Alabammy Bound: Our journey began in earnest in Auburn, Alabama where we stopped for lunch at Toomer’s Drugs, home of the finest lemonade this side of Mrs. Country Time’s front porch. It was a brilliant spring day with a honeysuckle breeze and it didn’t take long to see why time moves a bit slower down there – it takes a good half an hour to drink the giant beverages. 
I don’t know if Big Gulp pays royalties to places like the Smokehouse in Greenville (where we stopped later that week for a light lunch of a slab of pork ribs, fried chicken fingers, succotash and 64 oz glasses of sweet tea), but they should because they sure do enjoy drowning their whistles down there. Stopping at Toomer’s was worth the four extra rest stop breaks though, because I’m already fixin’ to get back down there for some more of that tasty lemonade.
Auburn is a pleasant college with a bent toward agricultural economics in the heart of GOP country, so the numerous “W. The President” stickers modeled after the trendy hotel weren’t surprising. But Auburn is still a college right? Not one student sauntered or drove by with any message resembling Jesus Is a Liberal, Visualize Whirled Peas, or even a simple Bring ‘em Home Now. (A quick aside: since tee-shirts are apparently now the preferred method of political dissent, the best one I saw was at Jazz Fest: Jimmy Carter in 2008, Nobels Ain’t Peanuts.) So much for youthful iconoclasts…although U.S. Out of Iraq and Into Iran! spaghetti-tees probably aren’t sweeping Madison, Wisconsin either.
After Toomer’s, we tooled around some backroads on the way to Montgomery. The deep forests, red clay and cotton fields are something to behold, but not nearly as breathtaking as the sheer number of churches that line the lonesome highways. In one ten-mile stretch, we counted some twenty houses of worship. Big churches and little churches; former grocery store turned churches and brand spankin’ new churches; hole-in-the-wall-needs- a-paint-job churches and fancy-parishoners-donating- lots-of-cash churches; simple we’re-not-worthy churches and gaudy the-Lord-loves- a-rich-man churches and everything in between. Who exactly attends devotions at each of these spots remains a mystery -- maybe religious folks hop around down there depending on where the Holy Spirit sends them -- but it seems that there’s a freestanding church for every ten people. And ten people just aren’t enough to pay the air conditioning bills, even with a handful of cars in each parking lot for Wednesday night services. (I owe an apology to the Pope, and my Mother, for all that youthful Sunday whining).
There is also a distinct lack of watering holes in the goodly gulch. Services over cerevezas might be why Southern Baptists seem so angry all the time.
Still, on a strictly per capita basis, it’s clear God loves Alabama more than you.
I Saw the Light: I was unaware that Montgomery is the home of the Hank Williams museum as well as his final resting spot. It’s a good little spot with the 1952 Cadillac he died in, but I mention it mainly because we apparently missed an unannounced visit from Hank Williams, Jr. himself, traveling with Kid Rock nonetheless, by two weeks.
“Say Kid Rock, are you ready for sommmmmmmme leather cowboy outfits my Pops used to wear? Look at the craftsmanship on the suede fringes, you just can’t find quality jackets like this anymore.”
“You kick ass Bocephus, we should team up again and redo one of your Daddy’s songs like I’m So Lonesome Could Cry…you know like we did on Cadillac Pussy. Now let’s go pour out some liquor for Joe C.”
Amazingly, Kim and I were in the Hank Williams Memorial Cemetery and felt the ground shake as the old man continued to roll over in his grave.
We stayed at the Red Bluff Cottage, the only B&B in downtown Montgomery. It served its purpose, particularly the blueberry pancakes covered in some sort of frosty sweet crème and powdered sugar served at 8:30 a.m. Our dining companions were a young D.C. couple taking their child on a civil rights tour, a vacation from Mom’s job at NARAL. I felt like we should be whispering, but she had no problem discussing a “woman’s right to choose” and all that other liberal elite nonsense out loud in between bites of schlag. Her Beltway demeanor behavior just wasn’t polite, she should have couched it in religion. For example, the night before one of the owners was nice enough to offer me his unprompted firsthand assessment on why New Orleans remains a mess. “I’ve been down there a couple of times with my church group…Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco just want to point fingers.”
Red Bluff Cottage: We report, You decide.
Montgomery is a town that can be toured in a day, even if you boycott the buses as we did. The original White House of Confederacy is worth a look; it’s got a decent collection of Jefferson Davis memorabilia and period artifacts, furniture and housewares. 
Although truth be told, the most intriguing part of the museum tour was watching an African-American schoolgirl buy a Rebel trinket in the gift shop…and imagining somewhere, her ancestors were doing a bit of grave-rolling themselves. Or perhaps a young black girl setting a Confederate collectible on her dresser is the true mark of progress and she doesn’t need Northern interlopers pointing fingers like ‘ole Mayor Nagin.
Live and let live. Let me shop in peace. Like President Jefferson Davis said, “all we ask is to be let alone.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering about the downtown with its abandoned buildings festooned in vivid Biblical artwork (the massive plague of locusts is rather disconcerting). We visited the state house, which has a brightly painted dome chronicling local history that includes a group of buff, smiling, Negroes unloading a ship with the caption “Prosperity Follows Development of Resources…1874-1930.” The “golden years” I believe they’re called. We also admired a Confederate war memorial, Martin Luther King’s Dexter Avenue church and I stopped into a small wooden home with a placard reading “Bad Boys Boxing Gym.”
It smelled hard and gritty inside, like sweat mixed with Formula 409, even though the only person in there was an old boy trainer who was just “helping to keep kids off the street.” In a span of about five minutes, he touched on how the government brings drugs into the inner-city, the proper way to throw a jab, why Marvin Hagler was the best and how we are all going to be alllllll riiiiight because boxing will set us free…or something to that effect, he talked lighting fast in a syrupy thick southern drawl.
Biscuits in Gravy: Speaking of syrup, we also took a stroll through Riverwalk Stadium, home of the Montgomery Biscuits. (And yes, the mascot’s tongue is a pat of butter. I told you it was all about the grub down here). It’s an amazing little park that utilizes pre-existing buildings, designed by the same architects that did Camden Yards. One of the exterior walls is an old train shed, which is a fitting touch since locomotives blow their horns while rolling past the outfield bleachers during ballgames. Riverwalk is on the site of an old Confederate prison where nearly 200 of the 700 Union soldiers in captivity there perished in the “foul vermin-abounding cotton depot, 200 feet long 40 feet wide.”
It's also a fitting touch because the groundskeepers preparing for the ballgame that night were guests of the Alabama Department of Corrections. Today’s chain gang works for the Biscuits, as taxpayer-funded tarp removers for the AA Southern League Affiliate of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
(Thanks to Kimmy Sauer for all the fine photography.)
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