Visiting Montgomery, Part 1

The morning after our encounter with Vulcan, we were up and at ‘em early so that we could have breakfast and be on the road to Montgomery.

We walked down the street to the Salem’s Diner, which according to someone someplace, was the number one diner in Alabama.

I’m sort of a strict constructionist when it comes to diners. They are a purpose-built diner (preferably with lots of stainless steel) or a converted railroad car. Something in a strip mall, while it may have many diner-like qualities (Formica booths, a counter, plain food, sassy waitresses) is not a diner.

And so, for me, at least, the Salem’s Diner wasn’t a diner. But it was diner-ish. Formica booths, check; counter, check; plain food, check. But it was so small that there was only one sassy waitress. I think there were four booths and as many stools at the counter.

What it lacked in size, it made up in character. The walls were covered, salon style, with vintage sports memorabilia, including someone’s golf score card. As the architect Robert Venturi said, “less is a bore” and this was far from boring.

If there was a blank spot on the wall, someone pounded a nail into it and hung a picture there.

What I know about Alabama and Auburn sports you can put in a thimble, but Salem’s Diner seemed like a good place to be if you were a fan. The owner’s father was the late (as of 2001) Ed Salem, a big deal on the University of Alabama’s 1950 football team. He went on to play for a year for the Washington Redskins and in the Canadian Football League.

Interestingly enough, the place is famous for Philly cheesesteaks. As a Pennsylvanian, I scoffed. And now that I’m back home in Pennsylvania, I’m still scoffing. This would be like a restaurant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania being famous for its grits.

Cheesesteak claims aside, I loved the atmosphere, in large part due to the gaggle of jolly, aging jocks that seemed to fill every booth and stool in the place.

Our waitress was great too, just the right combo of friendly and sassy.

Bruce and I had eggs, and they were quite good.

Martha’s pancakes, on the other hand, were cold.

I hope that it was just an off day. In theory at least, there are days when neither Alabama nor Auburn wins. Martha’s day breakfast wise, this was one of those days.

After breakfast we fired up the GPS and pointed our rental car towards Montgomery.

We had tickets to see the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

The memorial is located on a six-acre site on a hill overlooking the city.

Designed by MASS Design Group in conjunction with the staff of the Equal Justice Initiative, the work is a powerful reminder of America’s sordid record of lynching and racial relations.

When the staff member at the Memorial scanned our tickets, she told us not to take selfies with, or pose with the sculptures. I’m glad that she thought we were young enough to even consider taking a selfie.

Shortly after entering the memorial, visitors come to a sculptural group by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, an artist from Ghana. It’s of a group of young Africans, nearly naked and straining at shackles, their faces wracked with fear and horror. I thought it was supposed to represent people being sold into slavery. It’s a powerful and disturbing piece, but I wasn’t expecting it since so much of the press I’ve seen is about the larger, abstract portion of the memorial.

People take selfies with this? I shook my head.

After the sculptural group, a gravel path leads up a gentle slope to the memorial. The right side of the path borders a tall concrete wall.

It’s punctuated by five very large text panels that tell the Readers’ Digest version of the story of the lynching of African-Americans in the United States in the years after the Civil War.

The central portion of the memorial is a large, open, rectangular structure. Seemingly hundreds (I didn’t count) of COR-TEN steel boxes are suspended equidistant from the ceiling. 

Each box is incised with a state name, county name, and the names and dates of all the men, women, and children who were lynched in that county.

The boxes are arranged in rings, in alphabetical order. Alabama is on the outermost ring, Virginia and West Virginia are on the innermost ring.

The floor of the memorial is a gently sloping ramp so that as audience members walk through the memorial, the first boxes you come to are at eye level and the final ones are hanging well above visitors’ heads.

On the third leg of the memorial, there are a series of plaques telling the most basic stories of lynchings. They’re grim.

Really grim.

If you’ve somehow missed our country’s difficult racial past, it’s going to hit you here.

A bench has been built into the wall in case you want to sit and reflect.

When you get to the end, visitors are invited to walk up the small grass hill that’s at the center of the memorial. The docent explained to me that instead of the lynching victim being at the center of the crowd, now the viewer would be in that spot, surrounded by the steel memorials to all the lynching victims. It’s another solemn moment.

As you leave the central portion of the memorial, the docent explains that the steel boxes lined up outside the memorial are duplicates of the hanging boxes. Starting next year, the memorial plans to start sending them, as sites are prepared, to the counties where the lynchings took place. It’s a way to bring the piece to a much wider audience.

It's a short walk from this large conceptual work to a slightly larger than life sculpture of three women by Dana King, marking  the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956.

Before reaching the exit, visitors walk by an abstract sculptural work by Hank Willis Thomas and a stone slab bearing the poem Invocation by Elizabeth Alexander.

The central portion memorial is quite powerful, but I think it would have been more so if the sculptural works outside the main body of the memorial had been erected at a different site. I was reminded of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial and how Ross Perot and others insisted on adding some representational statuary to the ensemble. The abstract work is quite capable of standing alone.

After visiting the Memorial, we went to the EJI Museum which is a short drive away in downtown Montgomery. I was glad that we had purchased tickets in advance. It was crowded. The ticket taker asked for our zip codes and remarked that most of their visitors aren’t from the local area. She reminded us that we weren’t to take photos inside the museum.

The museum is mostly text panels and some video installation, very slick and au courant. I don’t recall that there were lots of works of art or original documents.

The ban on photos had to be about ensuring a good visitor experience when there is a large crowd. (Thank you Google for the photos!) The place was packed. The story the museum told about slavery, the Jim Crow era, and today’s civil rights struggle is shocking at times. I thought I was well versed and informed on the topic, but I was wrong.

We read and see videos about atrocities committed by ISIS or the Taliban or some other group of people and tend to think, oh, we’re not like that. Unfortunately, we are just like that.

Before going the memorial, I read about a lynching that look place in Charlottesville in 1898, just down the road from my old apartment. As horrible as it was, it pales in comparison to the story of Mary Turner, lynched in Georgia in 1918. As the cartoonist Walt Kelly said, I have met the enemy and he is us. 

On the way to the car, I made a brief stop at the bookstore. I know I’ve never been to a museum store with merch so attractively priced. The Equal Justice Initiative really wants visitors to buy its books, mugs, t-shirts, and to share its story. Its hope is that we learn from our troubled racial past (and present). I couldn't agree more.

Alabama Bound: Vulcan, Man of Iron, Not Irony

After the Hertz parking lot debacle, the we didn’t stop until we came to the Alabama Welcome Center, just after we crossed from Georgia into Alabama. State welcome centers are always good stops for free road maps, clean bathrooms, and picking up brochures for places that you didn’t know existed.

This one had a big monument of the Alabama state motto out front. Yikes.  While Alabama was admitted to the Union in 1919, it didn't adopt this state motto until 1939.

As state mottoes go it’s not quite as violent as New Hampshire’s Live Free or Die, or doesn’t require a knowledge of rudimentary Latin like Virginia’s Sic Semper Tyrannis. However, in the all around oomph department, it doesn’t even come close to New Jersey’s Not Only Toxic Waste But Also No Self Serve Gas.

Oh well, at least it wasn’t a monument celebrating the Ten Commandments.

Officially welcomed and with map and rack cards for the Paul W. Bryant (no relation) Museum and the Bates Turkey Farm and Restaurant in hand, we set out for Birmingham. I'm still sorry that we couldn't fit the Bates' place into our itinerary.

Before even checking into the hotel, we headed for the giant statue of Vulcan that overlooks the city.

Vulcan is a little shorter than the Christ of the Ozarks in Arkansas and Lucy the Margate Elephant in New Jersey, two of my favorite giant statues. But Vulcan is on a 10-story pedestal atop a small mountain overlooking Birmingham, a much better site than his compadres have in a mostly unbuilt Jesus-themed amusement park in the Ozarks, and on a not-very-attractive swatch of the Jersey Shore. What Vulcan lacks in height he makes up in location, location, location.

We bought tickets at a booth at the base of the park and then walked uphill to the Vulcan Museum. It’s a few steps from museum to the actual Vulcan Tower.

The first wow moment at Vulcan occurs when you walk into the museum/visitors’ center. They’ve placed a Louise Nevelson-ish sculpture of cast iron stuff—manholes, radiators, gears, pipes, and whatnots, celebrating Birmingham’s days as the largest industrial center in the south. It’s quite nice, really.

The museum behind the sculpture tells the tale of the statue and gives you a brief glimpse into Birmingham as a manufacturing center. I thought of it as a cousin to the museum at the base of the Hoover Dam, only the blue collar workers in these exhibits were wearing more clothes and lacking in the Tom of Finland-esque je ne sais quoi of the guys in the exhibits in Hoover Dam. This is the Bible Belt, after all.

The park’s website (which is great, btw) tells the story of the statue, which was created by an Italian American sculptor working in New Jersey, Giuseppe Moretti.

The Birmingham Commercial Club commissioned Moretti to sculpt the giant Vulcan in order to showcase Alabama’s industrial might at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. This was in the era when businessmen thought giant statues were a good idea. The Birmingham Steel and Iron Company used molds created by Moretti to cast the statue in 21 separate pieces of iron which were assembled at the Fair. Birmingham's Vulcan is the largest cast iron statue in the world.

Vulcan stands at his anvil, with a hammer in his left hand, holding aloft a rather cartoonish spear in his right hand. He’s wearing apron that droops to expose his heaving-in-a-manly-sort-of-way left pec. He’s sporting an Eddie Haskell-esque hairstyle accompanied by a totally butch and au courant hipster full beard.

He wears non-OSHA approved non-steel toed gladiator sandals. You have to hand it to the guy, he knows the value of statement shoes.

While Mr. Moretti made a valiant attempt, Vulcan’s head seems too large for the rest of the body, and as a result, Vulcan looks like a 56’ tall bobblehead doll.  Interestingly enough, you can buy a Vulcan bobblehead in the gift shop.

After Vulcan’s gig at the World’s Fair—where his prizing wining status makes me wonder about the competition—he was brought back to Birmingham and reassembled—incorrectly—at the Alabama State Fair Grounds. I’m unsure if the knee bone didn’t connect to the thigh bone, or exactly what.

This was the start of Vulcan’s checkered past, and at various points he held up a Coke bottle, a pickle sign, and even a giant ice cream cone. Apparently, the heat from Vulcan’s forge did not melt that particular kind of ice cream.

Vulcan was moved to his current home as part of a WPA project and presumably the museum building dates from this time. Vulcan’s career in advertising wasn’t over however, and in 1946, at the instigation of the Birmingham Jaycees, Vulcan started to hold a green neon beacon that turned red on the days that there was a traffic fatality in Birmingham.

As you can imagine, all those years hanging out at the Alabama State Fair and concentrating on traffic fatalities did a real number on him and he underwent a full restoration in 2003-2004.

Now he’s back to his buff self, and even wears the same size trousers as he would have worn at the 1904 World’s Fair....had he worn trousers there anyway.

Unless you bring a drone—which I didn’t—it’s hard to get a good look at Vulcan. But he has a nice butt and trust me, you can’t say that about all the giant statues.
 

I took the elevator to the 10th floor outdoor observation deck to see Birmingham spread out before me like the buildings of Plasticville that went with my old Lionel train set.

The floor of the deck is mesh so you can look straight down, always a fun thing if you’re afraid of heights.

 

When I was on the deck, we could see and hear the University of Alabama at Birmingham marching band on its practice field in the distance. Although they weren’t playing Sweet Home Alabama it was way more festive than the spread of hors d’oeuvres the Birmingham Estate Planning Association was laying on at for a cocktail function in the park as we left.

I minded the signs and did not run down the stair steps, equally impressed by Birmingham’s industrial might and Vulcan’s ageless physique.

Vulcan Park and Museum

1701 Valley View Dr.

Birmingham, AL 35209

Museum open 10:00 am to 6:00 pm most days; Tower 10:00 am until 10:00 pm. 

Alabama Bound: In a World of Hertz

My friends Martha and Bruce were headed to Alabama—she was giving a paper at a conference—and they asked me to tag along. I hadn’t been there in quite some time, so I said sure, count me in. The plan was to fly to Atlanta and then drive to Birmingham and so on.

After an on-time landing in Atlanta, M, B, and I went to pick up our rental car. Based on the time it takes to get to Hertz Counter, via moving sidewalk, tram, and broken escalator, I’ve come to the conclusion that the rental car center might might actually be in South Dakota.

The rental car center is gigantic. In fact, it makes the biggest one I’ve been to--in Las Vegas--look puny. 

It was my lucky day. There was no line at the Hertz counter.

Shontay, the nice customer service rep, asked me if I wanted to upgrade to a Range Rover. I laughed. A Range Rover? She had to be kidding.

Then she asked me if I were in Atlanta visiting family. I said no, I wasn’t. I told her that I come from a long line of white trash she should be glad that none of my relatives lived there.  She laughed.  We were practically besties. I didn't even need to drop my cousin Kobe's name.

Shontay completed my paperwork quickly and didn’t hector me about upgrading the insurance or adding a fuel package, premium cup holder, or designer highway flares. In just a few minutes I was in the parking garage allegedly picking out my car.

Our section of the garage—for non-Range Rover-ing descendants of white trash—was mostly empty. Actually, I had a choice of one car. And that was fine. As of last week, I’d cast off my long held belief that the way to a man’s heart was through my rental car. As long as it gets you there and back, who cares what a rental looks like?

Once I figured out where at least 20% of the car's essential controls were, I started it up and drove over to the check-out booth. As instructed, I handed over my paperwork and driver’s license to the gate agent, Shontay (no relation).  We engaged in some friendly banter, she gave us bottles of cold Dasani water. When she'd finished checking out my documents and license, she lowered the gate, deactivated the big metal teeth in the pavement, and sent us on our way.

There was one more gate and set of big metal teeth to clear—all of 100 feet away--before heading out into the cauldron of Atlanta airport traffic.  Clearly Hertz does not think that less is more in the gates and big metal teeth department. The gate was up, the teeth were down.  Three days of cultural tourism were on the horizon.

I headed for freedom.

And then it happened.

The gate came crashing down.

The metal teeth deployed.

An alarm went off.

And my first thought was “How did I screw this up?”

You see, I’ve a history with rental cars.

There was that time In Tempe, Arizona. I pulled out in front of someone. It was my fault. There was a pretty darned large dent in that car.

In Seattle, I scraped something in a parking lot. It was my fault. But that was nothing that some Comet Cleanser and judiciously applied dirt didn’t fix.

And that time a long time ago in England…with the broken rear view mirror? Definitely my fault.

But I was pretty sure that this time wasn't my fault.

The gate didn’t leave a dent on the roof, but Hertz’s Spike Systems Inc. Model CS-72-HTC did a number on my front tires. My left front tire was flat. And in short order, my right front tire was flat too.

After what seemed like a long time, but was probably only a minute, an apologetic Hertz employee not named Shontay appeared. She sent for the manager.

I asked if this had ever happened before and she said that it had. My experience was somewhere between a one off and a just another day at the office. 

And it wasn’t even my fault.

In a few minutes, the manager arrived bearing more paperwork. She was effusively apologetic. She didn’t mean for the trip to start that way. She had a me sign a bunch of stuff and told me that I’d get a discount on the rental.

She had someone bring another car around. One that didn’t have flat front tires or show evidence of being hit by a parking lot gate. It wasn’t a Range Rover.

We moved our bags into the new car. I gave the parking lot gate the hairy eyeball before easing the car into traffic.  We were on our way.