Walking

I suppose it’s all in what you’re used to.  What may seem a challenge to some is nothing out of the ordinary to others.  I have seen both sides of this since returning to Alabama.  I’ve talked about driving all over Birmingham in the quest for particular foodstuffs and how my friends and family saw nothing strange about that.  On the other hand, what I’ve done for exercise has made more than a few heads turn.

I like to walk.  I enjoyed it when I lived in Colorado for a number of reasons.  The exercise did me some good; there was plenty of fresh air to take in; and I sometimes met interesting people.  I would often take my camera along as well because there were many things to photograph.  Boulder was a pedestrian friendly city—sometimes I thought it was too much so—with a variety of fascinating places to sample.

Birmingham is a different place.  Boulder is actually an older city but Birmingham has neighborhoods that have the look and feel of places that have seen many years pass over them.  Boulder, on the other hand, has few “old” areas and those are mostly around the University of Colorado campus, and Mapleton Hill with its staid, even stately, homes and maple tree-lined streets.

A walk around my neighborhood is a journey of discovery.  The area is covered with trees, vines, tall grass and buildings that range in appearance from handsome to dilapidated.  It’s amazing to see some which are abandoned or fire-gutted but allowed to stand.  Some of the houses I was familiar with forty years ago are beginning to sag and show signs of neglect and decay.  Then there are those with yards that look more like jungles.  The grass is very tall; kudzu vines cover the fences; and their gardens are overrun with wild plants of every description.

Lawn care has always been a matter of pride for homeowners wherever they live.  In Colorado, the major issue was water.  The semi-arid climate demanded that a verdant lawn drank a lot of water, so much so that some cities had to institute water rationing to have enough to go around.  That is not the case in Alabama where every shade of green imaginable can be seen.  Rainfall is abundant and occurs with astonishing regularity.  Because of this, a lawn that has been mowed today will need cutting two weeks later.  During my walks it has been interesting to see which homeowners are serious about lawn care, which ones don’t care, and who fall in between.  My mother’s yard definitely is in the middle ground category.

In addition to viewing different lawns, there are many hills and prominences in my part of Birmingham which my feet have tramped across.  I’ve already mentioned Dynamite Hill, but it is hardly the only height around here.  Some of the neighboring communities have names that are indicative of their topography.  College Hills, Enon Ridge and Fountain Heights are just a few that I’ve ambled through, and I know others lying around the next bend which are awaiting my discovery and exploration.

It is precisely my wish to discover and explore that has so fascinated my relatives.  I’m often asked why do I go walking and where.  I get curious looks when I say I’d rather walk to a cousin’s or uncle’s home than drive the short distance because I want the exercise.  I don’t think my family is particularly lazy just because they prefer to drive.  There are some practical reasons for this and the Alabama climate is a major one.

Summer has now arrived and with it the pleasantly mild spring days have given way to the sultry, humid ones I remember from my previous residence.  It doesn’t simply get hot here.  The humidity compounds the heat effect and can make it seem hotter than it actually is.  So a walk that encompasses two miles or so—something that I like to do—can be a real labor when the temperature goes over 86° (30° C) and the humidity jumps over 50 percent.  Combine that with a relentless sun and you can understand why some of my kin only shake their heads when they see me coming back home after a walk.

They also don’t like the fact that I like scaling the hills and won’t walk around them, but instead will take the straightest route to the top.  The western slope of Dynamite Hill is more than most of my relatives want to handle, and when my cousins see me begin the trudge to the top they ask, “Isn’t that too steep to go walking up?  I wouldn’t do it.”  To that I smile and then reply, “Hey, I’ve climbed steeper and higher in Colorado!”  That usually ends the discussion.

That, I think, is the key.  I wasn’t in the best physical shape when I lived in Colorado and I’ll be the first to admit it.  I’d lose my breath on trails in Rocky Mountain National Park, see young kids go scampering by me, and even have a grandmother or grandfather pass me frequently.  Now, to be fair to me, much of that was due to my being a very clumsy hiker.  I regularly stubbed my boots against the rocks and stones you found on every Colorado mountain trail so I had to walk carefully to avoid taking a spill or disastrous fall.  I also simply liked taking my time whenever I went hiking in the mountains, literally stopping to smell the wild roses I would see growing alongside the trail.

I also would take a nice long hike in the high country, often tramping for more than four miles/six and a half km at elevations in excess of 9,000 feet/2,700 meters.  I always had a backpack—sometimes heavily laden with food and water, sometimes not—as well as camera gear, which meant taking extra weight along.  Many of the people I mentioned who passed me weren’t so encumbered so they were able to cover ground more quickly than I did. 

Now I’m back in Alabama and my walks are under completely different conditions.  I don’t pack extra weight (my digital camera fits in my pants pocket); the air is thicker and contains more oxygen; the elevation is much, much lower and my hikes are of shorter length.  In other words, walking a Birmingham neighborhood isn’t anywhere near the physical challenge that hiking across Rocky Mountain National Park’s tundra posed.  True, the heat and humidity are greater in Birmingham but they haven’t given me the problems they seem to impose on other residents around here. 

So I keep walking and let my relatives talk and marvel.  None of them has volunteered to join me yet.  Perhaps the walk I took from Smithfield through part of College Hills and down to the mammoth Legion Field football (gridiron) stadium scared them too much and made them think a walk with me would harm them.  That’s too bad because I know I would enjoy their company.  I also have to admit that age plays a big factor in my kinsfolk’s decision to stay on the porch.  Most of them are older than I and don’t have the energy they used to.  Nevertheless, I’ll keep extending the invitation.  If I could get someone to join me on a walk just to the Jewish cemetery, I’d be pleased.

I’m happy that I have successfully transferred this part of my Colorado life to Alabama.  It has certainly done me a lot of good and there’s no reason to change things.  Plus, a walk through a Birmingham neighborhood allows my mind to unwind and take in the surroundings.  Whether I’m looking at an abandoned structure, a seasonally overgrown yard, typical brick and clapboard homes or a proud old church, I get a sense of connection and belonging that is very comforting, making it all worthwhile.

The Necropolis

My neighborhood has seen some changes in the years I’ve been away, but there is one feature that has remained constant for decades.  That is the place I always knew simply as “the Jewish Cemetery”.  This plot of land lies only a “hoot and a holler” from my house and is located on Enon Ridge.  I’ve walked past it countless times, but never set foot on its grounds until I moved back to Birmingham.  I went to satisfy my curiosity and discovered a place brimming over with its own history and mysteries.

First I should give a little background.  Jews have played a prominent and significant role in the history of the South.  They were among the first to colonize the next door state of Georgia back in the eighteenth century.  Georgia was a colony founded by James Oglethorpe as a refuge for English debtors and was named for King George II.  Debtors did come there and worked off their obligations on the farms and plantations that were established or by starting businesses of their own that created the revenue they used to pay their creditors.  The opportunities all these circumstances created drew many Jews into the colony and their communities flourished.

It was likewise in Alabama where Jews rose to prominence in the state’s towns and cities.  When Alabama seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy, Jewish thinkers were part of the movement and guided its efforts.  One of them, a man named Judah Benjamin, was called “the dark prince of the Confederacy” by Nathaniel Hawthorne for his role in the Civil War.  After the war ended, Alabama began a difficult and painful rebuilding but there was one event that helped considerably.  That was the founding of Birmingham in 1872.

Birmingham is the only place known on Earth where all three ingredients for the making of steel can be found: iron ore, coal and limestone.  They exist in abundance in the area and that brought all kinds of people to the city.  The invention of the Bessemer converter and blast furnaces greatly aided the steel manufacturers and business began to grow, so much so that Birmingham became known as “the Pittsburgh of the South” and renowned both for the quantity and quality of the steel it produced.  Both of my grandfathers worked in Birmingham’s steel mills as did so many thousands of other African-American men who flocked to the city for the jobs the steel industry created.

Jews came as well, and they rose to prominence in the city’s business community.  They started banks and department stores; opened law firms and created other enterprises that contributed much to Birmingham’s political, commercial and cultural life.  But despite their many gifts to the city, they faced discrimination as well—in life and in death.  The cemetery on Enon Ridge was an expression of the anti-Semitism Jews encountered here.  Their dead had to have a separate burial ground as interment with Christians would not be allowed.

I visited this necropolis on an unusually mild June morning recently.  Eleventh Court neatly bisects it and on the day I came, a groundskeeper was duly cutting back on the plant growth which encroached upon the gravestones.  The two lots lie north and south of the thoroughfare and are enclosed by low but solid stone walls.  I visited the north lot first.  The gate was open and over it was an iron work arch bearing the words “Cemetery Knesses Israel”.  As I walked, I took note of names and dates and tried to discern what they told me of those resting here.  The names were of a kind I had known:  Avram, Jaffe, Weinberger and others. 

I did not visit every grave, but the ones I examined all had interesting information.  Many bore inscriptions in both English and Hebrew.  It was also clear that entire families were laid to rest here with the patriarch and matriarch having more prominent headstones and their children very simple ones, but all of them were together.  One old grave I saw contained the remains of a man who had passed away on 30 December 1901.  Another was occupied by a man who had died at the ripe old age of 95 in the first third of the twentieth century.

As I walked around, I recalled the story my mother had told me of playing hide-and-seek among these very same tombstones when she was a girl some seventy years ago.  The graveyard wasn’t as full then as it is now but her story made me realize just how integral a part this place has played in the history of the area.  I wandered around a little more and then crossed the street to visit the southern lot.

This one also had an arched entrance with the words “Cemetery Emanu El” spanning it.  Again there was the catalogue of Jewish names:  Gluck, Fies, Friedman, Saks and Seigel being some of them.  The words on the arches made me wonder if these plots were two separate cemeteries created because of some schism that might have opened in Birmingham’s Jewish community.  That is something worth investigating.  As I walked, looked, and contemplated, I realized that here was a lot of history literally resting at my feet.  These once had been men and women who had seen things I had read about and survived.

One tombstone of particular interest to me told a remarkable tale in just a few words:  “Born in Perth, Australia and died in Birmingham, Alabama”.  I’ll bet this woman could have told me stories that would have kept me riveted in my place as she related them.  Then there was the tomb of a woman who had been born in 1817, two years before Alabama became a state!  She had lived through the Civil War and died toward the end of the nineteenth century.

All around me were the graves of people who had seen the invention of the locomotive, the telegraph, and the telephone.  They had witnessed the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and both world wars.  They had survived the Great Depression and other economic and political upheavals.  They had loved and hated; had sown and reaped, and now were at rest.  I thought about all of that under the bright Alabama sky while birds sang and twittered in the trees and bushes that grow along the western walls of both plots.

As I walked away I remembered something else about this necropolis:  It had saved my neighborhood from extinction.  Family and neighbors told me that back in the 1960s when the state and federal government were in the planning stages of building the Interstate highways that now flow through Birmingham, our little neighborhood was firmly in the crosshairs of the planning engineers.  What saved our homes and businesses was the Jewish cemetery.

The families of the dead rose up en masse and told government authorities that there was no way they would allow the rest of their people to be disturbed.  The original plans put the highway pavement on top of those graves and that meant remains would have to be exhumed and reburied elsewhere.  At that time the affected families still had a lot of political muscle and they used it to save the cemetery.  The cemetery’s salvation was also our own and our homes were spared.  As it is the Interstate is literally a stone’s throw from my front door but at least it didn’t run through my kitchen and for that I’m grateful.

My mother says that burials still take place in the necropolis and I can see that its upkeep has made it a green gem in our community.  I want to visit again to see if I can find other interesting stories on the gravestones.  They will say much about the people and the times they lived and deepen my appreciation for the humanity we all share.