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Chapter 2: Just Like Home

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Cleveland's smokestacks, near where I-71 merges into downtown, were among the first indications Freddie Kitchens had in January 2018 that his new home -- and the people -- had similarities to his hometown of Gadsden, Alabama. (John Kuntz, cleveland.com)

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GADSDEN, Alabama -- Freddie Kitchens connects with home from behind the wheel, reliving his youth when he returns to Alabama.

The new Cleveland Browns head coach drives past where his parents first brought him back from the hospital. That’s only a block from the home he moved to in sixth grade, which caught fire when he was in college.

Then there’s the old trailer by Banks Park, where a good sprint out the back brought you to open fields and tall conifers, where a kid with an unrelenting arm could throw all day. And there’s Walnut Park, his elementary-school neighborhood, where you needed to know two things.

“How to work,” Kitchens said, “and how to fight.”

His tour of the past is familiar.

A year ago, on Jan. 29, 2018, Kitchens was behind the wheel again, this time headed into the unknown. As a new Browns assistant, he drove from the airport toward his first new residence in 11 years.

Bending into Cleveland on I-71, he caught sight of the old steelyards for the first time and was struck.

“When I saw those smokestacks,” Kitchens said “it reminded me of my town.”

He didn’t know Cleveland, but he felt like he was home. Kitchens was connecting with a place.

Soon, he’d connect with the people. Gadsden instilled something in Kitchens that Cleveland would soon embrace.

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For the North

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There’s more to a city than its industry, more to a skyline than its smokestacks, more to a coach than his accent. Kitchens was never a coordinator before Cleveland, much less a head coach. He may have never won a head coaching job on a first impression.

Over time, underestimation gives way to appreciation. The Browns warmed to Kitchens through an eight-game audition forced by circumstance. If the Haslams or general manager John Dorsey or the fans connected to Kitchens through that, it’s because they saw the Gadsden in him.

If Kitchens was hired in Los Angeles or New York or Seattle, he’d take the job and be himself. Jobs open. Coaches coach. With the Arizona Cardinals, he lived the last 11 years in the desert.

But in a city so often preoccupied with finding an AFC North quarterback, the Browns have found an AFC North coach, and they found him in the heart of the South.

That first smokestack drew in Kitchens, but his feeling of familiarity would extend beyond the view from that window. He soon sensed the steel backbone of a place that goes beyond a single factory or plant.

“Cleveland is a blue-collar town. There’s a lot of similarities,” Phillip Pierce, a special education teacher and an assistant football coach at Etowah High School, said after a recent midweek Blue Devils high school basketball game. Pierce was a few grades ahead of Kitchens at Etowah High in the early ‘90s.

“Built on a steel mill, just like us,” he said. “Built on a steel mill, and get up and do your job.”

The steel mill in Gadsden closed in 2000, just like the cotton mill had closed in 1949. But when Kitchens grew up, the fathers worked steel, just as the grandfathers and great-grandfathers had worked cotton. One of 17 American Goodyear facilities, outside of the world headquarters in Akron, still serves as a major employer in Gadsden.

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The Goodyear plant in Gadsden where Freddie Kitchens' father worked when Freddie was growing up. (Doug Lesmerises, cleveland.com)

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“The steel mill and Goodyear were the two main places to work,” said Larry Means, the mayor of Attalla who hired a high school-aged Kitchens to cut grass in the summer at the football stadium. “Those were good middle-class jobs. But you’d better make your money when you can because you’re probably going to get laid off at some time when business is bad."

Kitchens' father worked at Goodyear, and across his life, there were fathers and sons sharing the same factory/football existence. Big Freddie Kitchens taught it. Gadsden and Attalla confirmed it. In Cleveland, Little Freddie Kitchens can share it.

Kitchens carried his father with him to Cleveland. He did the same with his community.

In Gadsden and Attalla, they watched Kitchens during his introductory Browns news conference last month and heard themselves in a place most of them have never been. Browns fans warmed to the words of a new kind of coach. In Gadsden, they were mouthing along with him.

“I don’t know much about Cleveland,” said Todd Lamberth, the athletic director at Gadsden High who played football, baseball and basketball with Kitchens. “But being who you are is important here. We never change who we are, and he’s still the same. He still acts the same.

"His press conference, I knew what he was going to say when he was answering those questions.”

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The sign at the Gadsden-Attalla border just down the road from where Browns coach Freddie Kitchens lived in high school. (Doug Lesmerises, cleveland.com)

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Drop The Hat

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Kitchens grew up nearly on the Gadsden/Attalla border and is a product of both towns. Several high schools have consolidated since Kitchens’ era. But Etowah High, Kitchens’ alma mater, and Gadsden High, which Kitchens would have attended if he hadn’t open enrolled to Etowah, remain blood rivals, compared in these parts to Alabama and Auburn.

On his way to school, Kitchens would pass the “City of Champions” road sign at the Gadsden City limits, cross Cleveland Avenue, and head four miles down the road to Etowah High, where a community verified itself on the football field. One resident pointed to a story former Alabama coach Bill Curry told on ESPN about Attalla after the Sept. 11 attack. It spoke for the town -- patriotism, toughness, football.

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WOW! This message from @coachbillcurry is so so needed right now in our country. pic.twitter.com/W6zHXgQZZO — Jason Romano (@JasonRomano) November 17, 2017

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“The one common factor here as long as I was here,” said Raymond Farmer, Kitchens’ high school football coach, “our kids would fight you at the drop of a hat. And drop the hat.”

This is the 12th-largest metropolitan area in Alabama, with a population of 100,000 in the region. There is a mall and Chili’s and local chain of Southwestern grills called Bubba Rito’s. It is not quaint. It is not dynamic. The charm lies not with the landmarks, but with the people who lean in, grin and point you toward them.

The grace is in the fight.

The distinctions between Attalla (population 6,000) and Gadsden (population 35,000) are imperative on a Friday night and irrelevant in explaining a life. People don’t change at the city limits. They may not change 700 miles apart.

Places are different. The old-time uptown in Gadsden features a speaker high up a stoplight playing country music to the empty streets of midday. Blood stains the concrete between the school building and the fieldhouse at Etowah High -- the remnants of a hog slaughter.

A science class studied the anatomy of the hog. Then they ate it.

Gadsden isn’t Cleveland. But Gadsden people could be Cleveland people.

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The house in Gadsden, Ala., where Freddie Kitchens lived from sixth grade until he went to college at Alabama. (Doug Lesmerises, cleveland.com)

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The Connector

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The true connection between Gadsden and Cleveland lies in the man who now connects them.

Back home, friends reveled in their new Browns fandom at the golf course on Sundays in the second half of the season. There’s a handful of old Etowah teammates who might all lay claim as Kitchens’ best friend back then. If Kitchens threw party with his old Gadsden friends and new Cleveland friends, he knows they’d crack a beer, turn on a game and all get along.

Those people are why Kitchens made a Dawg Pound sweatshirt his gameday sideline attire during his eight-game run as offensive coordinator.

“That’s his people,” Pierce said. “He probably would rather be around that group than the people the owners want him to be around.”

“I think the people of Cleveland are hard-working people, just like I grew up around,” Kitchens said. “Just good, honest, hard-working people. Not to say that other people aren’t honest.

“I just the get the feeling it’s the same type of town with the same type of values and things like that.

“Cleveland is on a bigger scale, but it’s the same. It really is.”

He felt the connection from the start.

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BUILT IN BAMA: Find the entire five-part series here.

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