ABOUT TOWN IN MOBILE, ALABAMA

On our trip to the South this past January, we spent a day in Mobile, the third largest city in Alabama. Mobile fit right in to my overarching impression of Alabama: quiet and slow. As a Californian, I kept looking around and wondering Where are all the people? Why is it so quiet? We were there on a Friday, a day that should be bustling with end-of-the-week, start-of-the-weekend activity, but it felt like a comparative ghost-town.

We parked right by what I thought at the time was the Masonic Lodge . . .

. . . because of the sphinx statues flanking the front door.

However, I've tried to find information about the building online and have been unsuccessful, so I'm not sure WHAT the building actually is.

We didn't ever get to downtown Mobile, but the skyline is dominated by the city's tallest building, which is also the tallest building in the state, the RSA (Retirement Systems of Alabama) Battle House Tower. Completed in September 2006, it is 745 feet tall.

Mobile is an arsty little town, with plenty of fun public art to enjoy, including this warrior outside the Centre for the Living Arts Museum just a block from the Cathedral-Basilica.

MOBILE, ALABAMA: CATHEDRAL-BASILICA OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Mobile, Alabama, was designated the first capital of French Louisiana in 1702, and the first Catholic parish on the Gulf Coast was established here the following year. It was the first religious congregation of any denomination in Alabama and the Mississippi River Valley. Several different churches served as the home for the parish, but in 1829 Mobile was elevated to a diocese, and Bishop Michael Portier set out to build a monument that would represent that new status. The cornerstone was laid in 1835, and the cathedral was dedicated after fifteen years of construction in 1850.

The church is a Roman basilica design, with interior columns that divide the space and a wide central aisle. The exterior portico with its massive Doric columns was added in the 1870s, and the 103-foot-tall gold-topped towers were completed in 1884.

At one time the Archdiocese of Mobile included all of present-day Alabama and Florida, but today it includes just the Catholic parishes in the twenty-eight southern counties of Alabama. However, it was still important enough to the region that Pope John XXIII designated this building a minor basilica in 1962, and hence the "Cathedral-Basilica" designation.

The beautiful iron gates reveal the French influence of the region:

ALABAMA: COTTON FIELDS, MONROEVILLE TO MOBILE

We found that driving around in the countryside near Monroeville was a bit of a Brigadoon or Shangri-La experience. We could have sworn we had gone back in time. It was eerily quiet, and a little bit of fog enhanced the mystical atmosphere.

One of the tiny towns we drove through had the sensuous name of "Burnt Corn." In an interview, Truman Capote said, "My favorite place in the whole wide world is Burnt Corn. I swear, it's just the most delightful wide place in the road, and the way the highway bends right there, with the church and the cemetery, and the little country store, and those people."

 

I'm not sure what "people" he was talking about, because we got a little lost and couldn't find anyone who could give us directions.

Later, we started driving south towards Mobile, and the landscape was just as interesting. As it was January, the cotton fields were barren. Bits of unwanted fluff left on the brittle stalks hinted at what must have been a glorious wash of white a few months earlier:

MONROEVILLE, ALABAMA: TRUMAN CAPOTE

According the The Encyclopedia of Alabama, in 2010 the population of Monroeville, Alabama, was 6,519, with about 56% identifying themselves as African American, 42% as white, and 4% as other races. The median household income was just under $32,000. Eighty years before, the town was probably smaller than that and just about as poor.

How in the world did two major American authors come from a place like that?  Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville in 1926, and Truman Steckfus Persons (who later took on his step-father's last name of Capote) came to live with his cousins next door to the Lees when he was just three years old in 1927, stayed there until 1933, continued to spend many summers in Monroeville as he was growing up, and visited many times as an adult. As a result, Harper and Truman grew up together as best friends. Harper Lee even modeled one of the main characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, a precocious neighbor boy named Dill, after her friend Truman. In return, Truman Capote based a character in his first novel on Harper--Idabel Thompkins in Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Truman as a young child

Truman was a year-and-a-half older than Harper (known by her first name Nelle back in those days), and they had many wonderful adventures together.

He looks like the kind of boy who had LOTS of crazy adventures.

Part of the Monroe County Courthouse Museum is dedicated to the life and works of Truman Capote:

MONROEVILLE, ALABAMA: THE COURTHOUSE AND HARPER LEE

The 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning book To Kill a Mockingbird has been on my Top Ten Books list ever since I read it in my high school English class. I reread it once every five to ten years, and I've seen the 1962 movie about as many times as I've read the book, and so visiting Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, was the equivalent of visiting Mecca.

As we drove in to town, it was pretty easy to tell we were in the right place. There was that mural of a mockingbird on the Lee Motor Co. building:

. . . a cute birdhouse/mailbox with a mockingbird and the words "Literary Capital of Alabama" painted on it:

. . . a mural of Scout, Jem, and Dill hiding behind a tree:

. . . Radley's Fountain Grille ("Where Friends Meet"):

. . . and Mockingbird Inn & Suites:

We were definitely in the right place.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA: F. SCOTT AND ZELDA FITZGERALD HOME

When I was in college, I had a special interest in the literature of the first half of the 20th century, and so visiting the home of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Montgomery was especially intriguing. Opened in 1989, it is the only museum dedicated to the Fitzgeralds. Zelda was born in Montgomery, and this house, where Scott, Zelda, and their ten-year-old daughter Scottie lived for only six months (October 1931 to April 1932), was not far from her parents' home.

While they were living here, Scott was working on his book Tender Is the Night, and Zelda was writing her only book, Save me the Waltz, which ended up being one of many the thorns in the Fitzgerald marriage:

After the Fitzgeralds moved out, the house was subdivided into four apartments, and just a few of the rooms are currently open to the public. Today, the museum curator/tour guide, who is working on a graduate English degree, lives in one of the apartments. He is very knowledgeable and has an obvious passion for the Fitzgeralds.

The rooms are full of memorabilia from many periods of the Fitzgeralds' tumultuous lives:

This is not so different from the manual typewriter I learned to type on in eighth grade. We've come a long, long, LONG way since then:

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA: THE KING PARSONAGE, THE DEXTER AVENUE BAPTIST CHURCH, AND THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER CIVIL RIGHTS MEMORIAL

A trio of very important civil rights-related buildings are within blocks of each other in downtown Montgomery.  The first is the parsonage where Martin Luther King Jr. and his family lived from 1954 to 1960. Martin and Coretta moved into this house in January 1954 after two months of marriage and when Martin was just 25 years old. They were living here two years later when the Civil Rights Movement got kick-started by Rosa Parks and the bus boycott in December 1955. As the well-known and very articulate local pastor of the Baptist church, King was naturally drawn into the fray.
From the very beginning the work required great personal sacrifice. King was determined to follow a course of non-violent resistance, but the white community, including law enforcement, was not so inclined. During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it was common for him to receive as many as 40 death threats via phone and mail a day, and he knew he was putting his own life and the lives of his wife and baby daughter at risk. He had already spent time in the Montgomery Jail, and his will was beginning to falter.

According the David J. Garrow's Pulitzer prize winning biography Bearing the Cross (see review at the end of this prior post), one night after a particularly vicious day, ". . . he was about to retire when the phone rang and yet another caller warned him that if was going to leave Montgomery alive, he had better do so soon. King hung up and went to bed, but found himself unable to sleep. Restless and fearful, he went to the kitchen, made some coffee, and sat down at the table. 'I started thinking about many things,' he recalled eleven years later. He thought about the . . . many threats he was receiving. 'I was ready to give up. . . . With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward.'"

King reviewed his life up to that point, which he considered to be very happy. He thought about his religious views, and how he had grown up in the church. He said, "The church meant something very real to me, but it was a kind of inherited religion and I had never felt an experience with God in the way that you must, and have it, if you're going to walk the lonely paths of this life."

Kitchen in the King Parsonage

Garrow continues, "But that night, unable to be at peace with himself, King feared he could take it no longer. It was the most important night of his life, the one he always would think back to in future years when the pressures again seemed to be too great." King thought about his baby daughter, and the fact that she could be taken from him. He thought of his wife Coretta, and the fact that she could be taken from him or he from her. King said, "And I got to the point that I couldn't take it any longer. I was weak. . . . And then I discovered that religion had become very real to me, and I had to know God for myself."  He bowed his head over his cup of coffee and prayed to know what he was doing was right, and for courage to see it through.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA: HAMBURGER KING AND ST. JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Every now and then I have to throw in a word about our meals, especially if we go somewhere that's a little unique.

Such a place is Hamburger King on 218 West Main in Montgomery, which gets a 93% rating on Urban Spoon and 4 out of 5 stars on Yelp. The interior decor is definitely nothing special, unless you like diner-style blue-collar joints, and it's location is pretty dicey. If Guy Fiero hasn't visited this place on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, someone needs to get him here quick.

 I had the "Cheeseburger All the Works," and wouldn't say it's the best burger I've ever had, but I can see why this place is very popular with the locals. My burger was loaded with add-ons and had just the right amount of greasiness. It was a nice old-fashioned burger served up in a nice old-fashioned joint. Definitely worth a stop.

From the Hamburger King, we made our way to St. John's Episcopal Church, a Gothic revival building erected in 1855 and famous for being the church that Jefferson Davis attended.  It also hosted the Secession Convention of Southern Churches in 1861.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA: FIRST WHITE HOUSE OF THE CONFEDERACY

Just a few blocks from the Alabama State Capitol building is the First White House of the Confederacy. This house only served this purpose from February 1861 to May 1861, and then the capital was moved to Richmond, Virginia. However, Jefferson Davis and his family made a significant mark on Montgomery in that short period of time.

The house was originally located about a mile from this site, but it was moved when its original neighborhood was undergoing renovation.

The house back-in-the-day. Looks like the white
siding we see today is not original.

Inside, we were allowed to take as many (flash-free) pictures as we wanted to. Finally. 

Jefferson Davis, U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce, 1853

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA: STATE CAPITOL BUILDING

Alabama was a key state in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Many events that are now written into our history books occurred in this state, including Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus in 1954 and the resulting Montgomery bus boycott that lasted more than a year and led to the desegregation of the city's buses.  It was in Montgomery that Martin Luther King, Jr., a young minister at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization that played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement. It was from a jail in Alabama that King, who had been arrested during anti-segregation protests, wrote his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which defended non-violent resistance to unjust laws and racism and became a key document in the movement. A few months later, police used fire hoses and dogs to control demonstrators in Birmingham, and the images spread rapidly around the world, garnering much sympathy and respect for the civil rights protesters. Later that year, a bomb exploded in a Birmingham church, killing four girls attending Sunday School. In March 1965, protesters on a march from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights were stopped by police using tear gas, whips, and clubs, resulting in 50 people being hospitalized and spurring on the enactment of the Voting Rights Act a few months later. A third attempt at a Selma to Montgomery March was successful, ending on March 25, 1965, with 25,000 protestors at the base of the capitol steps.

Knowing these facts makes a visit to the state's beautiful Greek-revival capitol building even more interesting.

Jefferson Davis stood under the front portico of this building on February 18, 1861, and took the Oath of Office of the President of the Confederate States of America.

Most of the capitol buildings we've visited have statues honoring famous people. I liked this one in Montgomery honoring law enforcement officers:

STROLLING AROUND MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

Montgomery is the capital of Alabama, and with a population of just over 200,000 it is the state's second-largest city, just behind Birmingham. In spite of its population, it has a very small-town feel.

It was rainy when we were there, so very few people were out and about as we took a nice stroll downtown next to the Alabama River. One of the things I really enjoyed was a series of murals on the buildings. I come from a city filled with public art like this, so I'm always on the lookout for it when we travel. These are especially fun paintings:

This giant fish looks like he about to swallow not just Jonah, but the entire Garden of Eden and the stable with Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus:

ALABAMA'S HIGHEST POINT: CHEAHA STATE PARK (With a side order of Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles)

Bob and I had plans to climb to the highest point in Alabama, and we knew we needed to fuel up before leaving Atlanta, so we stopped for lunch at Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles Restaurant: 

I like Gladys Knight a lot, and I like her even more now that I've seen the rules she has posted in the window of her restaurant:

I've never thought to combine chicken and waffles on the same plate, and I can't say that I plan on doing it for our next dinner party, but it was pretty fun to try it in Atlanta. In fact, it's a common combination all over the South.

Bob's Southern-fried chicken

My waffle--moist and soft with a slight sweetness

Our sides were the best part of the meal: corn, cheese and grits,
black-eyed peas, and collard greens