whole dang thing blew up, [00:48:00] put a crater in downtown mobile, sunk two ships killed 339 people. And what it didn't blow up, it burnt down. So isn't that ironic? The mayor says, I'm surrendering my city. I don't want it burned up and blown down and this ain't still got blown up and burnt down. But that fire stopped short of this block because that building was built in 1852.
Marcus: Yeah,
Trey: that was 1864. There are a lot of tales of a lady who wrote in her diary, living on the third floor above us, large explosion downtown, shook my fine China off of my cabinet, right China cabinet. So I mean. It was, it was catastrophic. The very next day in the Harper's Weekly is an illustration.
Headline explosion kills 300 some odd people in mobile, it shows ox and cattle and I mean horses and people being blown for blocks.
Marcus: Yeah.
Trey: So very historic building. And, um, you, you can look at the three arches in the back. That's where the carriages would come in when it was a, uh, a shirt factory. [00:49:00] So I said, well, we gotta, we gotta come up with a real interesting name for this place,
Marcus: right?
Trey: And me and my three partners at the time, all of which are, are gone. Uh, we said, well, let's create an art society with a gallery. Okay. So I started being a history nerd. I start digging and digging and searching and googling, and I ran across an ancient pagan fertility festival that dated back 3000 years ago.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: Before Rome was a anything. Yeah. And in, during the eyes of February, these two tribes of priests would get together in the, uh, the cave Luper, cow cave. Um, you know, I think Rome had seven caves or something, I don't know. But anyway, they went in this cave, they built a bonfire and the two newest rookie priests were required to strip down and they had to sacrifice a goat and a puppy dog.
I don't tell, I don't tell kids about the puppy dog. Yeah. And the puppy [00:50:00] dog, I think represented brotherhood. A fraternity in Rome. I don't know. But anyway, and so they were required to skin the goat, make fashion, loin, cloths and cattle, nine tails without the hooks.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: And wipe the blood on their face.
And they were required to laugh. Now that's pretty bizarre, isn't it? Now I, I think alcohol must have been introduced at some point.
Marcus: At least
Trey: this was a fertility festival, so the. The, the two tribes of priests would light their torches and they would go from, uh, village to village blessing. The women who wanted to be fertile, and if you wanted to be fertile, you raise up your skirt and you showed them your backside and they would hit you with the whip that was supposed to make you fertile.
That was a blessing. Then they would go out to where the men were, which was out there with the. The goats and the sheep and they would bless the shepherds or we call it blessing. I don't know what Right. If they whipped them or what. And they wanted to protect the um, shepherds from evil spirits and the sheep from the she Wolff.
Marcus: Okay,
Trey: well, if you will look at a [00:51:00] ancient coin of Rome, it's a she wolf suckling twins. Two boys.
Marcus: Okay.
Trey: Romulus and Remus. Their uncle, I think, killed their father who was the king. And he forbid his sister-in-law from having any anymore kids. Well, she had those twins. She knew she had to get rid of 'em. She put 'em in a basket, put 'em in the river, river, came down, stopped at the same cave.
Those guys, those, uh, priests would meet in. The she wolf drug them in there. She suckled him until a shepherd found them later. Romulus killed Remus. That's why they call it Rome and that ream, right? So it's just all tied in together. That's wild. And then at 496 or something like that, the bishop, um, the Pope said, Hey, Roman Senate, you folks are getting outta hand.
This stuff is pagan and it needs to stop. Or at least tone it down because as it went on. It got rough. Y'all just say that. It got rough.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah.
Trey: And so they toned it down 'cause he said we need to [00:52:00] prepare for Easter. Well what's that? That's Mardi Gras,
Marcus: right?
Trey: Lent leading up to Easter. So now not all historians agree on that, but it was close enough for us.
You got murder, you got intrigue, you, you've got Pornification, you've got indulge overindulgence, you've got opulence. Listening in art society after that
Marcus: and spoken like a true artist. No, that's amazing. Well, uh, we're, let's end on that note. I'm gonna just say, I wanna say thank you for coming on the podcast.
Wrap up. Any final thoughts or comments you'd like to share?
Trey: My, my pleasure. Uh, if you're looking for a, a neat place to be inspired to buy a gift and to support local art, come to 3 58, uh, dolphin Street.
Marcus: Yep.
Trey: It's the Gulf Coast only underground, haunted, historic. Lake Night Art Gallery.
Marcus: There you go. And um, I've, you know, I, I think you have a wonderful selection.
I've been in there, you know, a number of times we've
Trey: grown it. It's, it's,
Marcus: yeah,
Trey: it's, we we're really for, we got some phenomenal artists in there
Marcus: right now. Yeah. There's really [00:53:00] some talent in, in mobile and, you know, you guys are capturing a lot of that. So. Well, Dre, I appreciate your willingness to sit with me and share your journey as a business owner.
Thank you. And entrepreneur. It's been great talking with you, man.
Trey: I enjoyed it. Same here. Thank you.
