carol comments: Saturday in the AL & synergy

Alabama (and the South) has always had a place in my psyche and imagination.. It seemed distant, mysterious, and in some ways larger than life. It's a mildly bizarre feeling to be living in the South. I remember learning about the TVA in school, well now I live in the Tennessee Valley, and the TVA provides my electricity (which is why my kitchen does not have a gas stove). I relished Twain (Anyone for a reading of the Emmeline Grangerford episode of Huck Finn?).

My first exposure was from the movie To Kill A Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck. It was my Grandma DiCamillo's favorite, and I have a distinct memory of watching it with her when I was grade school age. I remember her telling me what a special story it was. The movie, based on Harper Lee's award winning novel is set in a small town in Alabama. When I became an English teacher, I taught the novel to my ninth grade students. It has become one of my favorite pieces of literature, and I have entire sections memorized from reading them aloud in class. High School students still love being read to. When I was pregnant I found that I could not read "Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives. " without weeping. Ninth graders find this very disquieting.

As a many good ninth grade teachers do, I would always give my students a brief history of the Scottsboro Boys to help them understand that the premise, the historical context of Ms. Lee's novel (a black man being unjustly tried for raping a white woman) was quite realistic and not at all overstated or exaggerated. Yes, lynch mobs, prejudice, hate, Jim Crow - it was all quite real.

Well, over Labor Day weekend, we drove to Scottsboro, which is about 40 miles from our house. Our original purpose was to visit The Unclaimed Baggage Center. This is a big thrift store where all of the unclaimed baggage in the US is sent for resale. How it ended up in Scottsboro, I can't say. But it's there and sounded like a MUST SEE, so we went to check it out. It was disappointingly overpriced, and very crowded, quite a bizarre experience. Where else can you find ancient Egyptian remains...a Burberry coat.....skis........palm pilots.........any confiscated nail clippers and box cutters from the last 7 years all under one roof? Just as I was ready to leave, I saw what I thought was the most fabulous find:

Wow. Um........................Wow. I was really curious about how one might use such a device. Fortunately, there was a demonstration on the side of the box.

This was another one of those - laugh till it hurts Alabama moments.

We finished at Unclaimed Baggage much sooner than expected, but stumbled upon the Scottsboro town square and courthouse where we found a delightful flea market, car show and fair. It was a wonderfully quaint small town afternoon and we soaked it up. As we walked around melting in the heat, I had ringing in my ears the descriptions of Maybcomb's courthouse and town square and the sweltering summer afternoons of Tom Robinson's trial in To Kill A Mockinbird

We enjoyed the car show (some of us more than others)

We ate at a local diner/bakery called The Variety Bakery Shop. (Masons - thinks Marv's only Alabama style and with pastries). Lunch for the three of us cost $8. Later we went back and got a bag of free "end of the day donuts."

We had frozen lemonade in the town square, bought some great 50's chairs (I'll show you when they've been restored) and a lamp, and I met a lovely woman named Margaret, who was selling Scuppernongs, and as any good Southerner is, was happy to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. I've always wondered what they were....turns out they are wild grapes that are now somewhat cultivated. Scuppernongs are the green ones; the purple ones are muscadines. Well, actually they're all muscadines, but who's keeping track?