WAVERLY - Given the choice between the cha-ching of cash registers and the chirping of songbirds, folks here go with the birds. No contest.

Six years ago, Waverly kissed U.S. 280 goodbye when the state re-routed the highway that ran through downtown. Good riddance, residents said, to all those Mack trucks, to the football traffic roaring from Birmingham to Auburn, to outsiders prospecting for their own patches of paradise.

In their stead, Waverly's 180 disparate souls cling to quiet and their own eccentricities. Of nearly 500 incorporated towns and cities in Alabama, this spot straddling the intersections of Lee, Chambers and Tallapoosa counties is firmly in the puniest 10 percent in population. And yet, chef Collin Donnelly serves up dishes like Moroccan-spiced seared yellowfin tuna and creamy cauliflower bisque at the local restaurant, which also offers Italian Moretti beer on tap. Gardener Mace Glasscock grows lemongrass, kiwi fruit and heirloom tomatoes in his plot across from the cemetery, and screen printer Scott Peek designs T-shirts for the likes of reggae artists Burning Spear and Toots and the Maytals.

Course, there's nowhere to buy a Coke Fridge Pack. No chain stores at all. Once a thriving farming community, post-cotton Waverly has reincarnated itself as an oasis of preservation and creativity.

"It's special, and it's different, and it's almost an extinct animal out there that's worth saving," said Carlton "Corky" Nell, a Waverly Planning Commission member and Auburn University art professor.

"There is an appreciation that this is a special place, and that appreciation comes largely from the fact that, unfortunately, other towns have sold out, and they're not special anymore," Nell said. "They've allowed developers to determine what their town is like and how it's arranged and how they live their lives."

Nell is judicious and gentle in his analysis of Waverly's peculiar philosphies.

Lifelong resident Jimmy Graves is not so much. But such is the diversity of Waverly. "The reason people want to move here is the reason we don't want them. They come here because it's like it is, and if they get here it won't be like it is. So we'd just as soon they stay in Auburn," said Graves, 75, an unabashedly crotchety timberman who owns hundreds of surrounding acres.

He has no plans to sell and offers up the fates of two friends who sold off large holdings. "One of them, he sold 850 acres for $8.5 million, and he lived 3 months. The other one signed up to sell his for $7.1 million, and he lived a week," Graves said. "See, selling land's bad. It'll kill you."

Glasscock, a bearded, blue-jeaned 62-year-old, has his own strategy to keep at bay any potential subdividers who may be snooping around. "I'll buy some old cars, put them on blocks, hang some old dead snakes on the trees, and let chickens run loose in the yard," he said. "And they'll go on by."

Glasscock personifies the amalgamation of characters in Waverly. An ex-Marine who served in Vietnam, he knits together a living by selling homegrown produce to local markets, playing blues guitar and working with wood. Waverly won over Glasscock, a Chilton County native, when he was a student at Auburn in the 1970s.

"For me the village atmosphere was really nice, and the old people here were so much like the old people I knew in Clanton. ... They all had gardens and I wanted to get out here and garden and everything," he said, sitting on the porch of his house, where an army of vines and branches fast approaches the front door.

"We got the Baptist church, they kinda' control the town, but then they don't. The old families are dying out, and the people who come out here are kind of alternative people anyway, regardless of how different they are. They might be super right-wing survivalists, or they might be just so far to the left that they can't stand to be around yuppies."

If there are any real divisions in Waverly, and that's debatable, it would be between oldtimers, like Graves, and newcomers. But those categories are somewhat fluid, as you can live there 25 years and still be considered a newcomer by the oldtimers.

In a world divided by blue and red, War Eagle and Roll Tide, W the President and W with a big black slash through it, extreme personalities seem to peacefully coincide in Waverly, even though as small as the town is everyone really does know everyone else. There's a massage therapist, a poet who teaches in state prisons, and a conservative Christian octogenarian or two.

There's the youthfully irreverent Peek with his bouncy reggae music blaring through the print shop and his "What Would Johnny Cash Do?" bumper sticker. And the gray-haired regulars who huddle around dominos and jigsaw puzzles at the senior center. There's Mary Stevens, who created a life after retirement as an artist, then helped found Studio 222, a group of female artists who meet to share techniques and encourage one another.

"The interesting thing that has happened is how the old town of Waverly interacts and coexists with the younger artistic community," said resident Kyes Stevens, 33, the poet and director of the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project, based in Auburn.

"I grew up in Waverly, moved away, and came back because the town offers something that most places I have been cannot fathom, and that is a true community. Of course there are spats, we are like a big family, but all of us together make a pretty nice place," Stevens said.

Waverly's main street is lined with Victorian farmhouse-style homes.

Some have stood since the 19th century, their massive wraparound porches attesting to a more leisurely, less electronic era. A scattering of ancient brick warehouse-style buildings from the cotton heyday remain, many with new lives as artists' studios or small businesses. The town hall is lavender. The town dog is an affable red hound named Opie. Waverly's restaurant, The Yellow Hammer, occupies a building that formerly housed a car dealership, then a gas station. It is unquestionably gourmet, it's menu loaded with terms such as haricots vert, house-cured pancetta and Oregon black truffles. Yet there's a homey feel within the exposed brick walls.

"How adventurous are you?" Donnelly, the 31-year-old chef, asks with a half smile.
He'd been experimenting with pig ears one recent night, rubbing them with all manner of exotic spices, and wanted a table of early diners to test the results.

The crisp little strips were bacon-like and not bad, for cartilaginous extremities. Even off the beaten path, The Yellow Hammer has generated buzz. That night it drew a full parking lot, including three Hummers - definitely out-of-towners.

Until 2000, U.S. 280 ran right through the otherwise-quaint downtown, a bane to the existence of parents with small children, dog owners and porch-sitters hoping for a quiet spot to enjoy a glass of tea.

The state transportation department's re-routing of the four-lane highway has heightened the village feel that Waverly's residents have cultivated for decades. During the re-routing, Waverly annexed the

area around U.S. 280 to control development there, Nell said.

The goal was to keep the town distinct, unlike cities up the road. "You never know what Sylacauga or Childersberg or Alexander City is really like," Nell said. "They're defined by the Super Wal-Mart."

Waverly residents held a street party in appreciation of the highway's departure from downtown. They christened it the Old 280 Boogie, and decided to hold it the next year, then the next.

Older residents, brows furrowed, wondered just what a "boogie" was, that maybe there was too much boogieing going on for their taste.

But this is Waverly, after all, and even the old-timers host an annual shindig. Every autumn, they gather under a sprawling barbecue shed and cook up more than 1,000 gallons of stew, as well as chicken and Boston butts, to raise money for cemetery and church upkeep. Cooks pull all-nighters to keep the stew stirred.

So the Boogie, too, survives. This year's is happening Saturday. The Yellow Hammer will be serving food, for example, and so will the Waverly Baptist Church.

Organizers included everyone who wanted to take part and, in Waverly, that can mean a little bit of everything. Peek, the t-shirt printer, is the biggest Boogie promoter. Still a newcomer after 14 years in town, Peek transformed an empty cotton warehouse into Standard Deluxe, described on his cards as "Real Southern Vernacular Postmodern Eclectic" screen printing. Peek has a website and travels to festivals and tradeshows, so operating out of a tiny town is not a drawback. "Most of our business is out of state, out of the country. It doesn´t matter where we are," he said.

Waverly's Planning Commission confines dense development to the town center. Farther out, there's an attempt to retain the rural nature of years past with a three-acre minimum lot size. A developer recently wanted to cut a four-acre lot in half and sell it as two parcels. He made a pitch to the commission. "We try to be friendly and we listen to people," Nell said.

The commission responded with a polite no thank you. The developer had to sell his parcel in one chunk.

"It's not that we don't want people to come in, it's just we have a great way of life here, and we don't want townhouses coming in where people are just crammed together. We want people to have a yard, to have children to be able to play" explained Bob Stevens, a retired soil scientist who lives down a dirt road. "One of the biggest problems we have in Waverly right now is we have a gang of boys, and they're out running, playing, riding bikes and they don't spend their time..."

His wife Mary finished his sentence, "sitting in front of the TV." Though the Stevens live just outside the town limits, they are considered Waverly folks. Their tree-canopied house overlooks a mill pond whose banks hosted picnics and spawned many a courtship in generations past.

In typical Waverly fashion, Mary Stevens created a new life as a fabric artist after retiring as a physical therapist. She uses quilting techniques to craft intricate leaves and flowers. Her quote, stitched on one of her creations, captures a philosophy that seems to hold true for much of her town: "Today I have learned that I need to step lightly and work quickly, I am just a visitor here for a gifted and brief time."