Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Columbus is just inside the state boundary line and I found myself, twenty minutes
after leaving town, in Alabama, heading for Tuscaloosa by way of Ethelsville, Coal Fire
and Reform. A sign by the highway said, DON'T LITTER. KEEP ALABAMA THE
BEAUTIFUL. “OK, I the will,” I replied cheerfully.
I put the radio on. I had been listening to it a lot in the last couple of days, hoping to be
entertainedbybackwardandtwangyradiostationsplayingsongsbyartistswithnameslike
Hank Wanker and Brenda Buns. This is the way it always used to be. My brother, who was
something of a scientific wizard, once built a shortwave radio from old baked-bean cans
and that sort of thing, and late at night when we were supposed to be asleep he would lie
in bed in the dark twiddling his knob (so to speak), searching for distant stations. Often
he would pick up stations from the South. They would always be manned by profession-
al hillbillies playing twangy music. The stations were always crackly and remote, as if the
broadcasts were being beamed to us from another planet. But here now there were hardly
anyhillbilly-soundingpeople.Infact,therewerehardlyanySouthernaccentsatall.Allthe
disc jockeys sounded as if they came from Ohio.
Outside Tuscaloosa I stopped for gas and was surprised that the young man who served
me also sounded as if he came from Ohio. In point of fact he did. He had a girlfriend at
the University of Alabama, but he hated the South because it was so slow and backward. I
askedhimaboutthevoicesontheradiosinceheseemedtobeanon-the-ballsortofguy.He
explained that Southerners had become so sensitive about their reputation for being shit-
squishing rednecks that all the presenters on TV and radio tried to sound as if they came
from the North and had never in their whole lives nibbled a hush puppy or sniffed a grit.
Nowadays it was the only way to get a job. Apart from anything else, the zippier Northern
cadences meant the radio stations could pack in three or four commercials in the time it
would take the average Southerner to clear his throat. That was certainly very true, and I
tipped the young man thirty-five cents for his useful insight.
From Tuscaloosa, I followed Highway 69 south into Selma. All Selma meant to me was
vague memories from the civil rights campaigns in the 1960s when Martin Luther King
led hundreds of blacks on forty-mile marches from there to Montgomery, the state capital,
to register to vote. It was another surprisingly nice town-this corner of the South seemed
to be awash with them. It was about the same size as Columbus, and just as shady and
captivating. Trees had been planted along the streets downtown and the sidewalks had re-
cently been repaved in brick. Benches had been set out, and the waterfront area, where the
city ended in a sharp bluff overlooking the Alabama River, had been cleaned up. It all had
an agreeable air of prosperity. At a tourist information office I picked up some pamphlets
extolling the town, including one boasting of its black heritage. I was heartened by this. I