Saturday, October 29th

Sweet Home

Yesterdays greyness was only a fluke. This morning the sun was back. But cold air from the North had sneaked in past the low and when I rolled off the motel parking lot, temperature was only fifty Fahrenheit. There wasn’t really anything standing out from the map so the plan was essentially to head east slowly enough to spend the next night in Alabama.

The southern states seemed to have ample choice of small roads and small cities to go with them. The first such place this morning was Union. One had to drive straight across a big railroad yard to arrive at downtown where there were quite a few small stores along main street plus two churches right across from each other.

Onwards, past the village of House (of which it had more than one) someone had collected hundreds of scrap cars on a field. They had obviously been stripped for parts and gave a pitiful image.

The roads became smaller and smaller, from state to county route and eventually loosing a numbered designation altogether. But the direction, east by northeast, was roughly right so I just kept going. It indeed seemed to be a nameless road shown in the map. Finding it from the other direction would have been impossible, though, as it just turned off a larger highway without so much as a sign.

Every now and then, there was a yellow warning sign labeled “church.” This was a great service for any traveling non-believer. The habit of putting churches just somewhere beside a road miles away from any settlement seemed somewhat strange. But given that people lived all over the place and don’t really subscribe to the concept of settlements to begin with, made it probably right.

The landscape was still dominated largely by endless forests. The East Mississippi Community College at the entrance of Scooba looked more like a bungalow camp amidst trees then a serious academical institution. But the college seemed pretty much all Scooba had, apart from an intersection of two larger highways with its assorted collection of petrol stations.

Beyond loomed yet another large road construction site. But instead of fixing the current road, they simply built a new one next to it. This way, they also got the road a lot more straight, both in horizontal and vertical directions.

Alabama — without any warning whatsoever. And right away the landscape changed to farmland. After Gainesville (no notes), the road crossed the Tenn-Tom Waterway, featuring a lock and dam, by way of a huge bridge.

Eutaw was a handsome little town. All the highways were meeting at its center on a large public square. All important buildings, church, bank, court house, shops were around this square. Signage was a bit crazy so I had to go round instead of just turning right.

Yet another huge bridge for crossing the Black Warrior River. There also were quite a few lakes in the general area.

The next city, Greensboro, lacked a well-defined center but had both the county jail and the Western Alabama Mental Health Center to make up for the loss.

Marion, meanwhile, had a center and a very pretty one to boot. It took the design from Eutaw but placed the courthouse into the central square. I should find this layout in quite a few smaller cities while going east. On the way out of town, a big sign announced that Centerville was ten minutes closer than Selma.

Big sign on way out of town: Centreville is 10 minutes closer than Selma and listed the towns many wonderful shopping opportunities.

Yet another huge bridge for crossing the Chaba river. This one also featured a dam, making it into a little lake. Immediately, lots of holiday homes had sprung up along the shores.

Finally, I arrived in Alexander City, or Alex City as it is called for short. It was dominated by a huge factory of many, many red brick buildings. Beyond was a city-center that seemed quite active this Saturday afternoon. There wasn’t any people on foot, but you wouldn’t expect that. Instead plenty of pick-up trucks were wooseling about. There was plenty of small shops and a little park, too.

I had thought of Alexander City as my destination for the day. Yet it was not even three and, anyways, there was disappointingly few lodging to be had. So I made the fateful decision to drive the fourty-odd miles down to Auburn along a fast four-lane highway. The road was quite busy and people were generally ignoring the speed limit, until they could observe a cop stopping a vehicle on the other side which made them into model citizens right away. Funny thing that. One would think that, since the officer is obviously busy over there, one could speed even more.

I had a bit of a problem finding Auburn. The road went to Opelika about six miles east of Auburn. Obviously, I should have followed the sign pointing to Auburn University, but how should I have known that it is smack in the middle of downtown. When I found my way, the town was buzzing with people. This was either Occupy Auburn or, as the somewhat uniform clothes of the people suggested, a college football game was on. Indeed, the Auburn Tigers were playing Ole Miss Rebels at home and this seemed quite the event. Thousands of people were out and about. The atmosphere was very carnival.

Unfortunately, with this being America, everyone had come by car. Every available square foot of downtown had been re-dedicated as a parking space. Some unhappy fellows had to park far away and walk the rest. The other unfortunate thing was that accommodation was at a premium. Finding a room in Auburn was impossible. Even Opelika was almost fully booked. Eventually, I did find a mediocre room for a insane rate.

Unfortunately, the Internet was a goner and the lady at the reception was not able to fix that on a Saturday night. “Have you tried turning it off and on again” wasn’t an option either because she didn’t quite knew what exactly to turn off and on again. I spent the rest of the evening with a old television set instead. It’s beams were slightly off and it produced an effect not unlike those blue and red 3D images. Didn’t tell anyone, lest they charge extra for the 3D television.