My month in Alabama

My take on Alabama

where I went this month

As you can see, I made a valiant effort to see the state, but I missed huge chunks of it.  I've never thought of Alabama as being a particularly large state - it's ranked 30th among the 50 states for size, after all.  And if all I did was drive around, I could have covered it.  But of course I wanted to see things, too, and then write about them so I'd have something to jog my memory when I forgot them.  And anyway, I'm finding I need to stop and rest now and then.  All in all, I did the best I could.  At least unlike last December in New Jersey, I wasn't held up by the weather this December.

Alabama's Land
This was my biggest surprise about the state: the hills.  Almost the only driving I'd ever done in Alabama was along I-10, going to and from Florida, so I'd always thought the whole state was as flat as that area is.  But it is definitely not.

Except for this area in the extreme south of Alabama near the Gulf of Mexico, the rest of the state is hills.  And these hills all rise to meet the Appalachians in the far northeast corner where they stream down from Tennessee.

This is an attractive state, largely because of its mostly rural character and many wooded areas and rivers/streams.

Alabama's cities look just like cities, of course, though the farther south I got the more Southern they appeared.  Mobile looks a lot like parts of New Orleans, and has the street names to match, probably because the Spanish and French moved into both areas at the same times and left their marks.

Alabama's People
For the most part, I found very pleasant folks throughout the state.  I think my reception in all the states has a lot to do with me being a white female senior citizen who's willing to smile and chat with people, and I especially think so here.

There're still very strong remnants of the Old South in this state, increasingly strong the farther south into the state I went, based on the increasing numbers of Confederate Battle Flags I saw flying in people's front yards.

I think in general Alabamans are trying to pull themselves out of the 19th century and into the 21st, with some doing a better job of it than others.  And those who are not at either end of the spectrum may find themselves confused more than conflicted.

Alabama is now only about 67% white.  Not only is it 26% black, but it's also nearly 10% Hispanic, Asian, Native and other minorities.  The percentage of whites in Alabama has decreased notably over the last few decades.  At the beginning of the Civil War, almost half the population was black, but that figure wouldn't have worried the whites because of the dominance of the master-slave relationship.  During the Jim Crow era, large numbers of blacks moved to other parts of the US to find a safer place to live, and gradually the percentage of whites increased to about 3/4 of the population.  That percentage has been gradually trending downward for some years now, due especially to increasing numbers of Asians and other minorities moving in.

But for those who came from white superiority (if not white supremacy) backgrounds, these demographic changes may seem threatening.

As so often happens, city residents are confronting and dealing with the racism of both past and present by ensuring that accurate history is being taught, rather than the myths still prevalent when I was growing up.  Likely this too is threatening to some, who see it as denigration of their great-grandfathers, of their family histories.

Some, as seems to still be the case in Scottsboro, want to ignore the past entirely, thinking that the way to heal is to declare a new day to have dawned and that's the end of it.  But others know that pain can't be erased by wishing it so, that it has to be addressed directly before it will stop hurting.  I get the sense Alabama is in the midst of that process.

But for many young people, who haven't realized yet that the past is prologue, Alabama means a place to live.  Many told me they liked it where they were living because it was quiet, because they were close to things to do but still living in a quiet area.  I especially enjoyed the young woman who told me what she liked best was the weather: she'd moved to Mobile from Michigan.  (Her equally young co-worker asked her if it's warmer or colder in Michigan than Mobile right now, so who knows what they're being taught in school.)

Alabama's Drivers
They're a lot like Texas drivers - fast and pushy, but relatively polite when they stop to think about it.  For all the people who wouldn't let me merge, there were others who changed lanes to let me on the highway.  They speed, but they don't tailgate.  Like that.

Alabama's roads are mostly pretty good, but there were plenty of areas - mostly in cities - that needed a lot of work.

Alabama seems to have a casual idea about putting up signs to say names of roads.  In some places, I was ready to applaud; in others, I thought about tearing my hair out from the frustration of trying to figure out where I was.

What I Didn't See That I Wanted To See
Not much, actually.  I managed to get to most of the places I wanted to go.  Still, there were some things I missed that I mentioned in my daily posts.  And here are a few others.

* There's a Coon Dog Cemetery up in the Florence area that I could have gone to visit if I'd known it was there.  Next time, for sure.  This cemetery is shown in the movie Sweet Home Alabama, in case you're curious.

* In the northeastern part of the state, besides the Scottsboro Boys Museum that I missed, there are some areas of special scenic beauty, I'm told.  The Little River Canyon is a National Preserve, and there are waterfalls throughout the area.  The music group Alabama, which has lasted 50 years, was formed up there in Ft. Payne.  And there are a number of caves in that area.

* I'm sorry I missed the Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston and the Freedom Rides Museum in Birmingham.  I'd like to honor the bravery of those people.

* Another time with other dogs I'd like to visit the Natural Bridge in northcentral Alabama.  It's the longest natural bridge east of the Rockies, I was told, and is 200 million years old.

* I'd like to go back to the Tuskegee Airmen site, as well as the nearby George Washington Carver Museum.

* I'm not usually interested in antebellum houses because I don't like their histories.  But the Buena Vista Mansion in Prattville has a 24' circular staircase that I'd like to see.

* I missed the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, along with several other Civil Rights museums.

This list may look extensive, but I saw a lot of places so feel like I made a serious effort to see what Alabama has to offer.

My Conclusion About Alabama
In general, I liked it here.  The people and the accents are definitely Southern, and I missed that up north.  But I'm not sure whether I'd ever consider living here - the year-round ants, if for no other reason.  The bugs in the summer must be fierce.

But I think this state has a lot of potential and is doing its best to live up to that potential.  And I always admire that.

Alabama - Day 31 - Mobile

Payne's RV Park, Theodore
Tuesday, 31 December 2019

My last day in Alabama, and the last day of the year, and the last day of the decade (I don't know about you, but I'll be glad to see the last of the 'teen years and hope for better with a new decade).

today's route

The usual route into Mobile from the east is through one of the pair of tunnels under Mobile Bay.  But I've driven them before when Momma and I made our frequent trips to Florida to see her brother, and my memories were such that I wasn't sure I wanted to drive them in the RV.

I looked them up online and became even more sure.  The older of the two has only a 12' clearance, which I can make, but only by a foot, which seems to me cutting it a little too close.  And both of them are about 2/3 of a mile long, which I knew was further than I'd be comfortable with.  The newer of them has a sharp turn on the western end that has caused traffic problems with big trucks in the past, and didn't sound pleasant to me.  All together, I figured I'd just go back across that bridge near Africatown USA, like it or not.

And I didn't like it, but you have to choose your priorities sometimes.  Even the highway people designated my bridge route as a "scenic route."

This time across, I did the same as last time - driving in the inside lane and going my own speed.  But oddly, this time there were 2 vehicles that stayed in the inside lane behind me all the way across, never bothering to move into the outside lane and pass me as any self-respecting Alabama (or Texas) driver would do.  Very odd, but their choice, I told myself when I realized they were there.  At least they didn't honk at me to get me to move over, which I wouldn't have done anyway.

I was aiming for a Publix on the other side of Mobile and wanted to drive through some of the historic areas of town on the way (Google didn't like it because not direct enough).

I ended up in what they called the Old Dauphin Historic District, which runs along Dauphin Street.  Very attractive.  Obviously old.  Lots of magnolias and live oaks and Spanish moss.  Lots of old houses - some just normal houses but many with 2 stories and many many with large covered porches, some with pillars, some with porches on the 2nd floor as well as the 1st.

In that area I found Hank Aaron Loop road and, in looking him up, learned that he'd grown up in Mobile.  I've heard of him all my life but had never paid attention to just how great he was at his chosen profession.  I also didn't realize he's still alive, but he's only in his 80s (which is seeming younger to me as I get closer myself).  His remarkable career and the racism he had to endure to pursue it are detailed at this link.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Hank-Aaron

I saw the Alabama School of Math and Science.  Very large and attractive, it bills itself as "Alabama's only fully public and residential high school."

In a residential area I saw a sign warning me of "speed lumps" - specifically Lumps, not Humps as I've always heard them called.

I suddenly realized I was going to leave Alabama tomorrow without having tried boiled peanuts.  I should have tried them weeks ago but didn't.  They don't sound at all appetizing to me, but thousands of people think they are, and it's a local specialty, so I'll need to come back for that.  Or it may be that in a couple of years when I'm in Georgia, which is also known for growing peanuts, I'll have another chance.

Tonight's campground is just south of Mobile in the small town of Theodore, just north of Bellingrath Gardens, a famous horticultural attraction.  The owner was very distracted when I came to check in, and even started to hand me her half-eaten banana when she was trying to find her receipt book.  She told me her husband is about to have his 3rd back operation and was miserable with pain in the next room, and it was all difficult for her, she said.  And I believe it.

This campground has unpaved roads filled with deep ruts from the recent rains, and a pond filled with ducks.  Actually, until I spent some quality time with the bird book, I'd figured those ducks for being geese, what with their size and their long necks.  It seems they stretch their necks so much they seem to be geese, but technically they're Muscovy Ducks, which I remember seeing once before at that glass-blowing place in West Virginia.

an internet Muscovy Duck

They come in all varieties of plumage, but that red business on their faces seems to be the constant by which they can be identified.

In this campground, these ducks had free rein, fascinating both Dexter and Lily from the windows and complicating my attempts to walk the dogs.  But at least we didn't see many dogs in this campground, which was actually pretty empty, so we were in much better shape than the last 2 nights.

Alabama - Day 30

Riverside RV Resort
Monday, 30 December 2019

This campground seems very pleasant on first impression.  My next door neighbors told me they both work in Pensacola, had moved into their 5th wheel full time last year, and had planned to move from one campground to another in the area, since there are so many of them (though mostly expensive).  But they liked this one so well, they'd been here for more than a year and planned to stay a while longer. 

The campground has only 52 campsites, is well-run, clean, very good showers and laundry facilities, surrounded by thick trees though none in the campground itself, quiet, several small green spaces for the dogs to use, reasonably priced.  On the other hand, one of the campground's safety lights shone brightly in my bedroom windows all night long.  And there were anthills in the campground, at my campsite, and one ant in my cabin (where there's one, there're bound to be more).

But what was it that made the campground become absolutely intolerable for me?  The situation my dogs and I were stuck in.  There seemed to be dozens of dogs, even with so few campsites, and many of them were the size of my dogs and just as excitable.  As a result, it was really hard for me to find a time I could walk my dogs that we wouldn't run into several others.  And the way the campground was laid out, there were few escape routes we could go on if we ran into a dog along our walk.

Almost the only place we could go to get away was the steep road into the campground, which we did, and had our return blocked twice by dogs walking toward us on the same road, who were fortunately walked by sensible people who turned back before they got too close to us.

Just one full day of that bored my dogs almost to tears, and made it hard for them to deal with all their pent-up energy.

I did my laundry and took a shower and cleaned the RV's cabin and worked on the blog, but I also got more and more frustrated.  I'd intended to spend all of tomorrow doing the same thing in the same place and finally realized I just couldn't do it - either to the dogs or to myself.  So I also spent time today finding another campground to move to that I could afford and that wasn't too out-of-the-way.

I knew I had zero excuse for getting a refund for the next night so didn't say anything to the campground about leaving.  In fact, I was so irritated that I made a point of telling them that I'd be leaving for the grocery store, which meant taking the RV itself, but they weren't to think that meant anything.  I didn't want to tell them I wasn't coming back and give them the chance of making a double profit on the site I'd already paid for. 

Maybe not a fair position for me to take because it wasn't the campground's fault I couldn't walk my dogs one at a time (making them easier to control), but the whole place just got to me.

This is the first time (and I hope the last) that I've shelled out money for two campgrounds for the same night.  But I started to feel desperate to find some place we oddballs would feel welcome, so it seemed worth the extra expense.

Alabama - Day 29 - east of Mobile Bay

Riverside RV Resort, Robertsdale
Sunday, 29 December 2019

Because my next campground was less than a couple of hours away from last night's, I decided to take this chance to see something of Alabama's coastline.

When I was walking the dogs right before we left the campground, a car stopped and the woman driving turned out to be my savior from 2 nights ago, the very nice person who had helped me after I got dragged through the gravel.  Her name is Selena, and she stopped on her way to work to ask how I was doing.  Very nice woman.

today's route

Alabama actually has 2 chunks of land on the Gulf of Mexico, one on either side of Mobile Bay, which the city of Mobile sits at the head of.  I wasn't sure how long it'd take me to drive on these roads so planned to see only half of this eastern side.

The drive
I went past the town of Satsuma - "Safest City in Alabama" - which is where the dog-grabbing officials came from yesterday.  They have a Whataburger there, making me realize once again I'm not far from Texas.

I'd chosen a route that would avoid the tunnels that connect Mobile to the east side of the Bay, but as I was driving along I could see a very high bridge up ahead and gradually realized my route took me over this bridge.  Not liking bridges any better than tunnels, I pulled over to consult the map.

While I was looking at the map in the parking lot of an abandoned business, I saw a sign that said, "Future Home of the Legacy Lane Remembrance of the Individuals on the Clotilda."  I understood not one word of that and looked it up.  And was stunned.  I knew I had passed a sign for the turnoff to Africatown USA and assumed it was a game park or amusement park.  It's not.  It's the name of a community formed by those who were brought on the last slave ship from Africa, arriving on the ship Clotilda in Mobile in 1860.  This link tells their remarkable story, and explains the sign's plan to remember them.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Africatown

So, back to the bridge.  Yes, I had to go over it.  The alternative, beside Mobile's tunnels, was to go all the way back up to the interstate and drive all the way around the various water bodies to find a way south again.  So I gritted my teeth and over we went.

Cochrane-Africatown USA bridge

This thing is more than a mile long and actually goes over as much water as it does the land in this photo.  You may remember during Hurricane Katrina an oil platform broke loose and was swept under a bridge.  This is the bridge.  But it was built in a special way to withstand the rigors of the salt water environment, so the bridge continued to be usable even with the oil platform.  This is the route the DMV sends trucks with hazardous cargo, so I figured if they could use it, so could I.

I used my previous education and took the inside lane and went the speed I was comfortable with and let other drivers take care of themselves because, after all, there was another lane.  It worked fine.

On the other side we passed the Battleship Alabama, and I wanted to stop but couldn't figure out where the entrance was.  If I'd realized it was on my route, I'd have looked it up ahead of time.  This ship served during WWII in the Pacific Theater, was decommissioned in 1947, and was almost sold for scrap before Mobile businesses pitched in to buy it for a museum.

The road led into the town of Spanish Fort: A City of Spirit, they say, followed by Daphne: Jubilee City (they're jubilant about an annual freak of nature that brings lots of crab, shrimp and so forth close enough to shore to be caught easily).

These towns plus nearby Fairhope all have large attractive houses and yards, and ivy-covered trunks of old trees along the roads.  At least, that's what I saw along the roads I took.  I'm sure they've got housing for normal folks as well, though.  They're on a designated Alabama Scenic Byway, which I took along the eastern side of Mobile Bay.

It was in one of these towns that I saw this odd historical marker about Andrew Jackson.

I'm willing to forgive the grammatical error because of the humor.

Along this road I passed, though couldn't read, a historical marker labeled "Ecor Rouge."  I've tried, almost completely unsuccessfully, to learn more about Ecor Rouge and got only as far as the fact that it means "red cliff" which describes the landmark used by mariners back to the Spanish and French explorers and, doubtless, by the Natives before them.  But I found this charming report that describes the area, which was broadcast on NPR a few years ago, and the transcript is at this link.   https://www.npr.org/a-few-miles-from-mobile

This Scenic Byway becomes a typical drive along a waterfront - many residences focused on the water, with driveways running down to the houses, which all have cute little names: Where the Sidewalk Ends; Kate's Place; Tabby Corner; Nest of Nine; Thanks Doc; Happy Ours.  These residences mostly have big porches but the architecture is varied.   I saw one that was hexagonal - seriously, the walls sloped sharply to form six sides.  It was connected by a breezeway to a smaller version of itself.  It had screened porches and looked very inviting.

Point Clear has a large waterfront park and half the dogs in town were out being walked.  Wish I could do that with my dogs.  Point Clear also is the home of the Grand Hotel, which was set back too far from the road for me to see clearly, though I'm betting it doesn't look like Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel.  There's also a yacht marina next door - I know because there were several yachts moored there.

I passed small beach houses and large beach houses and large grand houses that made no concessions for being on a beach (why do people want fancy expensive houses like that in this setting?).

I passed a sign advertising Lambert's Cafe - Home of Throwed Rolls.  Of course, I had to look this up and learned that about 40 years they were so crowded one noon that the cook couldn't get the hot rolls to the tables and one customer said to just throw them.  So now they do that all the time.  They've been sued for injuries involving these "throwed rolls," and I can't imagine why they don't just post a sign saying people eat there at their own risk and refuse to pay damages, but apparently they do pay them.  Weird.

We stopped to rest at the Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, which was closed on a Sunday, though locals were coming here to hike on their trails, so we walked around a little, too.  In their visitor center area, I saw a Louisiana Sweet Orange Tree, that they harvest every year about this time, and an oak-leaf hydrangea, and old live oaks, and a sweet-smelling pine grove.  Also some short tree (or very tall bush - about 6' tall) that had monster leaves: there were dried leaves on the ground that were twice the size of my foot (and I have big feet).

Down the road I passed the turnoff for the Weeks Bay Pitcher Plant Bog, which may be fascinating though a little creepy, but we didn't go.

At some point that I couldn't identify, after one of the road's turns I started seeing signs naming this road as part of the Alabama Coastal Connection.  When I looked up the route later, it seems I was on this coastal connection for most of the day.

As I got closer to the Gulf, I started feeling strong crosswinds when I was traveling east or west.

But this is still agricultural country: I saw one of those Share The Road signs that usually mean share with bicycles, but this time they'd added the picture of a tractor that they wanted us to share with.

I came into Gulf Shores: Small Town, Big Beach.  I passed a sign at a vet clinic that read: "Neuter your dog - it will make him less nuts."

As far as I could tell, in both Gulf Shores and neighboring Orange Beach the only tall buildings are condos and hotels on the beach.

I turned on the long road that leads along the narrow strip of land that runs out to divide Mobile Bay from the Gulf of Mexico, and that ends at Fort Morgan.  All along this road I found mostly pastel-painted elevated beach houses on either side of the road (facing the Bay or the Gulf).  I passed several signs warning we were in a time of high risk of rip currents in the water.

I passed Gregorys Lane.  The local fire department had a sign out front saying all they want for Christmas is "numbers on your mail box."  I remember in Austin the emergency services folks were often pushing for people to put clearly visible and legible numbers on their houses, and I don't know why people don't.  Such an easy and obvious safety measure.  Guess folks think they'll never have a fire or need an ambulance.

I met a CruiseAmerica RV on the road, and remembered when I'd rented one, and thought about what a great experience these folks must be having with theirs.

I'd hoped that when I got out to Fort Morgan, or somewhere along the way, there'd be someplace the dogs and I could stop and stretch our legs and have some lunch, but it turned out I could have these things only if I wanted to pay for them.  Fort Morgan is now a national historic site and they charge an admission fee, which I didn't want to pay because I didn't want to tour the fort buildings  (it was a Civil War site).  It's right next door to a ferry terminal, where the ferries that go across the Bay to Mobile come in.  But they too charge to park there if you're not waiting in line for a ferry, so I turned around and went back along the road.

I hoped I could turn into one of those areas with the beach houses and find a place to park near the beach.  Boy was I wrong.  I tried several places and in all of them I ended up at dead ends so small I could barely get turned around to get out of there.  Meanwhile my own bladder was becoming more insistent, and finding a place to stop became as important as it was impossible to find.  I finally saw a small recycle area in front of a fire station and pulled in there.  I knew folks came to drop their recycling because someone did while we were there.  I walked the dogs around a little bit though didn't want to go out of sight of the RV, given we were partly blocking the fire station entrance.  But we stayed there for a little while and had some lunch and nobody complained.  The moral of that story is: don't go out to Ft. Morgan unless you want to visit Ft. Morgan.  Or take the ferry.

I headed back north on a road called the Foley Express, probably because it's a good divided road that runs through the town of Foley.  But first there's a toll bridge, which I knew nothing about until it loomed in front of me.  It was built like those ghastly fads among highway designers called flyovers, that rise up high in the air and make a nearly 90° turn before coming down somewhat abruptly.  It was a one-lane road and it's sheer luck there wasn't any crosswind and there weren't people behind me.  It'd've been ugly if there had.

And then the road came down smack to a toll booth, where they wanted me to pay $2.75 for that privilege.  As I explained to the woman at the toll booth, I feel like they should be paying me the $2.75 for having forced me to cross that bridge.  She agreed and was the one who told me how bad it gets when there's crosswinds.

Driving north I started seeing Hurricane Evacuation Route signs.

My campground for the next 3 nights is on the River Styx, that in Greek mythology forms the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead.  Should have realized it was an omen for me.  Driving along the road to get there, we passed the very active Styx River Shooting Range.  Startled both the dogs, and I didn't like it much either.

The campground seemed very pleasant, clean, comfortable, though small, but we settled in for a few days.

Alabama - Day 28 - Campground drama

I-65 RV Park
Saturday, 28 December 2019

I'd intended to spend a nice, quiet day in the campground, walking the dogs occasionally and spending most of the day catching up on my blog.  But that plan was torpedoed from the beginning by those stray dogs.

First, I couldn't take my dogs out for their early morning walk because I had to assume those dogs would be around.  Instead, at 6:00 AM I was packing up the RV's cabin and unplugging our connections and driving off down the road to a local grocery store, hoping I could find some place to walk the dogs while I waited for it to open.  It worked out okay, but what a nuisance.

Back at the campground, I waited for the office to open at 9:30 and went down to have a heart-to-heart talk with them about those dogs and my injuries and what I think was their negligence.  The campground manager was in the office, fortunately, and she took it all very seriously.  She took photos of my bandaged, then unbandaged injuries, called the local police station, and said she'd deal with it that day.  I pointed out that my dogs couldn't leave our RV while those dogs were around, and if they weren't gone by noon, I needed to find another campground and wanted a refund.

Campgrounds hate to give refunds and most, like this one, have a sign posted prominently that says they won't.  But I thought, with my injuries, I had a pretty good case and so did the manager.  But she knew she'd have to argue with the owners and was hoping for a better solution.

She told me those dogs weren't abandoned at all but instead lived just down the road.  We speculated that the owners didn't bother to tie up their dogs but just let them roam around, and that someone in the campground was feeding them because otherwise why were they hanging around here so diligently for so long.

Nothing had happened by 11:00, when I absolutely had to walk the dogs, so once again I unplugged and went down the road to a different grocery store and walked them around a different parking lot.  But when we went back to the campground, I pointed out to the manager that I couldn't reasonably keep that up.  And it was ridiculous to think that's what I'd have to do for our before-bed walk so - - when were those dogs going to be gone?

I checked with her again a couple of hours later and was really feeling the pressure to have a resolution one way or another to this situation, and she said she was waiting on a return call from the police officer in charge but she thought the dogs had left the campground.

So I took my dogs out for a walk and - guess what? - found that those dogs hadn't left the campground at all but instead once again showed up to check out my dogs.

I real quick hustled mine back to the RV before yet another incident happened and went straight to the manager and said no they're not gone, they're right here.  And she called the police and said they're here.  And the police promised instant service.  So the manager and I stood around, with me shaking a little bit from the nearness of my recent encounter between those dogs and mine, waiting for the police.  And they did come fairly quickly.  A cop and the local city employees that deal with stray dogs.

They managed to catch the 2 dogs fairly quickly, stick them in the back of the city pickup truck, and promised they'd keep them until the county animal shelter had room to take them.  The cop said he'd keep trying to identify the owners - apparently he didn't know who they were as the manager had thought so who knows whether the dogs would have ever left if not for me pushing.

At some point when I'd gone elsewhere to walk my dogs, the manager checked around the campground and learned that those dogs had been causing problems for other residents - yowling all night under one man's trailer, growling at another woman who was walking her dog, that sort of thing.  So I did the campground a favor for pushing the issue and, given my extreme inconvenience, I think they should have given me an extra night free.  But she didn't offer, and by then all I really wanted to do was get out of there.

From then on, every time I took the dogs out, all 3 of us kept expecting those dogs to appear.  After all, they'd appeared each of the 3 previous times we'd tried to walk there.  And even though I'd actually seen them driven off and knew for certain they wouldn't be back soon, I kept worrying about it.  I guess it was a mild case of PTSD for all of us.

But with all that, I certainly didn't get the nice peaceful hours of work in that I'd hoped for.  Instead, once the dogs were gone, I spent some time trying to find another campground to move to.  And found that most of the ones that looked at all comfortable were completely booked up.  I didn't expect that so many folks would go camping for New Year's Eve, but that seems to be the case.  But I finally got one and reserved a spot until January 1st, hoping we could relax there and I could get caught up.

But what an experience.

Alabama - Day 27 - to Creola

I-65 RV Park, Creola
Friday, 27 December 2019

today's route

I'd covered some of this route before and recognized some familiar sights, such as the orange orchard.  But I didn't remember there were so many hills between Ozark and Enterprise and Opp.  In fact, I was dealing with hills most of the way to Mobile.  The land got a little flatter as I got closer to the Gulf, but it was nothing like the Texas Coast area, which is flat for miles.

I noticed a lot of calves in the fields.

I crossed some colorfully named creeks, such as Murder Creek and Burnt Corn Creek.  I'd really like to know where those names came from.

I kept seeing a lot of Texas license plates - more than Florida plates.  Weird.

I passed the Wind Creek Casino and Hotel, which has its own water tower.

Shortly before I got to tonight's campground, I crossed a very long bridge.  Very long.  This same bridge crossed wetlands, then the Tensaw River, then Mifflin Lake and Middle River, then Little Lizard Creek, and finally the Mobile River.  One bridge.

This campground seems okay, though their roads could use a little maintenance.  When I expressed some concern about walking my dogs, the young woman in the office assured me all the campers kept their dogs on leashes.

Except when I took the dogs out about 20 minutes later, 2 very unleashed dogs started following us and getting my dogs riled up, and it was very trying.  I stopped in the office and told the woman not everybody had their dogs tied up and she said oh, those were strays.  They'd been dumped at the campground last week and were hanging around.  Which didn't make me feel better because how would I be able to take mine out if they weren't under anybody's control.

And sure enough, when I took my kids out for the before-bed walk, the strays materialized and started following us again.  I have a really hard time when I walk my two anyway, because Gracie keeps insisting on lagging behind and then wrapping her leash around my legs or my body which can throw me off balance.  Which is what she did this night.  I was trying to get her around me on the right side when she suddenly raced out on the other side toward the strays at the same time Dexter did the same thing on the other side, and over I went.  They ended up dragging me across the gravel until they finally got tired of dragging a human around.

But those strays never went away.  I'd have expected them to retreat when my dogs went after them, but they didn't.  Which kept my dogs focused on them, so it was all I could do just to keep lying on the ground, acting as a sea anchor, focusing all my attention on not letting go of the leashes.  It was really awful.  Really awful.

Fortunately, a young woman was doing her laundry at the time and came out of the nearby laundry room and helped me - took the leashes so I had a chance to get up and shooed off the strays.

But then when I started back to our RV, I saw that the strays had gone that way and were hanging around right by our space.  There was no back route I could take to get there and I didn't know how to get home.  Meanwhile, both my arms were bleeding from various gravel scrapes and I was shaken up and crying and feeling helpless, which I hate.

I finally went back to the nice young woman and asked her to help me take the dogs back to the RV.  I knew I couldn't do it without help, and she was very sweet about it.  The strays retreated - I guess the 2nd person was too much for them or something - they didn't seem to mind me by myself.

I've got quite the stock of bandages of various sizes left over from Momma's various operations and illnesses, and I'm sure glad I brought them along on this trip.  I ended up with several sizes of scrapes on my left forearm and hand, and one deep scrape at my right elbow region that's about 4" long and 2" wide.  But I had bandages to fit them all and put iodine on them first to kill whatever germs I might have picked up.

It was hard to get in bed, because I have to crawl over the length of the mattress and it turned out I have some minor scrapes and bruises on both my knees.  But I'm seriously counting my blessings because I could have been hurt much worse.  Still, I'm talking to the campground people tomorrow.  They need to get those dogs out of here or refund me my money because the dogs and I are prisoners in the RV with those strays roaming around.

Alabama - Day 26

Ozark KOA
Thursday, 26 December 2019

Today was spent in the campground, working on my blog, figuring out where I'm going when we leave here tomorrow, and walking the dogs.

The big event today was that I got the RV washed.  First time in its life, so you can imagine how badly it needed the bath.  A man who works here in the campground freelances on RV cleaning and handyman chores.  He charged me $120 but, like I said, this was the very first time and the man said he had to really scrub in some places and go over it a couple of times to get gunk off.  I didn't tell him until after he was done that that was 2 years worth of dirt.  It sure looks better now.

In this campground I saw a chinaberry tree, a mimosa, and a camellia packed with buds.  Sure makes me realize I'm in the South.

My plan is to go over to the Mobile area tomorrow and spend the rest of the month checking out the area, which includes all of Alabama's coastline.

Alabama - Days 24 & 25 - Christmas celebration

Ozark KOA
Tuesday, 24 and Wednesday, 25 December 2019

And a Happy Christmas to all!  It was great for me.

David and Anna drove from near Dallas to Ozark yesterday in about 10 hours.  It would have taken me double that amount of time.

They spent all day both days with us here in the RV, which was really nice for all of us.  The critters liked having someone else to pat them, and the walks were easier because I wasn't having to hold both dogs at the same time.  Although I think it was a bit of a surprise to my co-walker when the dogs decided to start wrestling with each other.

Anna took this photo of my RV, which I'd just gotten washed on the 23rd.  First bath since I bought it more than 2 years ago.  I was a little surprised to find that the dirt and bugs from the highway weren't actually holding it together, and it sure looked a lot happier.

Ozark
On the 24th, we humans decided to go to Ozark for some lunch, forgetting our options would be limited on Christmas Eve.  In fact, other than the fast food franchises, our only choice was the Blue Agave Mexican restaurant.  We discovered Alabama's take on Mexican food wasn't like either the Tex-Mex we were used to, or like Mexico's version either.  For instance, when Anna asked for some queso to go with the chips and salsa we'd been given, what she got was sort of runny melted Velveeta - the white cheese variety.  And when Anna asked about it, the waitress assured her it was queso.  And it was this same runny queso that they put on the nachos David and I ordered.  Very odd.  On the other hand, they had Victoria beer, which is hard to find even in Mexico, so I was happy.

On the other side of the courthouse square is an ice cream shop, which we patronized after the Mexican food.  The ice cream is made there in the shop, they told us, and it was pretty good.

Across the street is the First United Methodist Church (at left) which has a very unusual steeple (at right).  The church doesn't seem to know it's unusual, though, because it has no signs around the building about it, and on their web page, they talk about the building itself, but refer to the steeple only when saying their antique stained glass windows were stored for many years under the steeple.  That's it.  The entire steeple structure is obviously made out of some kind of metal - it looks like tin but couldn't possibly have lasted this long if that's what it is.  The rest of the church, which they're very proud of, is to me pretty standard red brick.  But this steeple can be seen from blocks away and may be unique.

Anna took these photos, and I'm very glad she did because they show how "a picture is worth a thousand words."

one of the nice old houses in Ozark

After gawking for a while, we drove around town a little to gawk at the very nice old houses.  The town's much more pleasant than you'd ever dream from just the franchise businesses along the highway.

Back in the campground
On Christmas Day, David put a 3-lb ham in my crock pot, which I've never tried before, and it turned out very well.  Anna had brought all the way from Texas her cranberry salad I like so much, and some deviled eggs which I'd thought about making but hadn't gotten around to.

I don't think I contributed much of anything to all this feast, other than making Momma's coffee cake for breakfast in the morning.  But I appreciated everything very much.

Anna gave David a Texas-opoly game for Christmas, and we played that in the afternoon.  Like Monopoly but with Texas-type stuff like "Bluebonnet Lane" and "You ain't from around these parts" (jail).

they're about to start wrestling

Dexter

Gracie

Intermittently we walked the dogs, who enjoyed the extra attention and the nicer food I gave to them and Lily for Christmas dinner.

Gracie never seems to want to have her picture taken - hope she's not wanted by the law some place.  This under-the-table photo was the first time she showed herself for Anna's camera.

When my family left that evening, my frig was packed with all the leftovers - like half of Anna's mincemeat pie (which she also brought from Texas), most of the ham, most of the cranberry salad, most of a stick of Summer Sausage they brought, the loaf of Corsicana Pecan Bread they brought me, some green beans, all the breakfast sausage I'd bought that we didn't eat on Christmas - a truly stunning amount of food, considering there's just me to eat it.  But oh well.  I can suffer through, I guess.  I won't have to cook for a week at least.

It was really wonderful to have them with me.  I lived alone for 16 years before I moved in with my mom, and I've been alone since she died, so I'm really used to spending holidays on my own.  But this reminded me of how nice family can be and I'm really grateful to them.

Alabama - Day 23 - Enterprise and Dothan

Ozark/Ft. Rucker KOA, Ozark
Monday, 23 December 2019

today's route

Although we continued to have intermittent rain for much of the morning, the weather was much better than yesterday.  Today I'm going back to the Ozark KOA where I'd gone last week to avoid the possible tornadoes predicted then, and where I'll be meeting David and Anna tomorrow.  But there were things I wanted to see in Dothan and Enterprise, and Dothan especially is completely out of my way, being almost in Florida in the far southeastern corner of Alabama, so I knew I'd be unlikely to see them if I didn't go today.

The drive south
Not far from last night's campground I saw a sign posted on fenced property saying "Forever Wild Property."  I wondered if it were some kind of environmental thing here and looked it up.  Check some of the details at this link.   http://alabamaliving.coop/keeping-land-forever-wild   It's a state program, funded mostly by the interest on oil and gas money, that provides permanent protection from development wrecking the ecology of the area.  The program garners massive public support by encouraging all sorts of recreational activities on these lands, such as hunting, hiking and water sports.  Pretty clever.  And I wouldn't have figured Alabama for being a major oil/gas producing state, so think of what could be done like this in other states with more petroleum resources.

I saw many fields with many cows in them.  I can't tell one breed from another, though I can say I saw a small herd of Brahmas - or Charolais - I don't know the difference.

I saw major numbers of Texas license plates.  More, even, than Florida plates which Alabama is right next door to.  Are all these Texans over here to work on the oil fields I haven't seen?  Really, there are so many Texas plates I'd think the Alabamans might get tired of stumbling over us.

The route I took ended up going on 3 sides of Fort Rucker, and signs told me they have the US Army Aviation Museum there.  If I had more time, I'd be interested in seeing it.

Enterprise
Signs told me that Enterprise is the City of Progress.  I'm willing to believe it because, for one thing, it's a lot bigger than I'd expected and, for another thing, their Civic Center and Senior Center building is very large and very fancy.  There's money here from someplace.

boll weevil

I was in town to see the world's only monument to the boll weevil.  You know - that little pest that destroyed the cotton crop throughout the south before the Depression destroyed the rest of the economy.

The devastated cotton farmer near Enterprise figured out they'd been too dependent on cotton and this was a sign they needed to diversify.  George Washington Carver, born into slavery (and a prime example of the utter waste of resources that system (and racism) promoted), had been working at Tuskegee Institute on how to replenish soil that cotton depleted.  He had been trying to persuade farmers to rotate in crops of peanuts and sweet potatoes.  Thanks to the boll weevil, they finally listened to him.

As a result, the farmers around Enterprise and Dothan are producing nearly half the peanuts in the US.  And we eat a lot of peanuts in the US.

In thanks, the city of Enterprise raised this monument to the boll weevil that has to be seen to be believed.  My photos don't convey its full impact, but the photos I saw online are about like mine.  You just have to see this thing.

detail from the statue

monument in the center of town

As you might be able to tell, this monument isn't very big, but the citizens of Enterprise are nonetheless grateful to this bug.  The statue went up in 1919, and for its centennial this year, coinciding with the celebration of Alabama's 200th anniversary, the city held an "un-boll weevil-ble celebration" in its honor.

The town really goes in for celebrating this bug.  You can see the sign at the donut shop, which I thought was pretty funny.  There's also a Boll Weevil Inn just down Main Street, and a business with a sign in front - "Wee-vil Wish You a Merry Christmas."

And when I was coming around a corner I came face to face with a boll weevil mural.  Unfortunately, other traffic kept me from taking a photo, and I couldn't find any uncopyrighted photos of it on the internet, but I found these pages that get you there.  First is the local newspaper account and a photo of the partially finished mural.   https://www.dothaneagle.com/downtown-mural  Then there's most of the completed mural shown on this Trip Advisor page   https://www.tripadvisor.com  Note that this mural was painted by a mural artist from Dothan, a town that's known for its murals.  My next stop.

Dothan
I think Dothan sees itself as the capital of Wiregrass country, because that's what's in the name of lots of things around town.  The Wiregrass Shrine Club put up a sign to welcome travelers to Dothan.  I saw a bus labeled Wiregrass Transit, and there's the Wiregrass Art Museum.

The Wiregrass region of the US actually covers a lot of southern Georgia and parts of the Florida panhandle, as well as southeastern Alabama, and it's named for a tough local plant called (surprise!) wiregrass.  I couldn't figure out which of the uncopyrighted photos online were actually of wiregrass, not having seen it (as far as I know), so I'm attaching this link that has a photo.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Aristida-stricta

Coming into the main part of town, I came across a large amount of traffic, and I couldn't figure out why.  It was only 11:00 - not really lunch hour - on a Monday, but the streets were absolutely packed.  Making the situation worse, the multiple traffic lights weren't timed for any direction.  We were all just stopped randomly and frequently.  Whoever's in charge of their traffic patterns needs to do a better job.  There are other ways to slow down traffic, if that's what they were doing.  Frustrated drivers aren't going to drive safer.  So says the daughter of a former traffic engineer.

At one point I was stopped behind a large truck of young chickens.  They were crammed in cages so small they couldn't stand up, though they tried to so they could turn around.  I had to look at them for so long I was about ready to swear off chicken forever, it looked so inhumane.

But all the stopping and starting and frustrations were nearly worth it when I saw some of Dothan's murals.  I think they have 19 of them around the downtown area.  These are the ones I saw.

from George Washington Carver to the annual Peanut Festival

Tribute to Sherman Rose, Tuskegee Airman & Instructor

U.S. Army Aviation Center/Fort Rucker, Alabama

the women of Dothan

The Steamboat Era 1824-1925

Dothan to Ozark
Route 231 runs from Dothan straight to the Ozark KOA, where we're staying for the next few nights.  Actually, it runs down to I-10 in the Florida Panhandle and up through Montgomery to within 40 miles of Birmingham.  Useful highway.

This KOA is quite small, but it's laid out in such a way that the dogs and I can find enough space to take walks in, and they have that dog park, and my campsite is level and comfortable, so I was glad to come back here.

Alabama - Day 22

Ft. Toulouse National Historic Site
Sunday, 22 December 2019

We spent the day huddling inside, drying off from each foray into the very rainy outdoors.  It just poured most of the day, with very strong winds and some thunder to scare Gracie.  All that weather made it pretty chilly inside the cabin and I was hoping my propane supply would hold out.

When there were letups in the rain, we'd go out and walk around the campground, or up to the main area where the visitor center and fort remains are.  In better weather it's probably a very interesting place.  They have a nature walk, for instance, that goes through the woods and probably provides access to see lots of birds and various plants.  The fort area is also probably interesting and very accessible.  But with this weather, I could scarcely have been less interested in anything but getting back inside.

I very luckily had a wifi signal so could do some catching up on my blog and plan a driving route for tomorrow.

Except for the constant threat and occasional scent of deer, it was a peaceful day.

Alabama - Day 21 - Wetumpka

Fort Toulouse/Fort Jackson National Historical Park, Wetumpka
Saturday, 21 December 2019

And today's the Winter Solstice, meaning longer days for the next 6 months.  Here in southcentral Alabama, today's sunrise will be at 6:42 AM and sunset at 4:43 PM.  There's not much of a dusk or dawn period at this latitude - less than a half hour - so earlier sunrises and later sunsets mean a lot.

today's route

Drawer repair
When I was closing things up in the RV's cabin to get on the road, I found yet again that the latch on the top drawer under the stove had broken.  This is the 3rd time it's broken, and it's only this one that's broken.

The glossy brochure and map for last night's campground had ads for local merchants, including an RV dealer a few miles away.  I called, they said yes they had those latches, so I emptied the broken drawer, found other places to stow those things, and we took off.

The service person at the RV place agreed that it was unusual for it being always the same drawer that breaks, but he said those latches are notorious for breaking and he didn't seem to think my experience was odd.  I guess I think it's odd because it's such a major nuisance.  I got 2 new latches - one for fixing today, and another for when it breaks next time, as apparently it will do.  Quel nuisance, as my Momma used to say.

Recycling
You'd think - well, I'd think anyway - that a city the size of Birmingham would have easily available recycling facilities - and you'd/I'd think wrong.  I had to hunt for any.

The one I found I'm skeptical about because it was nothing more than a couple of rows of large open-top wooden crates that people piled stuff in.  There weren't any signs about what was or wasn't acceptable for recycling, and most people were dropping off stuff in large plastic bags which may have been mostly garbage for all I could tell.  But I was stuffed with recyclables, and it was labeled as a recycling facility, so I too put my things in a large plastic bag and left them there.

It's clear to me that people all over the US want to recycle stuff.  We've all been educated and are willing to participate, as far as I can tell.  But a huge chunk of the country isn't providing that service for us.  The big cities seem to think that providing service at people's houses is enough - but what about all the people who live in apartment buildings or in RV parks or in rural areas?  I'm seeing an awful lot of people at every recycling facility I've gone to, even in big cities, so a major opportunity is being lost.

Groceries
I didn't want to brave Montgomery traffic - even on a Saturday morning - just for groceries, and I found a Winn Dixie in Wetumpka, where my next campground is, so that's where I went.  It turned out to be a small one to cater to a small town, so they didn't have everything I wanted, but it was good enough.

Miscellaneous from the drive
This time I took the eastern ring road around the city and passed a sign I hadn't noticed before, marking the Wetumpka Impact Crater.  I'd never heard of this before so looked it up, and it turns out to be pretty interesting.

Wetumpka impact crater
Back in the age of dinosaurs, a meteorite 1,000' wide blasted into this area, which scientists think was at that time a shallow sea.  Of course, now it's just part of the hills in this Piedmont region, which is how they found it: to a geologist, it doesn't look at all like the rest of the area.  For a layman's version of all this, you can check out this link.   http://www.wetumpkaimpactcratercommission.org  To me, it's almost as interesting to learn that even as recently as the 1970s and '80s most scientists didn't believe large meteors could hit the Earth.  (Why?  Do they think Earth has a meteor-repelling shield around it?)

Surprising bumper sticker
In Wetumpka I saw an ordinary sedan being driven by an older woman with that helmet sort of hairdo that some old-fashioned women never give up, and I had her pegged for your basic small-town Republican Alabaman.  She had a sticker in her rear window that said: "11.3.20  As it turns out, he wasn't the lesser of two evils."  I still expect him to win the next election, but it may be closer than I expected.

License plates

current plate since 2014

previous plate, still as common as the new ones

The current plate isn't nearly as clear as my photo shows.  In real life, driving down the street and seeing it on the rear of someone's car (AL is one of many states with only the rear license plate), it's very dark and hard to read.  I tried to darken my photo, but this was all I could get.

That "Heart of Dixie" thing that shows up on all versions of AL license plates - the DMV says it's the state slogan, but I don't know who told them that.

The official state motto is "We Dare Defend Our Rights."  (Really.)  The official state motto is "Garden State."  (Don't ask.)  And one of the 3 unofficial nicknames is "Heart of Dixie."  Along with "Yellowhammer State" and "Cotton State."

So I think it's really odd that a state government arm would decide to put this phrase on their license plates.

Campground
This is the place I visited a few days ago where there's a lot of Spanish moss.  By the time we got here, it was starting to rain, as forecast, and that kept on the rest of the day.  But the campground was only about a third full, and I saw only a couple of other dogs, so I only worried about deer.

Deer were actually a problem.  When we went out for our before-bed walk, it was dark of course so I couldn't see anything, but both the dogs sensed a deer as soon as we stepped outside and reacted like idiots as usual.  I could barely wrestle them back inside, and gave them a 5-minute settle-down period.  When we tried it again, the deer had gotten the message and left the area, thank goodness.  But I hate scares like that.  I really don't want to get dragged again, or get my arms half wrenched out as has happened not too long ago.

Alabama - Day 20 - Montgomery

The Woods RV Park
Friday, 20 December 2019

today's route

Vet clinic/dog grooming

I dropped the dogs off for baths at the vet office early this morning.  Odd thing about that: the street is shown on the street signs as being named Robison Street, but the vet clinic is named Robinson Street Veterinary Clinic. 

Since the dogs were going to be at a vet clinic, and since Banfield seems to be keeping their records as secret as Pres. Trump's telephone transcripts, and since the dogs are out of both tick medicine and heartworm medicine - both of which require a prescription, I asked this clinic to take this opportunity to do the doctor exam or whatever they need to do to think it's okay to prescribe the meds. 

When I picked the dogs up early this afternoon, they were clean and happy, I had enough meds to take care of both of them for a year, and I was about $600 poorer.  But the clinic had let them out into a fenced yard with grass while they were waiting, instead of keeping them in a cage, which was a nice bonus.

Laundromat

I found a nice clean laundromat down the street a couple of miles, and it turned out to be an incredible racket.  The machines operated only with a card that had to be bought there; and the machines cost odd amounts - like $4.79 for a washer, and 8¢ for 6 minutes in a dryer.  The dryer was an especial ripoff because the machines didn't all work very well.  One I put my clothes in took about 2 minutes before it got hot, and then the last 2 minutes were for a cool-down, which meant my clothes got only 2 minutes of heat.  And I couldn't add any time to that first 6 minutes but had to wait for the cycle to run (including cool-down) before I could add money, so instead of 1 cool-down period at the end of a long period of heat, I had one every 6 minutes.  Plus the odd amounts of money required meant I couldn't use it enough times to come out to an even dollar amount.  When I'd finally gotten my clothes clean and dry, I still had 61¢ on the card, and I gave it to a young woman who said she came there regularly.  The woman who worked there was very pleasant and helpful, which was the only reasonable part of that experience.

Driving around Montgomery

I'm seeing a lot of pansies - it's that time of year, after all - but I found some purple pansies planted around a flower bed that also held some orange and yellow tulips, which I thought it was much too soon for.  But the purple/orange/yellow combo knocked my socks off.

I passed a museum for Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.  Zelda grew up in Montgomery, the daughter of a prominent citizen; several streets and other locations are named for her.  Scott, Zelda and their daughter Scottie came here for a winter, although Scott took off for the West Coast for several months right after they moved in.  The museum is in the home they lived in while they were in town.

When I was driving by the Greyhound bus station, I saw a historical marker titled Civil Rights Freedom Riders and realized it must be commemorating the first Freedom Ride in 1961 where the KKK bombed the bus and beat the riders in Anniston; then on to Birmingham where again the KKK beat up the riders, targeting especially the white riders, who local hospitals refused to treat; and with Alabama National Guardsmen riding the bus for protection, on to Montgomery - but the Guard abandoned the bus at the county line and a white mob met the bus at the Montgomery bus station, beating them especially badly while the local police refused to intervene.  Interesting account at this link.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Freedom-Riders

I've been seeing signs all over the state advertising "Jeff Coleman 4 Congress" and, since the signs never mentioned which party he was in, I assumed he must be a Democrat in this strongly Republican state.  Turns out he's not.  Guess he just assumed folks would know he was Republican because, after all, he was running for statewide office here.

Here in Montgomery I've been seeing lots of signs for the Camellia Bowl, due to be played tomorrow.  I'd never heard of it and have now learned it's one of the multiple NCAA bowl games.

Troy University is located here.

Driving through various parts of town I was surprised to see that Montgomery doesn't go in much for sidewalks.

Alabama State University is a prominent feature in town, and the campus is just a few blocks from the state capitol.

Alabama State Capitol

Built in 1851, this is the 4th building to serve as AL's capitol.  It was here, ten years later, that Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America.

That clock over the portico on the front of the building is much more prominent in person than in this photo.  To me it seemed so huge I had trouble looking at any other part of the building.  The 3 clock faces (one on each side) are each 10' in diameter; the hands are 3' and 4' long.  Apparently others better versed in architecture than I am have also criticized this clock as being "architecturally inappropriate," per Wikipedia.  It was a gift to the state from the city of Montgomery.  Wonder what message they were trying to send to the legislature.

It's possible to drive right up to the front door, but it's not possible to stop, get out and take photos, so the one above is from the internet.  The capitol as I saw it had a big Christmas tree out front, just as it appears in this picture, except I remember lots of holiday decorations I don't see pictured.

Dexer Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church

This church is less than a block from the capitol, but I wasn't looking for it and was just turning the corner when suddenly, there it was on the corner.  MLK was the pastor here 1954-1960; many civil rights programs were designed in his office in the basement of the church, including the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott.



Civil Rights Memorial
This memorial is just around the corner from the church.  You may be able to tell that it was designed by Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC.  It was built by the Southern Poverty Law Center to commemorate 41 people who were killed during the civil rights struggle of the '50s and '60s.

detail of the memorial

The wall and the table both have water running over them continuously.  Although this is easily accessible to the public, when the public is driving an oversized vehicle it's hard to find a parking place.  Especially when the city has the opposite side of the street blocked off for parking purposes and a guard to shoo people away when they (me) try to stop.  So these photos are off the internet.

National Memorial for Peace and Justice
This memorial was opened just last year, and I'd heard about it during an NPR interview at the time of its dedication.  It commemorates those who were lynched in the US between 1870 and 1950 and is designed to feel like an area where people were hanged, so you gradually feel among the dead and tormented. 

It begins with a brief history of American race relations, starting from the first Africans who were brought to this continent as slaves.  It's trying to explain to visitors how on earth we got to such a place that wholesale or random killing of others could be accepted by a large part of the population.

The history:

That's the background and the state of the nation for the 90 years following the Civil War.

County monuments:
The Memorial presents the victims of lynchings by the county in which they died.  For examples:

Tulsa County, OK

Lamar County, TX

McClennan County, TX

Williamson County, TX, on right -
both lynchings were as recently as the 1930s

Carroll County, MS, shows
 massacre of 23 at once in 1886

St. Clair County, IL, shows
massacre of 40 at once in 1917

Sabine County, TX, shows 9 of
these 10 were killed on the same day in 1908

Anderson County, TX, shows 15 of
the 22 were killed on the same day in 1910

The atmosphere:
The county monuments are hanging along 4 avenues, and visitors walk along and through them on a floor that goes gradually lower into the ground, until the monuments are hanging high above our heads.

first level

2nd level

3rd level

4th level - water runs down the face of this wall

to understand the depth, you can just make out
 a person at the end of this 3rd level

on 4th level: "Thousands of African Americans are unknown victims
of racial terror lynchings whose deaths cannot be documented,
many whose names will never be known.  They are all honored here."

at the bottom of the 3rd level

More monuments in the courtyard:

lynchings in OK not shown on county monuments

West Virginia lynchings

And lest folks think these lynchings were confined to the South:

Indiana lynchings

Kansas lynchings

Maryland lynchings

Missouri lynchings

Ohio lynchings

I noticed both these TX counties had
lynchings as late as the 1940s

this one showing David Gregory was lynched
in 1933 was unsettling -
that's the name of my brother and my cousin

Explanations:

The memorial explains why some of these lynchings happened:

   in 1933 an AL woman was lynched for reprimanding white children who threw rocks at her

   in 1937 a TX man was lynched for reporting a group of white men who attacked him

   in 1925 an AL man was lynched for refusing to run an errand for a white woman

   in 1926 a FL man was lynched for asking a white woman for a drink of water

   in 1918 a pregnant GA woman was lynched when she complained about the lynching of her husband

   in 1891 a TN man was lynched for being "intoxicated" 

And then there were the mobs:

   in 1917 in IL dozens of men, women and children were lynched in a massacre

   in 1922 in GA a 15-year-old was burned alive by a mob of 1,000

   in 1919 a MS man was lynched by a mob of several thousand

   in 1906 2 MO men were lynched by a mob of 5,000

   in 1901 in FL a 16-year-old was burned alive by a mob of thousands

   in 1919 a NB man was lynched by a mob of 15,000

   in 1921 dozens were lynched in the Tulsa, OK, massacre

   in 1922 a WV man was lynched by a mob of 1,000 

   in 1911 a PA man was burned alive by a mob of 1,000 men, women and children

   in 1893 in TX a 17-year-old was lynched by a mob of 10,000

Just as a sample of the random terror that was inflicted on the black population.   

I now understand more clearly the quote I found at one of the Selma March Interpretive Centers:

   "We been walkin' with dropped-down heads, with a scrunched up heart, a timid body in the bushes.  But we ain't scared any more."

Not much wonder why anyone would be scrunched up and timid, living with fear like that.

Additional memorials:

This memorial was intended to honor those who died in the first 90 years after the Civil War, but that doesn't mean the terror killings and lynchings stopped in 1950.  Across the street is a memorial to others who died in the '50s.

there's water running down the face of this monument

The drive back
I picked up the dogs all clean and bouncy, and now with cleanish beds, and drove back to the campground.

This last memorial sickened me in a way none of the others had for some reason, and I think I've seen enough for now.

Growing up in a sheltered environment, mostly in segregated Waco, I had no idea what life was like for the black people I scarcely knew were there.  Which is why I was especially troubled by the monument (above) for McClennan County, where Waco is.  These various memorials and museums I've been visiting for the last few months have educated me bit by bit - a different focus at each one - so I now have a completely different perspective on life in the United States, both then and now.

I was lucky to have parents who taught me that people are just people, no matter what their skin color or religion or hair color or any other identifying feature.  They didn't themselves do anything to make society recognize that fact, but at least they didn't burden me with myths about one right church or one right people over others.  So my learning curve has at least been less painful and arduous than for others, but it's still been steep.

And I think I'll take a break for a while on the civil rights stuff. 

This hanging memorial, by the way, has copies of the county monuments that they hope will be taken to the various counties for use in location-specific memorials around the country.  If you're interested in making that happen in your county, the memorial folks will be glad to talk to you.