1. The camera salesgirl spoke with the soft lilt of Alabama, "How kin I help yew?" I smiled and slid right down into that familiar dialect. We chatted while I looked. "I just love it here," she said. "Is this your hometown?" I asked. "Oh, yes," she said and repeated, "I just love it." Scottsboro must have come a long way since it was a crime to be black in a little town.
2. On the walls, up high and mostly out of reach, fascinating objects are displayed with their dates of arrival at Unclaimed Baggage. Underwood typewriters, McDonald's arches, and this Hani headdress, my personal favorite. East meets West by way of the South, where hundreds of folks pass every day. I wonder how many look up and stop as I did?
3. Veranda Cafe for lunch was a pleasant stop, but the dessert, which my friend and I bought because of the owner's enthusiastic description, exuded the too-sweet flavor typical of "the country south." Crushed pretzels, topped by what we were told was cream cheese (but seemed suspiciously like Cool Whip), slathered with sticky, gelatinous strawberry pie filling. Even the description makes my teeth hurt now.
4. A quick stop at the Stevenson Town Park rewarded us with coots bobbing on the water and pecking along the ground, their tidy feathered silhouettes like little mourning-coated gentleman mingling at a wedding, and a pair of osprey, their nest on a ball-field light. As if showing off for us, he fished, with success, brought the food home, and then they both soared.
Scottsboro has been known for two things: a horrifying miscarriage of justice famous in American history (The Scottsboro Boys) and Unclaimed Baggage. Today's journey added a few more to my list, all in the "best of" category.
I find these days I think in increments of thought -- a word, a gesture, a shade of color, a crumb. I think I may always have thought this way.
In graduate school, I remember studying John Philip Kemble's notations for Shakespeare plays, comparing the images he created on stage to those David and Poussin created in neoclassical painting. I didn't know why -- and still don't know why -- I was so interested in the minutiae on textual notations. I'm not sure I ever even posited why it mattered. Can it? Matter, that is? Beyond the scholarly pursuit of writing that shows a scholarly bent?
Today, I returned to the Stevenson Town Park and found myself unable to take a single decent picture of the panoramic view of lily pads, water, and distant mountain. Even with a tripod for HDR photos, I failed at capturing the big picture. Only later, when I cropped a photo to the foreground, flattening it like a turn-of-the-century print, or photographed the center of a passion flower did I make myself happy.
Narrow the field: my modus operandi. Make the image and let it be itself, without interpretation or meaning or significance. Mine is a mind for small things.
A Lake Cheston stroll and the most compliant (battered and torn) Blue Dasher I've met yet, followed by a beautiful drive to Crow Mountain Orchards and the purchase of Laura Delicious and Asian pears, a hairpin-turning stomach-churning mountain descent into farming countryside, a picnic at a stop along the North Alabama Bird Trail, and conversation with a friend.
A full day and a delightful one.
Between mile markers 206 and 207 on the northeast-bound lanes of I-59 toward Chattanooga (just beyond the last Fort Payne exit and before the Valley Head, Mentone, and Hammondville exit), a holiday surprise awaits travelers: a decorated Christmas tree at the edge of the woods past a stone outcropping. Because I passed the tree at 70 mph, I have no photograph to document what I saw. I drove by just as the sky settled into a long twilight and saw the tree early enough to enjoy it, but too fast to register it fully till moments later. Then, I exclaimed "Wow!" aloud to myself in the car and enjoyed the sight in my mind's eye: a real Christmas tree, a large and tall, perfectly-shaped one, strung with balls and garlands, along the side of a busy freeway -- all for the fleeting pleasure of strangers erected and decorated by another stranger. And for what? For the knowledge that such generous gifts, whether large or small, signify a true holiday season.
A second gift awaited me in Stevenson, Alabama, small town aglow with light, first in the Stevenson Town Park where birders and Civil War buffs gather, and then on the main street, where the old railroad station, a beautiful brick edifice reminding citizens and visitors alike of the slower form of travel predating and coinciding with automobiles and trucks -- both glittering and shimmering with happy illumination, the last significant light before my car nosed its way through rolling terrain and then up to the plateau.
These free gifts are welcome indeed for a traveler like me, filled with nostalgia for family long gone or far away. Thank you to generous strangers for such light.
