Day 49: Birmingham

Although I grew up in San Diego, which is about as far south as you can get on the west coast, I have never really visited "the South," with the exception of a short trip to Charleston, South Carolina with my mother many years ago. So my impressions are just that, impressions. There seems to be a different lexicon here that an outsider like me is unable to access, especially on a short trip. 

Given the historical moment that our country is in and the geographical location that Greg and I were in, we decided to seek out historical sites connected to the Civil Rights movement. Our first stop was Birmingham, Alabama. 

We started with The Birmingham Civil Rights Heritage Trail. The website explains it better than I can: 

The Birmingham Civil Rights Heritage Trail winds through downtown, marking significant locations along the 1963 Civil Rights march routes. The trail speaks to the valor of both common people and to the spiritual leaders who spearheaded the fight against segregation and other forms of racism.

The trail starts in Kelly Ingram Park. The park is dotted with statuary and monuments which are beautiful and devastating and very, very memorable. The photos below don't really capture the experience. 

                                   

                                                       Martin Luther King 

As you wind your way through the park, you stop at monuments that attempt to capture the terrible cruelty that marked this period in our history. In the metal sculpture below, you walk right through, just inches from the snapping jaws. On a plaque accompanying the sculpture, text and mounted photos show the real life scenes portrayed. 

Below, the metal sculptures portray the jailing of children and the use of water canons.

                          

As you head out of the park, the monument below makes you stop in your tracks. It is incredibly beautiful and haunting. The site of the tragedy, the16th Street Baptist Church,  forms the background in this shot. We stood for a long time, before we noticed the empty shoes. 

On September 15, 1963, a bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls: Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Carol Denise McNair (11). (from the History Channel website)

 

The heritage trail ended in a second park where, as it luck would have it, voting was going on, giving us a moment of hope for the future as folks lined up, masks in place and socially distanced, to cast their votes. 

After the heritage trail, we took a meandering drive back to the hotel. Birmingham has many beautiful buildings, most of which have an air of being from an earlier time. We found ourselves wanting to stop and take pictures and, because we weren't in a rush to get anywhere, we were able to do that. 

After Birmingham, we took a winding route on local highways lined with dense woods. Occasionally, we'd pull in and out of a tiny town here and there as we made our way toward Selma. While Birmingham felt like a fairly big city with all of the distractions that provides, Selma seemed to be very much a small town --with a powerful history, but not much of a hopeful present for those who live there.

 

 The Edmund Pettus Bridge crosses the Alabama River at Selma. 

It was a sobering experience to cross the bridge and stand where history was made by John Lewis and the other brave people who fought for civil rights.

Day 48: Franklin, Tennessee to Birmingham, Alabama

A random stop at a rest area featuring a Saturn 1B rocket inspired us to take a detour to visit the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Although the facility was closed, we were able to  appreciate the sheer scale of the spacecrafts. 

The Saturn V rocket was 111 meters (363 feet) tall, about the height of a 36-story-tall building, and 18 meters (60 feet) taller than the Statue of Liberty. Fully fueled for liftoff, the Saturn V weighed 2.8 million kilograms (6.2 million pounds), the weight of about 400 elephants. 

(source, NASA)

[Translated into football terms, the Saturn V was as tall as a football filed including the end zones.]

 

                                                                

 

        

This was an unexpected, but cool item. Apparently, Miss Baker was quite a monkey -- the first animal to travel in space and return alive -- and she had a much younger husband  to boot. 

As we got ready to head back to the highway for another 90 minute drive to our hotel in Birmingham, a jet passing overhead provided a photogenic moment.

Driving into the setting sun was a challenge and our detour meant that we didn't reach our hotel until quite late, but it was worth it. Nice to remember times when the U. S. was reaching for the stars.

Here's the map with our route down to Birmingham shown in yellow.

  

 

Day 47: Indianapolis, Indiana to Franklin, Tennessee

It did not make geographic sense to go home to Vermont with Greg's next game slated for New Orleans, so we said "good-bye" to Indianapolis and headed south toward Nashville, Tennessee, aiming to take in a few historical sights on the way. Our route went right by the stadium, so we stopped for this selfie. 

As you can see from the parking lot, it was raining slightly. Unfortunately for us, the rain would become a downpour midway thought the journey. Turns out the trucks don't worry about such things. They continue to speed past you at alarmingly close distances even when visibility is poor. 

Our route took us through Kentucky, a state I have never visited. I'm sure that there are lots of lovely parts but they weren't much in evidence from the highway. 

While I am not a fan of Kentucky's exports in terms of senators, they do know how to make whisky, as we learned from many "historic landmark" designations on the freeway. We made a brief pit stop to take a picture in front of one of them. Alas, no free samples in the era of covid -- and, of course, we were driving. 

Scenes from the road.           Louisville skyline (right).

Greg is really adept at finding odd roadside attractions. And he's a fan of "Muffler Men" from the 50s and 60s. Lucky for us, there were several available sightings on our route.

  

                    

When we arrived in Nashville we saw signs (literally) of the final presidential debate, then just a couple of days away. 

Nashville seems to be a pretty cool town. There is definitely a building boom going on. We saw a lot of modern structures under construction. When I googled "up and coming cities 2020," Franklin (a Nashville suburb) was ranked #3. There are many lovely public parks and the weather was perfect for walking. Centennial park (below) featured a surprising structure. No, we're not in Athens.

 

The Parthenon in Centennial Park, in Nashville, Tennessee, is a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens. It was designed by architect William Crawford Smith and built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition.  (from wikipedia)

                                                                                     

We spent the night in Franklin and stopped at a civil war battle site the next morning.

Franklin, Tennessee: House with 1,000 Civil War Bullet Holes. Not a nice place to be during the Battle of Franklin, where bodies lay six feet deep. (below, text from wikipedia)

  

                   

Here is the overall map and an inset of the journey from Indie to Nashville. 

Next stop: Birmingham, Alabama