OK, back in the saddle here. Sorry no post Tuesday–I was staying in a
motel in Clanton, Alabama which knoweth not the Internet. Wednesday I was
at a party in Virginia, yesterday came home to find 534 e-mails were waiting
on my main e-address, 261 on my hotmail. Around half are total junk.
Nothing but happy memories from a week in Alabama. I don’t think I heard an
unkind word nor saw a frown. That’s some state you guys have down there.
Special thanks to the NASCAR volunteers at Talladega, to the lady in
Birmingham who, when I asked the way to Dreamland, told me to just follow
her car (“It’s not out of my way at all,”–so why was she food shopping
three miles away?), to the farm lady in a pickup truck who got me back on
route 22 when I was lost, to the National Park Service officer at the
Horseshoe Bend military museum who stayed after hours so I could mooch
around the site, to various other curators in Montgomery, Georgiana, Selma
and Mobile, for their patient instruction, to the Federalist Society for
hosting me, to Atty. General Bill Pryor for his time and a great deal (I
feel pretty sure) of help behind the scenes, most of all to Mike Debow and
Jack Park for their unfailing generosity and hospitality.
If you had done a word-association test on me two weeks ago using “Alabama”
I would have come up with something like: George Wallace, Martin Luther
King, Bull Connor, Hank Williams, coon dogs, shotgun shacks, and bugs. Now,
as Johnnie Cash said in that song, “I come away with a different point of
view.” Travel really does broaden the mind. I’m sorry I missed seeing the
Coon Dog Cemetery at Tuscumbia, though.
Now back to the e-mail mountain.