Railroad Park runs along four city blocks dividing downtown from the southside. In my childhood, trains competed with billowing smoke and the fiery glow of furnaces smelting ore. Now, in the post-industrial era, folks skate, skateboard, walk, exercise, play frisbee, walk their dogs -- mix and mingle in ways outlawed then.
On Christmas Eve, my niece, two great-nieces, and I wandered through the park, where the homeless and monied, young and old, black and white and hispanic gathered to enjoy the brilliant blue sky and gentle temperature of a mild winter day.
Before she died, my friend Kathy Kemp wrote a lovely article about how Birmingham amazed her. Me, too. I shall return to the park often for a city idyll. (And next time I will have my camera!)
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