This was my yesterday evening. Made it back home by around 9 p.m. thinking “There’s no place like home from the holidays.”
Though I wish I could have stayed longer, there is work to be done. And, also, the vain hope that moving 170 miles to the south will improve the temperature. It is cold in north Alabama, where the snow still looks abnormal, but the bitter chill is setting into the bones.
So that’s looking west. I headed east, and then south, and then east again. And in all of that driving I began to tinker with an hypothesis about what you can learn about a reason by the tall things you see during your travels. Here’s a partial list of last night’s sites:
Neon catfish. They like their fried fish around here.
A giant cross. It is the Bible belt.
Vulcan, the god of the forge belongs in a steel city.
The big peach, in the fruit tree region.
Then, of course, that regrettable Confederate flag.
And on the last leg of the trip the dog track’s giant triple sevens.
You could write books from just those starting blocks.
Anyway, back to the above picture. If you look east, you’d see this:
I took that particular picture four years ago after it closed. Yesterday, when I drove by it was still covered in snow.
The bridge was built in 1924 and opened in 1925. My grandmother, at Thanksgiving, showed me a newspaper clipping of the first car that went over the bridge. There was an addition made in 1959, making it one of the last truss bridges built in the state.
When they closed the narrow little bridge it was supporting something like 15,000 cars a day. Now there’s a nice, wide six-lane expanse sitting nearby.
And we’re going to call that History Monday, because the rest of the day was indoors, trying to stay warm and reading. I did make it to the mailbox. We got a card from family in New England. The theme was “Let it snow.” I bet they’d like to take that back just now.
Very cold here in Auburn still. There was a wintry mix late on Christmas day. Snowmen were made. I saw photographs.
Later this week it’ll be in the 60s.
