Put Out by the Ritz: Before diving into one of the great American natural wonders, I’d like to recount a bit of local Alabamian AM talk radio I enjoyed on I-65. The topic of the day: immigration, or more precisely, “spics ruin everything.” I never did get the name of the program or the two male hosts -- and the weak signal faded quickly -- but listening during the national May 1st protest provided a snippet of why all of the sudden the “immigration problem” became a major problem in the first place.
Male caller: “...I just saw a Mexican flag on the hood of his truck out here…”
Host #1: “You should call the sheriffs on him.”
Host #2: “I don’t believe that’s illegal.”
Host #1: “I know, I don’t think they should arrest him, but they could harass him a little bit.”
Male caller #1: “I think the flag is covering up part of a headlight—“
Host #1: “Well that is illegal! Get off the phone right now and notify the authorities, do your civic duty.”
Elderly female caller: “I just wanted to say that yesterday afternoon I went out to the supermarket to buy some Ritz crackers--”
Host #2: “I love Ritz crackers.”
Elderly female caller: “Me too, but I wanted to see how much fat the crackers had and would you believe the label was in Spanish? I walked right out of the store and didn’t buy them.”
Host #1: “Good for you! It’s your money, you spend how you want.”
Host #2: “Isn’t that suppose to be the national biscuit company?”
Host #1: “Probably make them in Mexico…they print the warnings on your pack of Marlboros in Spanish yet?”
Host #2: “Let me see here…no. That might be the day I give up cigarettes.”
Elderly female caller: “Also, isn’t today May Day, the Communist holiday—“
Host #1: "You’re right. I didn’t think of that, this is the day the Commies used to parade their fake weaponry though Red Square. I don’t think this is a coincidence.”
Elderly female caller: “ I guess we know what kind of people we are dealing with here.”
Host #2: “Yes, we do.”
Yes we do. It’s those damned cracker-eating, Commie, flag-driving Mexicans fault that our Marlboros are under siege. Somebody woke up the echoes of Governor George Wallace, "...immi-graytion tu-day, immi-graytion tu-mah-ruh..."
Perhaps there are legitimate arguments to be made for reforming America’s immigration system, but c’mon Alabama AM talk radio callers, listeners and hosts. You’re just going to abandon your Ritz crackers? Ritz crackers are delicious. Work to affect positive change.
You’re better than that.
The Winsome Jubilee: Montgomery’s downtown dining options aren’t robust, so we drove to the Cloverdale district to eat some fresh Gulf Coast fish at the Seafood Jubilee Company. It’s a homey, downscale joint where if you’re lucky, the special will be what they caught that afternoon. I’d go with the crab claw appetizer (1/2 fried, 1/2 sautéed), maybe the amberjack entrée and a slice of Key Lime pie. And ideally, you too will be seated next to a white shoe lawyer and his wife in pastels and pearls treating his cutoff-sleeved biker chick client to a feast while discussing their lawsuit against somebody or another who may or may not be responsible for her husband’s death. Worth it if only to see the wife put on her most sincere sorority girl face, look deep into the biker chick’s eyes and say, “Your memorial tattoo is absolutely beautiful.”
(It’s not insensitive if I eveasdrop on strangers and don't know any actual facts of the case.)
Little did Kim and I know the significance of the restaurant’s name, but the Seafood Jubilee Company is in reference to an amazing phenomenon that may cause me to take an extended vacation in Fairhope, Alabama. We first learned about the “jubilee” from Becky Jones, one of the proprietors of the Bay Breeze Guest House, which features a lengthy pier jutting out in the muddy waters with a mobile wet bar. 
It also features an angry gaggle of geese that protect Mother Goose during the spring egg-laying season, so wooden sticks with neon orange tape at the end are scattered throughout the grounds for scaring, poking and bopping the geese on the noggin to shoo them away. Endlessly entertaining…albeit frightening. Geese can be downright mean. Becky, a retired biology teacher, doesn’t want any more geese, so she throws the eggs away. One of the housekeepers jokingly called her, “an abortionist.” Oh, there’s also an extremely gross, ugly possum that eats cat food.
Anyhow, a jubilee occurs before dawn in the mid-to-late summer months along the 15-mile stretch on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay (although it more commonly happens just for few hundred feet at one time). Certain conditions must be met for a jubilee: overcast or light rain the day before, soft winds from the east, calm surface and a rising tide. What happens is this: oxygen-poor water forces bottom-dwelling fish and crustaceans toward the surface to survive and the wind/tide push them to the shore. Thus, flounder, stingrays, eels, blue crabs, shrimp, hogchokers, catfish and other sea creatures flood the shallow waters and are scooped up in buckets and piled up on the bank. It ends at sunrise because oxygen levels change, but in the early morning interim, everyone gets to make like Jesus and multiply the fishes. Becky told us that it doesn’t happen every year, but when it does, all the locals turn out and no other activity takes place. School, work, sleep and breakfast are all put on hold, at least until eggs are cracked for eel-and-cheddar omelets.
Becky will wake you up upon request. Mountains of aquatic animals litter the shore and in my imagination, people run around in swimwear hugging and shouting “Jubilee!” while chucking fish like that guy from the Muppets. Jubilee pictures are wild; everyone is smiling and piling, like Forrest Gump and Lt. Dan after Hurricane Carmen. And if this tale sounds fishy, stop at Manci’s Antique Club, a former produce-warehouse-turned-gas-station- turned-tavern where photos of the bounty of jubilees gone by line the walls. If somebody else’s photos don’t do it for you know that Manci’s is also the “Bloody Mary Capital of the Eastern Shore” and proudly displays the world’s largest collection of Jim Beam decanters, as pointlessly brilliant a collection as you’ll ever find. Pouring a stiff glass of bourbon out of a ceramic spark plug must have been quite a treat for some old boy back in the day.
Science Lessons: Becky explained more science than just the jubilee. Over breakfast (a baked apple flapjacky thing topped with caramel sauce), she and a warm, friendly, roly-poly southern gentlemen in red suspenders I’ll call Roy pulled out maps, charts and photos and laid out the big picture of Hurricane Katrina. Between the two of them, they knew all the wheres, whys, hows, etc. of how “the storm” devastated the Gulf Coast region. (Few people we talked to used the name Katrina, sort of like how no New Yorker ever says “September 11th.”). They also explained how people have been living through hurricanes forever, so many people’s default reaction is board the windows and crack a beer. 
Roy added that since Katrina hit the area harder than anyone ever imagined, many of his fellow Alabamians assumed this was the ultimate sign from God that humans had gone too far and there was nothing that could’ve been done. “I am a Methodist by nature, but also a man of science and do not believe in the apocalyptic versions,” said Roy (note his need to preface that), “but there are plenty of folks ‘round here who believe the end is near.”
Becky, Roy and a few other people warned us that we wouldn’t be able to handle the Katrina wreckage, but that seemed more like southern paternalism than legitimate concern. That being said, I had mentally prepared myself for New Orleans, but had more or less forgotten that the storm’s full brute force actually hit the Gulf Shore area, not the Big Easy.
Biloxi was a stark reminder.
(Thanks to Kimmy Sauer for all the fine photography.)
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