Wife got a job back up north. In New Jersey, outside of Atlantic City.
I wasn't ready to leave yet. It was too soon. I was only barely just beginning to incorporate the pace of life into my own rhythms, make them a real part of me. I was only just beginning to get a sense of how I could incorporate the politics of the place into my own political philosophy, rationalize those things that made no sense to me by examining them from whence they came. Like the statute of Nathan Bedford Forrest in the Selma Cemetery. The incongruity of just that. Right there. And how the majority of the people who still live in Alabama try to rise above their past, while honoring it at the same time.
It was starting to change me. And I welcomed it.
And I miss it, terribly.
Even though I stuck out like a sore thumb.
Here are the top 10 things (in no particular order) I'll miss about Alabama
- The 200 acres of farmland in Macon County that I camped on, hunted on, and moved cows on, and that brought me peace and quiet so many times
- The pine trees swinging in the wind
- The sound of the whippoorwill on spring and fall nights
- The color of the sunshine, so bright
- The Auburn family
- The smell of football on fall Saturdays in the South
- The friendliness of strangers
- The waves of people in cars driving through the neighborhood
- $17 golf
- The friends we made there
