A Belated Road Home…

By now I’m sure some of you are wondering what happened to me. Most know. A few probably don’t care. But many still believe Memphis is just a quick shot up the interstate from highway 17, with little in-between. I apologize for the confusion. The fact of the matter is that once home, in Santa Cruz, there no longer exists those empty, dark, solitary hours that must be filled with endless ramblings and jettisoned communiqués from my wandering soul to the outside world. I am here! Not there. I feel as if this writing is no longer as important as it was when it was my only method of transferring my happenings — always hopeful that the next rest stop, hostel, or coffee shop would provide the miracle of wireless internet. But as the time has passed, I feel that the importance of closure has gained priority in my conscience. So, allow me to finish…

You can read endless historical accounts and view numerous movies and pictures that attempt to recreate the essence of a place, but honestly it is impossible to absorb the true attitude, texture, and aura of a location without visiting in person. I remember learning about the Civil Rights Movement early in elementary school, but feeling even into my time as an undergrad that Alabama, Mississippi, and Little Rock in the 1960’s was such a foreign and far-away place. At first, you learn about the people: Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and what these names now mean to a people, generation, and country. Then the places and movement’s activities: Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, bus boycott, sit-ins, marches. The story is moving and captivating, heroic and tragic, but to a white kid from California, very abstract. As I headed from Memphis to Birmingham all I could think about was all the appalling things that had gone down within the city limits of Birmingham and Montgomery. The Drive By Trucker’s lyrics, “A church blows up in Birmingham, four little black girls killed, for no god-damned good reason,” rattled around in my head, and I couldn’t shake the negativity that I felt towards the cities and the state.

Birmingham has all the characteristics of an archetypal southern city, but it possessed a prevailing melancholy connotation, which made me feel as if I was returning to the scene of a crime… perhaps many crimes. It was strange to me that the only location that I could think of off the top of my head to enter into my GPS was the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where on September 15th, 1963 four young girls and a boy, aged 11-14, were blown up while attending Sunday school — considered the most cowardly, inhuman and reprehensible terrorist act of the Civil Rights era. Not far from there is the city’s plaza and city center where the famous pictures of black men and women being attacked by German Shepherds and fire hoses were taken; proof of the hatred and viciousness that was brewed and bred in the city and state by the hands of “respected” officials like Eugene “Bull” Connor and George Wallace. I had difficulty finding a comfortable moment while in Birmingham. Even the friendly faces of the staff at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, directly across the street from the Sixteenth Street Baptist church, couldn’t shake my uneasiness or expunge the deep, simmering feeling of guilt that had been burdening me since I got out of my car. After just a few hours in the city I felt I had to move on.

There is not much to see on the drive from Birmingham to Montgomery, but there is a hell of a lot of football jabber to listen to on the radio. From the few hours of sports talk radio that I could handle, it appeared that the rivalry between Auburn University and University of Alabama exceeded that of any that we possess in the western states. Its hard to believe, but I think that it must be harder to get a full sentence in on an Alabama college football radio show than it is on The View with Rosie O’ Donnell. Its quite comical how the show host will introduce a question to a particular person and before the answerer can get two syllables of their response out three of four other voices are yelling in chaotic Tuscaloosa twang about the quarterback throwing like a pansy and the running-back’s sexual preference. It was all gibberish to me, and as far as I can remember not one caller ever made a decisive football statement — the calls were always intended to enlighten everyone about how dumb and/or homosexual a previous caller is. Fascinating.

I drove to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, to see two things: The Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and The “Official” Hank Williams Museum. I did have some presumptions about Montgomery, but nothing quite as negative as those for Birmingham. I arrived at dusk and gathered a sizeable stack of tourist information from the Visitor Information Center to read up on for the following day…