The start of Josh’s Winter Reading Period coincided with Presidents’ Day weekend, so we decided to head somewhere warmer than NYC or Toronto, and visited my friend Jen in Montgomery, Alabama.

I’ve been debating whether to write this as a chronological narrative or grouped by impressions. I think I’ll go for the later.

Can a vegan eat in the south? More importantly, what about his vegetarian girlfriend?
Yes. Yes. Saturday morning, Jen made vegan pancakes accompanied with fresh strawberries. Saturday evening we were invited over to dinner by a friend of Jen’s. Daniel  prepared us a delicious vegetable and tofu kebabs marinated in a “little something he threw together” along with some rice. When we weren’t taking advantage of southern hospitality (or the hospitality of Yankees desperate for the company of their own kind) we had no problem finding veggie menu items.

Southern Culture is not on the skids
Saturday morning Jen, and her friend Daniel, took us to a bluegrass jam session that occurs twice a month. Musicians gather in a hall in Old Alabama Town, a sort of historic district. Everyone is welcome, including us foot-tappers. I was delighted when they played Jambalaya, and have to confess that I didn’t recognize any of the other songs. It was still a great welcoming environment and I love seeing/hearing people get together to create music. 

Saturday evening, we went to Pure Country, a bar Jen and her friends frequent. It was in a strip mall in the Strip Mall Section of Town, which is kinda half the town. There, we saw our first cowboys. About half the men wore cowboy hats and most people (including our hostess) had the boots as well. I was inspired and rode the mechanical bull. The bull is surrounded by mattresses and when the attendant was instructing me how to use it, she offered to throw me off. I gave her a signal to throw me in the midst of my ride. As I was spinning with one hand clenched on the handle and my legs squeezing the bull, the idea of flying off didn’t seem as appealing as it once did, so I clenched and squeezed harder and thought about how it usually takes many beers before a bar spins like this, but tonight it just took one… I stayed on and signaled the attendant to stop. The other highlight of the evening was that the dreamiest guy in the bar asked me to dance with him for a slow song. During the fast songs, which remained mostly country, but also veered into Madonna, people tore up the dance floor with some fancy two-stepping. Like at the Bluegrass jamboree, I felt that this was an unpretentious welcoming environment where people were partaking in artistic expression more than I see in NYC.

Monday, Josh and I ventured to the Cross Garden where we saw a whole hill-side full of artistic expression. The proprietor/artist passed away recently, so Josh and I explored this roadside attraction ourselves. I found it eerie and creepy. I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

We also stopped by the Hank Williams museum, where in addition to seeing Kalwliga, we saw the leisure suit and car that Hank died in.

Southern urban planning is on the skids
The lively scenes at the jamboree and at the bar provided a stark contrast to the desolate street scenes of Montgomery and Birmingham. Admittedly we saw the down town sections of both cities on a weekend and a holiday. Nonetheless, few people were outside. Municipal and state offices, including the state courthouse that civil rights demonstrators marched towards, sit in downtown Montgomery. There are only a handful of restaurants to serve the employees of those office buildings. There were very few small businesses and many of the shops on the main drag were boarded up. Downtown there is a pretty fountain and a curious mural.Everything is very spread out, so having a car is pretty necessary. Jen’s house is only 5 minutes from down town, but the residential area she lived in felt suburban. We drove by some lovely old mansions, but most of the homes we saw looked fairly run down. Confronted with the desolate downtown, the spread out nature of the housing and the multitude of strip malls, Josh was stumped and how an urban planner should address those problems. We wondered if one reason for the lack of civic life in public spaces was a consequence of desegregation. Once public space was open to everyone, whites retreated to semi-private establishments. The jamboree and the bar were noticeably all-white.

Alabama State Motto: We Dare Defend Our Rights
The civil rights struggle that occurred in Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s was another reoccurring leitmotif of our trip. On our first night we passed the bus station where freedom riders were beaten when they arrived in Montgomery. Freedom riders were groups of young whites and blacks who traveled together on public buses from the north to the south. They challenged the jim crow laws of the south through simple acts like sitting together in segregated diners. For this they were repeatedly arrested and beaten. 

On Saturday, we went to the Rosa Parks museum in Montgomery. Inside, we saw a video reenactment of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white woman. After the presentation, we toured the museum learning about the civil rights struggle. We learned that Rosa Parks had been an active member of the NAACP and had received a scholarship to study popular education and how to create social change at the Highland Center school in Tennessee. She wasn’t just a heroine acting spontaneously and alone. She was a heroine supported by a network of activists. The Monday after her arrest, the African-American community organized a boycott of Montgomery’s city buses that lasted approximately thirteen months. To carry on a boycott for that long required community organization and lawyers working together. A theme we all liked. The civil rights struggle was more than leaders and supreme court cases, but daily struggles by individuals working together. The goal of the bus boycott was not integrated bussing, but simply that blacks wouldn’t be required to give up their seats to whites if they were already seated. 

At the Civil rights Institute in Birmingham, ever on the alert for a teachable moment on the subject of disability rights Jen pointed out the ironic bathrooms. The first exhibition room of the museum showed examples of "whites only" and "blacks only" signs that were part of the southern landscape 50 years ago. In the bathroom, there were 4 sinks in a row. All looked identical, except for the one labeled “handicapped.”

The Civil Rights Institute was another great museum. We chatted with a tour guide for awhile who told us how at one point his wife and 3 of his children were in jail because of acts of civil disobedience. It was at the children’s march for rights that the police turned dogs and firehoses on the marchers. There was a moving photo of the students dancing and laughing as they were marching for their rights. There was another group portrait of a group of civil rights leaders who had all been arrested on the same day beaming with pride. I was perpetually fighting back tears thinking about how social change was achieved by the courage of people who refused to live under an oppressive system and fought with joy. I was even more touched because the museum tied in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s with the movement for human rights around the worlds, incorporating an exhibit on the International Declaration of Human Rights. 

Across the street from the institute, there was a sculpture park where Josh took these pictures: 

The Dramatic Escape from Alabama
3:45 Appointed time for us to meet Jen behind the courthouse (she had to go into work and let us use her car to see the cross garden), so that she could drive us to the airport so we could make our 4:55 flight.
3:50 Time we actually arrive at courthouse
3:51 We suggest that we stop at a carryout or grocery on the way to pick up some food for the flight.
3:57 We arrive at a strip mall. We investigate the Subway sandwich shop
3:58 We investigate the Chinese take-out
3:59 We consider buying some hummus and bread at the nearby grocery
4:00 We order 2 different dishes at the Chinese restaurant and are assured it will only take 10 minutes to prepare.
4:15 We leave the Chinese take-out
4:25 We drive past the airport exit on the high-way. Next exit 3 miles.
4:30 We get off at the next exit and Josh is confident that according to the map we can take a back road to get to the airport.
4:37 We turn around and head back to the highway.
4:45 We arrive at the airport and eject from the car.
4:46 Josh and I arrive at the unattended US Airways counter and ring the bell frantically. The attendants at the next counter over inform us that US Airways personnel are at the gate boarding the flight. We try to explain that we belong on the flight. They are unmoved and say to wait until the flight takes off, then the USAirways personnel will return.
4:48 We try to explain to the security guard at the metal detector on the way to the gates our predicament. He refuses to let us near the gate w/o a boarding pass. I have no ticket, because I ordered the flight on-line and for no-good-reason I did not print out a boarding pass.
4:49 Elderly policeman at Montgomery airport accosted by frenetic northerners who have no ticket and no boarding pass, yet want to go someplace where a boarding pass is required. This is unheard of. Northerners present all sorts of outlandish ideas like, why can’t the police officer walk to the gate and tell USAirways personnel that there are two passengers on the other side of the gate? Policeman vows never to leave his safe office in the Montgomery airport.
4:51 I go to every rental car counter asking if they have internet access and a printer so that I can print out my boarding pass. None do.
4:53 Josh looks weak and resigned. The burden of the responsibility of getting us home now rests squarely on my shoulders. I am distracted by a handsome young man in uniform and approach him.
4:54 Handsome young man in uniform turns out to be a pilot! He agrees to go back to the gate and inform ticket agents that two passengers are in the airport.
4:56 We go through metal detectors, including shoes off and then back on rigamarole.
4:57 With untied shoes we run onto plane.
4:58 Entering the plane we are greeted with the grinning face of the boyfriend of one of Jen’s coworkers (a fellow mechanical bull rider). Said boyfriend/mechanical bull rider happens to work in my buiding.
5:07 En route north we indulge in our Chinese food. It had been leaking the entire time and in a feat of skill we successfully transferred it to an empty Tupperware container and ate using the utensils Josh- and now I- carry everywhere.
5:11 Josh, chews, swallow, and says in a hurt voice, “no one is staring at us.”