Northern California 9 Nov 1997

Southern California 10 Nov 1997 11 Nov 1997

The Southwest 12 Nov 1997

Texas 13 Nov 1997 14 Nov 1997 16 Nov 1997

New Orleans 16 Nov 1997 18 Nov 1997

Montgomery, Alabama 19 Nov 1997

Wednesday 19 Nov 97 Montgomery, Alabama

Mornin, y’all!

We thought this one was going to be easy enough.

We breakfasted at our hotel, meeting a couple guests (not always a good thing). The daughter was in town for a real estate convention, and the mother for a showing of her paintings at a local gallery. Both were interesting, and it was a great way to start the day.

The trip from New Orleans to Montgomery, Alabama was uneventful. The only excitement was passing through Mississippi, a place I was sure I’d never visit in my life. Their visitor center (as you enter the state) was the most impressive we’ve seen, and the landscape was pleasant [beautiful, to some of us], if repetitive.There were few trucks and virtually no billboards along I-65.

As we got into Montgomery, our certainty of an early evening at the motel strengthened. It’s an amazingly little town for a state capital, but perhaps the same can be said of Olympia, a place I hardly know. We stopped at the city visitor’s center, and talked with a very helpful woman who pointed us to the few tourist spots in town. Chief among them (for us), which we discovered only upon reading the AAA guide book, is the Civil Rights memorial, done by Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam Memorial. The experience of seeing that began the phenomenon that has become our Montgomery experience.

The memorial is done in much the same spirit as her Vietnam memorial. It is a fairly simple structure (black granite) that picks up on a theme in M.L. King’s Dream speech about justice flowing like water, and it runs a constant sheet of water over both the quotation that underlies the theme, and also a horizontal circular granite plate that, like the Vietnam memorial, lists the names of those who died in the cause of civil rights since 1954 (the year of the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation). Unlike the Vietnam memorial, this one also notes the nature of the death. For example, so-and-so was killed by state troopers breaking up a demonstration. So-and-so was killed for speaking to a white woman.

It was so much worse than I’d thought, the racial situation in my country. We’re so used to feeling that nothing much has changed (as we see and feel the prejudice upon which this phenomenon was and is based even today), but those of us in the West aren’t always aware that people killed for the cause of racial segregation, and the murderers of most of the people commemorated on that plaque are still at large. You could kill in cold blood, in plain sight of almost anyone (one of the names was a witness to a killing before his own), and know you weren’t likely to be punished.

This monument takes those deaths from obscurity, and thus meaninglessness, and makes them stand forever as a record in the history of a change in how we live our lives in this country (however we might feel inside ourselves). It makes those people soldiers in a battle that they might not have had any more interest in serving than did so many soldiers sent to Vietnam. That they died made them victims of that war, and that their deaths are memorialized, especially with their names, makes us face the fact of that war, and not let us easily forget that it happened. If we could add to the memorial the names of their killers, as you can so easily find the names of both sides of the Civil War participants around here, the record would be complete.

It is an odd feeling to see this memorial in Montgomery. We had the distinct feeling that this tribute is not welcome by all here. It stands across the street from the Lurleen Wallace office building, and George and Lurleen probably mean much more to many people here than does M.L. King. But, it’s here (under police guard), and it’s been here for nearly ten years. Did you know about it? I didn’t. We haven’t yet found any postcards of it, either.

We then drove by a Scott Fitzgerald museum. Evidently, Zelda was from here, and they lived here together for a brief time.

Then, we found a room. Our first “suburbs location,” a La Quinta place, if you can believe it. How nice to have a room that is clean, and where everything fits. Downtown had one hotel, but there seemed so little reason to be downtown that we took the chance we might get a standby seat for a play being put on by the Alabama Shakespeare Theater, that took place far from downtown, and found a place nearby that location. And the story continues.

We’d been told we should be in line for standby tickets at the new performance center (Alabama Shakespeare is doing a Hart-Kaufmann play called The Man Who Came to Dinner, which is not, as we had first thought, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) by 6:30, which meant an early dinner. Frustrating, because we had no reason to assume we’d even get in. We decided upon a restaurant near the motel, called Shogun. Seemed like a place for rice and teriyaki. When we were seated, though, we weren’t so sure it was a good idea. Shogun is based on the Benihana idea of the chef as performance artist, and you sit with a bunch of people around the grilll while he does his stuff. One of our group saw us studying maps and tour books, and started a conversation that would last the meal. Don’t know what we learned, but it gave us more contact with native Montgomerians.

Rushed out to the Blount Hall, as the meal had predictably taken a bit longer than we’d hoped. As we entered the grounds, we knew we’d made the right decision. This Blount is obviously fabulously wealthy, and had built a remarkable performance center (I think an art museum is also part of the facility) with theaters, one smaller than the other and intended for plays (versus musicals, etc.). Our destination was this smaller one. Almost as soon as we’d entered, we saw our friend from the visitor center. This was preview night, and she was here to be able to recommend the play to visitors. We had to wait almost til the play started before we’d know whether there was a seat for us, so Melissa went into the gift store (Seattle should be so lucky as to have this place). Working there is a young man from Seattle, as well as a young woman from D.C. They’re both here for a degree in theater management in connection with some college here. So, by the time the play started, we felt we know most of Montgomery.

We got in. It was perhaps the most impressive theater we’ve been in. The stage is a thrust stage (as with Bathhouse), and seating is around about 300 degrees of the circle. The actors were wonderful, and the play a delight. A wonderful conclusion to a remarkable day.

Some things we noticed. We can’t get over the children. There was no reason for children to be at this play (they couldn’t have understood much of it—an adult comedy), but they sat there incredibly patiently, never fussing, always attentive. They’d pick up on whatever they could understand. At one point, it’s Christmas, and the sound system plays a Christmas song. They sang along. We need to discover the trick they’re using, bottle it, and make our fortunes. The US—nay, the world, would be transformed. I guess it’s how they inculcate this remarkable politeness that we see all around us here.

Now, we’re off to Atlanta, Aunt Nita, and EST.