Welcome Sign, Interstate 59, Georgia/Alabama Line
September 2nd, 2012
To date, I’ve been to Alabama twice. First time was back in 1999, when I attended
a three-day conference in Birmingham with New Image, International. The Conference was held at the Birmingham-Jefferson
Convention Complex, an easy walk from our hotel which was located right in the
heart of the city, and only a few blocks from the Amtrak station where I
arrived on the Southern Crescent from New Orleans. It was an easy walk until the police closed
off the street that connected hotel and convention center, which they did
because the Ku Klux Klan was having a major demonstration half-way between the
two venues in “honor” of the Martin Luther King holiday. 1999 was seven years before I got a decent
digital camera, and while I know I have photographs from that trip, at present
I’m having trouble locating either the prints or the negatives to scan. Oh well, you’ll just have to imagine what
that trip was like from my words.
Inside our Cabin at Bluff Creek Falls
Steele, Alabama
September 3rd, 2012
Riding the Southern Crescent, we pulled out of New Orleans,
crossed into Mississippi shortly thereafter, and crossed that state in a
diagonal line from Southwest to Northeast, a trip I’ll discuss in my post about
Mississippi. The Crescent runs between
New York City and New Orleans, and the Amtrak guide assumes that you will be
heading south and gives all the miles as distance from New York’s Penn Station,
the busiest rail station in the country.
The total travel distance is 1,377 miles, and you cross the
Alabama/Mississippi state line at mile 1,155, or 222 miles from N’Awlins. Once you cross into Alabama, the rail line
runs roughly parallel to and south of Interstate 20. You pass through the towns of Livingston and
Eutaw, cross the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, and stop in Tuscaloosa, home of
the Crimson Tide and all things University of Alabama. After several hours and 354 miles, you arrive
in Birmingham, Alabama’s largest city located toward the southern end of the
Appalachian Mountains, and therefore quite hilly. I have to admit that I have no memory of the
Alabama portion of the trip, at least not until I stepped off the train at the
Birmingham Station, which struck me as old, pretty small for a big city train
station, and located in a not very interesting neighborhood. For those who don’t know the city, as well as
being the largest in Alabama, it is the 103rd largest city in the
U.S., with a 2010 Census count of 212,237, down from 242,840 in 2000, one year after
I visited. In fact, the population of
the city has declined in every census since 1960 when the count was 340,887,
the highest ever for the city. In other
words, over the past fifty years, the city has lost a third of its population,
although the 2015 estimate showed a minimal increase from 2010.
Parked Outside our Cabin at Bluff Creek Falls
Steele, Alabama
September 3rd, 2012
This decrease became apparent my first evening in town. Despite being in the center of an apparently
prosperous downtown, judging solely by the new skyscrapers that surrounded our
hotel, there were no restaurants open after 5 p.m., and no retail businesses to
speak of any where we looked. Oh there
were lots of empty storefronts on streets nearby, but most looked as if they
had been closed for years, or even decades.
A local explained to me that downtown historically was the Negro section
of town, and with increased prosperity and desegregation, the Blacks had moved
to the suburbs and no one had taken their place. It gave downtown Birmingham a distinct ghost
town feel, especially after the skyscrapers emptied of their white-collar
workers. Missoula friends attending the
same conference, had a rental car, so we were able to get out of downtown and
see a bit of the city, albeit by night, including the section called Five
Points South where we found restaurants and the hill on top of which Vulcan,
the largest cast-iron statue in the world, looks over the city and moons the
suburbs. (Well at least in 1999, when I saw
the statue. At that time, Vulcan wore an
apron which protected his family jewels from the heat of the forge, but his
apron was open at the back, and his cheeks were quite visible should you
approach him from the rear. I understand
the statue has been completely renovated since then, so I cannot say what he is
showing the world today.)
The Pool Area at Bluff Creek Falls
Steele, Alabama
September 3rd, 2012
I never saw the hooded Knights as the police diverted all
traffic away from the area, but I remember the next day walking a couple of
blocks from our hotel to visit a park dedicated to the Civil Rights
struggle. Unfortunately, while I know I
took photographs on this trip, including several from the train and in
Birmingham itself, I cannot find those images.
Nor do I have any memory of returning to the Amtrak station, boarding
the train or the return trip to New Orleans.
Yes, George Wallace's wife has a street named for her
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
September 3rd, 2012
My second trip across Alabama was in September, 2012, when
Kevin and I drove from Columbus, Ohio to Starkville, Mississippi, and spent a
night outside of Steele, Alabama en route. On this trip, we entered Alabama from Georgia
on Interstate 59, capturing the Welcome sign shown at the head of this
post. We stopped for supper in Gadsden,
then proceeded on to Steele where we stayed in a cabin at Bluff Creek Falls. We had been driving through torrential rains
as we skirted the path of Hurricane Isaac, and the grounds at Bluff Creek were
drenched. As a result, we spent no time
in what looked to be a lovely pool, were the weather better, but the
friendliness and hospitality of the hosts and campers were unmatched and we had
a very pleasant evening there, albeit inside.
US Highway 82, Western Alabama
September 3rd, 2012
The next morning, we reloaded the Saab and headed on through
Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, where Kevin had his very first Waffle House experience
and got a Waffle House cap for being a “virgin,” and then on across western
Alabama on U.S. 82, crossing into Mississippi just east of the town of
Columbus. All of the pictures
accompanying this post are from the 2012 drive.
