Yep, that's right: Stuart and Hank Williams. Well, Hank's statue. He died January 1, 1953, so this is as close as we'll get to the man who wrote such heartbreak songs as, "Your Cheating Heart". That song was probably autobiographical!
We spent the day yesterday, Saturday, in Albany, GA. It was just too cold and too rainy to feel motivated to travel. But, we did manage to move ourselves from the Cottage to have lunch out, and then to see the plantetarium show at the downtown Thronateeska Heritage Center and Weatherbee Planetarium. They were showing the story of the the night sky at the Winter Solstice, and how Christianity has adopted all the pagan traditions as their own.
Today, we drove in fog and light rain, through the back roads to Montgomery, AL. We are now in the central time zone, so we gained an hour. By the time we arrived at our campground in Montgomery, it was time for a late lunch. It's sssooo wet, water is standing everywhere, but the temps are much warmer. It's rained everyday since we left home! This is big cattle country, not so much cotton as I thought we'd see. Much divided wealth, too. Grand houses, hiding behind locked gates, or little shacks that haven't seen a hammer or coat of paint in many years.
Montgomery is home to the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald museum, and of course we visited this afternoon. She was from here, and the two of them lived here for 6 months. He began writing Tender is the Night while they lived here. Hey, you make a tourist attraction from anything you can! We had a private tour, guided by the live-in director of the museum. The museum is only part of the first floor of the house in the Cloverdale neighborhood. The rest of the house is apartments. Not much money to be had for a Fitzgerald Museum. But, we saw some paintings Zelda made while they lived in Paris, and saw all the first edition books.... Afterwards, we found the Hank Williams Museum, downtown. Again, we had the place to ourselves, which made for a totally unobstructed view of his baby blue Cadillac, and a couple of Nudie suits donated by Hank, jr. Hank lived a traumatic life, which made good material for all his songs.
I have to say, though, the best part of today was the grocery store we found not far from our campground, on highway 82. This side of Montgomery doesn't appear to be very, um, affluent, and the grocery store was in a partially empty strip shopping center. There was korean writing on the sign, which was a good indication that the vegetable selection would be good. Wow! This little store is pretty big, and caters to both a hispanic and asian population. I saw all sorts of vegetables familiar from our travels in Mexico, and some familiar from our touring in other asian neighborhoods. Lots of leafy greens and squashes, beans and fruits, melons and okra. Even calcium cakes that I use on my comal. There was a long aisle of noodles and big bags of rice, and a section of packaged Indian food. Think I might do a little research for recipes, and take advantage of the situation tomorrow night. But for tonight, some bok choy and turnip greens, to go in the chicken and rice stew...
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