more Montgomery, AL

Monday, it's still raining, but with Big Umbrellas (Bums)and raincoats-by-Cabella, we continued to be tourists in Montgomery. You know, besides Hank Williams, Montgomery has many reasons to be a tourist destination: the Civil Rights movement birthplace, and the Civil War beginnings. They are related.

The capital of Alabama, Montgomery was the first, brief capital of the South, in 1861. The capital was moved to Richmond, the more strategic location after only 6 months. But, the order to fire on Fort Sumter, the beginning of the Civil War, was issued from here. The capital building itself is pretty impressive, and we toured the exterior, under our Bums. There is a big, impressive sycamore tree close to the front steps, planted in the mid-1800's. There is also a loblolly pine, a bit further from the front steps, which was grown from a seed that travelled to the moon on one of the Apollo missions. It was pretty exciting to see both. We dripped our way through the hall of Governnor's portraits, admired the building's very thick interior walls, and waded across the street to the First White house of the Confederacy.

The Jeff Davis White House had been moved more than 10 blocks to it's present location in the early 20th century. Guess they didn't like the neighborhood. The house was pretty nice, we agreed with the nice man who worked there that we could live there, even if there wasn't a bathroom in every bedroom. Upstairs, we saw a broderie perse quilt that had been made in the 1860's, by an Alabama woman. It was called the Gunboat quilt, because it had been raffled several times to raise money for a gunboat during The War. It was quite nicely made, and I marveled that it was raffled 'several times' to raise money for the war effort. And, it is still in good shape, after more than 150 years.

We had a long conversation with a semi-retired man who has worked for the State for many years. He now works part-time at the Confederate White house, and told us he loves that house. He's a black man, who's grandmother was a slave on a cotton plantation close to Montgomery. He spent a little time picking cotton, too, and laughed at his inability to make any decent money with that job! He said he never got enough speed to pick 100 pounds a day, the minimum required to make enough money to make a living at the time. "Red" told several stories of growing up in the south, and we very much enjoyed our conversation with him. From there, we moved to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the MLK memorial there. The Dexter Street Memorial Church was less than a block away, and the third attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 ended with a demonstration on the steps of the Capitol building. It is an emotional memorial. The rain, however, chased us back to our truck.

We gave in to a late lunch in the downtown brewery, a delicious gumbo and beer, and slogged through the water back to the Cottage. Dinner in tonight.