How Dry I Am

People always talk about the weather but can do nothing about it.  That has always been true and always will, I suppose.  But weather is a fascinating topic for me.  I’ve already talked about some of the differences between Alabama’s weather and climate and Colorado’s.  But after being away for more than thirty years, I had clearly forgotten just how great those differences are.  Now, after being back for four months, I can take a fresh look.

The talk this year has been about the drought that has gripped much of the United States.  The Midwest has been hard hit with many farmers saying they will harvest no corn (maize) this year.  Colorado has been plagued by more than the usual summer forest fires that have destroyed hundreds of homes along the Front Range.  In addition, a severe dry spell has gripped its eastern plains drying up pasturage and forcing ranchers to cut down on the sizes of their herds.  Even in Alabama drought has made its mark, but that mark has been hard for someone like me to see.

In a typical year, my old home of Boulder would receive 18 inches/460 mm of precipitation along with more than 300 sunny days.  The climate is semi-arid and the high elevation of 5430 feet/1655 m accentuates this.  So a drought there was quite pronounced.  The one that came in 2002 was particularly severe and its signature event was a forest fire that burned more than 200,000 acres/80,000 hectares.  We got little snow that winter and the summer monsoon rains did not fall so everyone was urged to conserve as much water as possible until the weather improved.

By contrast, Birmingham receives 54 inches/1380 mm during the year—triple what Boulder would expect.  The drought that has hit the country hasn’t spared Alabama, particularly its easternmost counties, but as I look around town, I see little evidence of it.  The trees are still green and many are blossoming as they should.  Right now, the crepe myrtles are displaying their white and magenta flowers.  The lawns around here are as verdant as ever.

However, summer in the Deep South is nothing like its counterpart in the High Plains and Rocky Mountains of the West.  Both regions can see hot days with temperatures over 100°F/38°C.  Alabama has already had more than half a dozen of those this summer and we’ll have more before the season ends.  We have had a dry spell here as well, but what Alabamians call a dry spell wouldn’t even merit mention by Coloradans.

In Alabama, a week without rain is cause for worry.  People start to complain about how dry it is and they feel the ground and soil becoming hard.  When I returned at the end of March, it took me some time to get used to walking on soft spongy ground with its springy turf.  I didn’t have that luxury in Colorado where the ground was often hard packed and the soil was thin and stony.

So when meteorologists, farmers, gardeners and ordinary folks started talking about the drought in Alabama, I could only shake my head.  So far, Birmingham has seen 28.49 inches/718.57 mm of precipitation this year.  That is 4.66 inches/118.36 mm short of its normal totals for this date.  I tell people here they have no idea of what a real drought is; no idea of what it means to go weeks, even months, with little or no precipitation; no idea of what it means to live under a loud sun in a cloudless sky that turns your soil to stone as it sears and withers crops and gardens.

A few weeks ago when thunderstorms ended a heat wave of four consecutive 100°+F/38°+C days, I was shopping in a market as the lightening flashed and thunder pealed out of the sky.  One of the staff told me how happy he was to see the rain because the “drought” was becoming serious.

“What drought?” I asked.

“Why, the one that has been hitting us over the head this last week!” he exclaimed.  “I mean the weather has been so hot and dry that I couldn’t stand it anymore.  Didn’t you think so?”

I gave him a bitter smile and then said, “I come from a place where 20 inches (510 mm) of precipitation in a year would be cause for celebration and rejoicing.  Y’all get three times the amount of rainfall in a typical year than the folks back home get.  This last heat wave and dry patch would be considered normal there.”

“Where’s ‘back home’?” he asked.

“Boulder, Colorado,” I answered.

His eyes got wide.  “You’ve lived in Cadarada?  (Practically everyone in Alabama says “Colorado” that way.)  Man!  That’s a real beautiful place from everything I’ve seen and heard.  But I didn’t know that about the climate.  Do y’all get a lot of snow there?”

“About 80 inches (2032 mm) in a typical winter,” I said.  “And snow falls from October to April so winter is a fact of life there.  But I loved it and will always remember it fondly.”

That conversation sums up many of the differences between my old home and the new.  When I saw the forest fires ravaging Waldo and Poudre Canyons on TV, I cried.  My family had lots of questions about the fires and the role they play in forest ecology which I was able to answer.  The fires were another vivid example and demonstration that I am now living in a completely different part of the country.  The South is blessed with abundant moisture and in amounts that would astonish Westerners. 

Eastern Alabama has indeed had a dry spell with lost crops and water levels in creeks, rivers and lakes well below normal.  Water problems are easing elsewhere in this state as rainfall has increased significantly lately.  However, much of the South is facing a water crisis.  That is particularly true along the Mississippi River where the Army Corps of Engineers has found it necessary to dredge the river’s bottom in many places to assure that barge traffic will continue to move.  Big sandbars have appeared, halting recreational boating and silting in marinas and docks.

I have learned that drought means different things to people depending on their geography.  In the semi-arid to arid West, Mark Twain’s observation that “whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting” is still true.  The difference of a few inches can make or break an agricultural year.  Water’s scarcity was the root cause for many of the range wars that were fought in the past; and even today, Western cities quarrel with one another over water rights. 

In the South, while water is much more plentiful, that abundance is offset by the huge population.  A prolonged dry spell can have a drastic impact on the recreational and tourist industries and the many jobs tied in with them, not to mention the effect on agribusiness.  Alabama’s agricultural products are sold all over the world.  Why, I have cousins who farm in north Alabama’s Tennessee River Valley growing soybeans for export to markets in the Far East.  I’m sure the summer rainfall deficit is a matter of serious concern for them.

This year has been a hard one with respect to water over much of the country.  Yes, I’ve laughed at Southerners’ definition of a drought, but that doesn’t mean the anxiety and fear they felt weren’t legitimate.  I’m relearning what water means to different people even in my own country.  A Colorado forest fire ignited by dry lightning is just as disastrous as an Alabama crop being lost to drought.  In both cases, the lack of water has brought pain to many people.

20 July 2012

For me, 20 July was a day that seemed to have been lived in the Twilight Zone for that old TV series would have been able to portray what happened in its deft and surrealistic way.

Awaking to the appalling news from Aurora was a terrific shock.  I watched some of the news items on TV for a short time before I had seen and heard enough.  My problem with the TV coverage was that it lacked focus and cogency.  The broadcast producers, anchors and news reporters would seize on any detail and magnify it out of proportion in an effort to fill what otherwise would be dead air time.  That may have kept viewers in front of their screens but didn’t treat the tragedy with the gravity and importance it really deserved.  But in these days of 24/7 news cycles, this is what I’ve come to expect so I turned the TV off and got on the Internet. 

There I got involved in a nasty online debate about the meaning of the disaster.  I took quite a few lumps and dealt out some myself.  I suppose I was angry and wanted to lash out at anybody so I wrote things that were unfair and intemperate.  But I wanted to do something, anything that would help my adopted home state get past another disaster in a summer that has been anything but a good one.  Only the day before, I had e-mailed my Internet correspondents about how homesick I was for Colorado.  Now I found myself wondering if the Colorado I had left behind was perhaps in an alternate universe.  So much had changed in the space of twenty-four hours and a summer that was already a bad one due to monstrous forest fires and withering drought for the state had suddenly become much, much worse.

The Twilight Zone elements manifested themselves in the evening.  One of my cousins was getting married and I attended the wedding.  This cousin was someone I did not know as she had been born and grown up in the years I have been away.  When I was invited to the wedding in April, I had looked forward to the event with joyful anticipation.  Then came the news of the Aurora massacre and suddenly everything took on a completely different perspective.  I talked to some of my friends in Colorado about the murders, e-mailed others, and argued and debated on the Internet with complete strangers, some of whom were very angry with the stance I took and let me know that in no uncertain terms.  The wounds this tragedy opened and re-opened are very raw and won’t heal for a long time.  But after all was cussed and discussed, I still had a wedding to attend.

For my family, it was as though the events in Colorado had not happened at all.  Nobody discussed it except one of my cousins and my mother.  I wondered if any had even heard about what had happened in Aurora.  But I also understood that I was in neither the place nor the time to bring it up.  Our family had gathered to celebrate and affirm life, not to weep and mourn over death and murder.  On my cousin’s wedding day, the topics for conversation were to be ones of joy and love, of reaffirming family ties, and seeing that the newlyweds got off to the best possible start.  So I put on the best face I could and attended the wedding and the reception that followed.  I enjoyed the events and the people I saw.  I told funny stories and heard others related to me.  I got reacquainted with relatives who were very happy to see me and catch up with my undertakings.

But as I took part in the festivities, there was a dark corner of my mind that dwelt on what had happened in Aurora.  Once the shock and numbness wear off, how will the people of Colorado carry on?  The memory of the Columbine massacre has been dredged from its shallow and unquiet grave to haunt the state once more.  Another horrible mass murder has been committed on Colorado soil to be chronicled beside others, and there have been others besides Columbine.  But those others have been relegated to the history books because there are none now alive who remember them.  While I never ruled out the possibility that something like this could happen again in Colorado, I certainly didn’t expect it to recur as soon as it has.

My absence from the state did not soften the blow of Friday’s events.  However, living in Alabama has meant that the coverage has not been as intense as it has been in Colorado.  Besides, Alabama has had to deal with two shooting sprees that have occurred since the start of June.  One left three people dead and three others wounded in the university town of Auburn.  The other, in the college town of Tuscaloosa, saw seventeen injuries but fortunately no deaths.  Dealing with these rampages has left people here little emotional energy for taking on Colorado’s even more grievous tragedy.  The focus will be single-mindedly on Colorado for the next several days and weeks and Alabama will be left to fend for itself.  That is just as well.

I have told everyone how much I look forward to returning to Colorado.  Today’s news has tempered that desire somewhat.  It’s not that I no longer wish to go back as it is that I have been forced to realize that evil can be found anywhere and it can strike anytime.  My cousin reminded me of this truth when we talked about the Aurora situation on Friday afternoon.  He didn’t say that Alabama is a better place than Colorado or that I shouldn’t want to return there.  He simply observed that absolute security is a fantasy and that nobody should feel he is beyond the reach of disaster or tragedy.

I can only hope now that my Colorado family will carry on.  None of the people I know in the state has been directly touched by these murders.  Nobody is planning to abandon it because of what has happened.  I am sure each is trying to sort out what happened and then move on with life.  All I can do is to affirm my own support for them and let them know that I feel their pain in some measure.  At the same time, I want to draw lessons from this and apply them to my own life.  One of them is surely how precious and fragile life is and that I cannot take any day for granted.  Instead I want to get the most out of life, not in hedonistic pursuits, but in appreciating what I have and treasuring it to the greatest extent I can. 

The date 20 July is an important one in history.  It was on this date that Neil Armstrong took his “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for Mankind” back in 1969 when he became the first man to set foot on the Moon.  And my family will now have a reason to note it as well with the wedding of Paul and my cousin Amber.  I will have to think of these things to offset the blackness of the Aurora massacre.  My Colorado family will also have to find a way to recover and move on.  We were able to do so after the Columbine murders although that is an ongoing thing.  I have confidence we can do the same with this tragedy as well.

Southern Fried Accents

It has been said that while there are many American Souths, in the end there is only one South.  It is true that this area is hardly homogeneous.  There is tremendous diversity in its landscapes, for example.  From sun-splashed beaches to mile-high mountain peaks, from lush subtropical forests to the only desert east of the Mississippi River, the South has enough variety to keep anybody curious about it occupied for a lifetime.  Geographically speaking, there is the Upper South, comprising of Delaware, Maryland, the Virginias and Kentucky; the Mid-South which is made up of Arkansas, Tennessee and the Carolinas; and finally the Deep South which takes in the remaining states.  But these three provinces still have an unmistakable Southern stamp on them which serves as the overriding unifying factor for this region’s identity.

When people think of American Southerners, they naturally divide them into two main demographic groups: black and white folks.  That is changing also with the great influx of Latino newcomers in recent years.  Spanish is being heard far more frequently now than it was when I lived here thirty-five years ago with most of the immigrants arriving, not from Cuba and the Caribbean, but from the American West, Mexico and Central America.  Asians are also coming in growing numbers.

Still, black and white folks make up the overwhelming majority of the population.  Their presence is more than just the natural result of the slavery that was sustained here for nearly two hundred fifty years.  Not all black Southerners were slaves and not all white Southerners were slave-owners or even free men.  Many whites came here originally as indentured servants while the first blacks accompanied the early Spanish and French explorers and sometimes led expeditions themselves.

It was the meeting, mixing, and in many cases, mating of these people that created something for which the South is world famous:  the Southern accent.  But even this very American form of speech has both a complex history and usage.  Like the South itself, there is no one and only Southern accent.  There are many and which one you hear depends on a wide range of factors.

First, it is important to understand that black and white Southerners speak in different Southern accents.  For white Southerners, their accent will depend a good deal on which part of the South they inhabit.  There is a difference between the way a Virginian will say something and the way an Alabamian will.  And there are variations even within the same state.  An administrator in Atlanta shouldn’t be expected to talk the same way that a mechanic in Macon would.  Furthermore, city dwellers’ speech is often markedly different from their rural cousins. 

These differences will be heard in the different voice inflections.  Some will drawl their words the way Andy Griffith so famously did.  Others will have the kind of crisp speech you might expect to hear in Washington D.C.  Occupations also play a big role in speech patterns as well.  Some people seem to take a long time to say anything while others shoot straight from the hip, er, lip.  My point is that you are as likely to run into white Southerners who talk like Rhett Butler as you are those who are more like Andy Griffith; or who sound a lot like Scarlett O’Hara as opposed to Reba McIntire.

With black Southerners there is the additional factor of different dialects.  Everyone has heard about Black English, or Ebonics as some like to call it.  I won’t get into all the issues with its usage here, but I will say that when Black English is combined with a black Southern accent, you get speech which makes the heads of those unaccustomed to it spin round and round.  There is also the very different and fascinating Gullah speech heard in South Carolina’s Low Country and Sea Islands.  I’ve known a few Gullah folk, or Geechees as they also call themselves, and found listening to them a remarkable experience.

When I lived in Colorado, very few of my friends and acquaintances ever heard me speak Black English.  One who did was my housemate Andy Gill who often overheard my telephone conversations with different family members back in the South.  Andy told me he couldn’t believe how the inflection, accent, and even volume of my voice would change during those conversations.  I would switch back and forth during the same chat depending on the topic.  Andy would listen while a strange smile played on his face as he saw a facet of my personality that otherwise was very well hidden.

One of the other rare occasions when my Colorado friends would hear my Southern accents come out was whenever I would read aloud from passages of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  The book is one of my all-time favorites and one of the things that makes its humor come to life is when you allow the characters to speak in Southern accents, and that is how I would read.  I’ve had people tell me they never really had appreciated the humor, sarcasm and irony of the novel until they heard its characters talk in Southern accents.

Now that I am back in Alabama, I hear Southern accents all the time of course.  And while I have always enjoyed hearing it and speak that way far more frequently than I did in the West, there is still part of my mind that will occasionally wonder at what I am hearing.  I also am quite conscious of who my listeners are and that will have a strong impact on what kind of speech I will employ.

When I interact with white folks, I talk the same way I did in Colorado.  There is no trace of accent and I seldom will use the many colorful turns of phrase and colloquialisms which spice Southern speech.  I am friendly, but professional because I want to make a strong impression on the listener that I am serious and should be taken seriously.

With black folks, the setting is what matters.  If I am transacting business, then I am formal, but less reserved than I am with whites.  When the situation doesn’t involve anything really important, then I’m relaxed and as Southern as they come.  So whether I am greeting the postman bringing the mail, or chatting with a neighbor during the morning walk, or simply conversing with family and friends, I speak Black English in a Southern accent freely and warmly.

I am interested in hearing other Southern accents in their home areas.  Before the year is over I hope to travel to Atlanta, Mobile and New Orleans.  All of them are fascinating cities with much history and legend attached to them and their residents have some interesting ways of talking.  These cities are also very close to Birmingham and reaching them requires little effort.  Eventually I will also be traveling further afield and becoming reacquainted with the Appalachians of Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia where some of the language has remained unchanged since the late seventeenth century.

“Who is it that gives man speech?” Moses was once asked.  The English language is a very rich one and I have been lucky enough to hear different variations of it in my native country, let alone to have encountered speakers from outside its borders.  But of all the variations of English I know, my favorite flavor is the one with a Southern fried accent.

A Different Natural Scene

I have been pleasantly surprised by the abundance of nature in Birmingham’s urbanscape.  As a matter of fact, it would be more accurate to say that I have been overwhelmed by it.  I had completely forgotten how nature is in the South, even in its cities.  Of course, the Colorado landscape I lived in was dominated by mountains and they made residents aware of the land’s tremendous natural splendor.  I am slowly coming to appreciate that the same can be said of Alabama and furthermore that natural splendor can be exhibited in ways that eclipse what I knew in Colorado.

The words “natural splendor” are often equated with incredible scenery.  That is the way the phrase is used in travel brochures, for example.  While Birmingham has its own beauty and charm, nobody would equate its setting with that of Boulder or Colorado Springs.  Nature here does not shout but hums instead.  You have to be willing to uses senses other than sight to appreciate the wonders this area has.  In Boulder, your gaze was always directed upward toward some mountain peak.  In Birmingham, I have learned to take things in with a different kind of perception and awareness.

One feature of Southern nature that made its presence felt as soon as I arrived was the abundance of birds and birdsong.  Birds begin singing well before sunrise and I’ve awakened to their song while the world outside is still dark.  I still don’t know the names of most of the birds I’ve seen but I have discovered that the different species here have made their presence known by the songs they sing.  I’ve heard a bewildering variety of calls, notes and cadences filling the air on a typical day in Birmingham.  That was a pleasant surprise but by no means the only one.

Local bird species are quite colorful and I’ve learned to recognize some.  Robins, mourning doves, cardinals and mocking birds abound.  I’ve seen hummingbirds sipping nectar from the flowers in our front yard and a few weeks ago I had an encounter that startled me very much.  I noticed a yellow-breasted bird hopping along the ground which did not fly away when I approached.  Instead it found refuge under one of the front yard shrubs, settling there and hoping that the shade and foliage would make it inconspicuous.

Seeing this bird gave me an idea as to its possible identity so I went into the house and consulted the Internet.  It turned out that my hunch was correct and the fowl in question was the yellowhammer, Alabama’s state bird.  The one I had seen was a female, identifiable by the dark feathers on her head whereas the males have bright yellow feathers on theirs.

That was remarkable enough, but you can understand my amazement when I learned that the yellowhammer is a ground nester!  I couldn’t believe that.  It would seem that the bird I spotted likely had a nest under the shrub and that explained her refusal to take flight when I approached.  She had a clutch of eggs that she was sitting on or perhaps even a small brood of nestlings she now had to feed and care for.  I told my family about the yellowhammer and her putative nest, but I didn’t tell them where to look and I decided not to disturb her in any way.

It’s not that I have never encountered ground-nesting birds before.  I was familiar with the meadowlark and the lark bunting when I lived in Colorado, ground-nesters both.  But those birds dwell in the open grasslands east of the Rockies where there are very few trees so nesting on the ground is the only option they have.  It is quite otherwise in Alabama, a state that is heavily forested and home to scores of tree species that never grow in Colorado.  With the abundance of trees in the state, I would never have thought any bird would choose to build a nest on the ground.  Add to this the fact that the yellowhammer is actually a woodpecker which preys on grubs found in tree bark and you will understand why I was completely amazed by my discovery.

Then there are the other natural instrumentalists whose music is heard quite frequently.  I was finally getting used to all the birdsong when new sounds became part of the scene.  The trees in this area are homes to katydids, insects that possess amazing acoustic abilities.  They sit in the branches and produce a high-pitched vibrating note that carries a great distance.  They can be heard during the heat of the day, but it is as evening draws near and particularly during the gloaming which comes with dusk and twilight that they become especially vocal.

A small group of insects will settle in a tree and begin to sing.  They will sing in unison for a set time and then end their song with a long, drawn out sound that goes from a high note to a low one.  When they have finished, insects in another tree will take up the melody and sing; and when they are done those in another tree will contribute.  You can often hear an entire street burst into song as the katydids sing, each group knows its place in the order and the symphony produced will play for some time until finally darkness falls and the performance ends.

Another remarkable thing about these insects is that they will not sing if some creature walks under the tree they occupy.  When that happens they will cut their song short and remain silent until the ground below is clear again.  But I’ve noticed something else:  if eye contact is made with them, they will take flight and find another tree before they will sing again.

After night falls and the birds and katydids have ended their performances, other animals chime in.  In the evenings I can hear crickets, frogs and I don’t know what else all in chorus.  Of course, there are many other creatures also calling, but their notes are produced at frequencies beyond the range of human hearing.  Even so a night in Alabama is seldom a quiet one because life here is abundant and vocal in ways I never experienced in Colorado.

I know that these sounds are not made to please human listeners.  They are mating calls, territory claims, lures for prey and other things far removed from human intercourse.  They represent an aspect of nature that takes time to appreciate and learn.  I suppose another way of putting it is that Colorado is given to the grand gestures:  snowy peaks, deep canyons, horizon-claiming prairies and awesome vistas.  They make an immediate impression upon the observer.  Alabama, on the other hand, is much more intimate:  the scent of magnolia blossom, the song of the katydid, the flower-spangled hillside and the small-scale landscape.  The lessons learned come from patient observation.

Both states have their share of natural splendor and both can be studied profitably by the nature lover.  Along with her geography, Colorado has secrets that demand as intense an examination as any Alabama biome.  On the other hand, Alabama’s biological diversity is supplemented by spectacular landscapes that leave visitors as breathless as Colorado’s terrain.  What I am discovering in Alabama is that I must adjust my viewpoint in order to fully enjoy this state’s many treasures.  Doing so will enhance my life and put a marvelous patina on my sense of wonder.

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.

That Old Time Religion

Give me that old time religion.

Give me that old time religion.

Give me that old time religion.

That’s good enough for me.

So say some of the lyrics to a hymn one can still hear sung in the churches down here. “That old time religion” is still alive and well in the South.  They don’t call this region the “Bible Belt” for nothing and since my return I once again have seen how true that moniker really is.

Prior to moving to Colorado, I lived in North Carolina and Alabama for twelve years.  I was raised in a home where religion had a place.  I attended church every Sunday even though my parents didn’t.  Nevertheless, they wanted their children to go and believe in the things preached from the pulpit.  Religion was important to me into adulthood but it may well have had its greatest meaning during my years in Alabama and the first five or so in Colorado.

Religion is a leading force in Southern life and culture.  That is certainly not true where I lived in Boulder, Colorado.  Yes, there are churches, synagogues, temples and other religious meeting places in Boulder; and there are many believers of different faiths living there.  I knew those who professed Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and other beliefs.  But it was clear that for many people religion wasn’t the driving force in their lives.  In fact, the only place in Colorado where that would not have been true was the city of Colorado Springs where fundamentalist-style religion has a stronghold.  By contrast, Boulder is the polar opposite of the Springs in just about every aspect of life.  Far from being conventionally religious, many Boulderites could be classified more as secular humanists.

In the South religion is more than a personal matter.  It is a potent political force whose power and strength cannot be ignored.  The Civil Rights movement was born in this region’s churches where preachers used language that was simultaneously fiery and eloquent to inspire their congregations to active resistance against racism and segregation.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher as are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  And ministers today are still held in very high esteem.  Birmingham has named streets and buildings for them in recognition of the role they have played in the city’s history.

Sunday morning is the time when religion’s power is the most visible.  Preachers take to radio and television to spread their messages.  I had completely forgotten how they dominate the scene in that way.  But I found out my first Sunday back when every local television station in Birmingham broadcast some kind of church service or preacher’s sermon.  It was likewise on the radio where many local stations followed suit.  Then there are the radio and television networks whose entire content is nothing but fundamentalist Christian religion and thinking, producing programming that is listened to or watched by legions of people.

Religion also plays a big role in building personal social networks.  It is quite common when meeting new people to be asked what church you attend.  People not only attend church faithfully, they are very often deeply involved in them to an extent I hardly ever saw in Colorado.  Many are lay ministers—my brother John is one—or they take part in the various outreach programs their church will have that are directed toward youth, tending to the elderly, political involvement or other things.  Churches also stage social events, gatherings, picnics and other meetings to strengthen personal ties within the flock.  They are prominent in charity work too, running food banks, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and even medical clinics providing primary health care for the indigent. 

Church choirs are a very important part in the life of the congregation as well.  Good singers are encouraged to be choir members.  My sister-in-law sings at her church, even performing solo as I witnessed on a recent Sunday.  These choirs are mother lodes of outstanding talent, too.  Opera singer Leontyne Price sang in her Mississippi church’s choir.  Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson did likewise for her church and so did the late Whitney Houston.  Talent scouts often attend services looking for new people whose abilities are then culled for careers in the entertainment industry.

Church is the institution many will join when looking for a spouse, a job or a better life situation for themselves.  The connections formed through knowing congregation members are unequaled.  I’ve already been told by family members that I will be introduced or mentioned to different church people they know when I begin looking for work next summer.  I won’t have to be a member of the congregation to be helped by the church either.  It was enough that I knew a congregation member to be eligible for assistance.

Perhaps the sign I saw that was the most important indicator of the power of old time religion was church buildings themselves.  Yes, Birmingham does have some very impressive houses of worship.  Quite a few are splendid architectural masterpieces, but that’s not what I mean.  It is the sheer number of churches which exist in the city that is overwhelming to me.  A walk around my neighborhood made me acutely aware of this.

There are not one, not two, but seven churches with active congregations within walking distance of my house.  By walking distance I mean buildings you can reach in less than twenty minutes.  Some of these churches are close to a century in age now, but they still stand with their steeples framed against the Alabama sky.  These churches represent different Christian denominations.  I have seen Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches during my walks.  And that’s not counting the congregations that don’t have a building of their own in which to worship but instead meet in private homes or commercial spaces.

If there are seven churches within walking distance of my house, I can only imagine how many there are in the entire city.  Some are the so-called “mega-churches” which boast thousands of members.  Others are much more modest in size with perhaps a couple  hundred in the fold.  But whether they are large or small, the churches here have influence and control that dwarf anything I saw when I lived in Boulder.  Old time religion maintains a high profile everywhere and will always do so.

I am not a regular church-goer anymore.  I have gone to one service since I came back and that was at the church John’s family attends because he was preaching a sermon that particular Sunday, so it was very important that I attend to show my love and support for him.  Formal religion does not appeal to or attract me nowadays, but I am intrigued by the way so many hold it in such high regard, and how it influences numerous aspects of their lives.

“You’re down South now,” John said with a laugh recently when I remarked on the religious cast to various features of life in Alabama.  Indeed I am.  It’s not just old times that aren’t forgotten in Dixie.  Old time religion hasn’t been either and understanding that will enable me to coexist peacefully.