I haven’t been feeling well today — nothing bad, just the cotton swabby feeling of medicine head, without the medicine. Sitting or relaxing is fine. Getting up and moving around doesn’t feel so hot today.
So have some videos I discovered. Sadly there is no embed function on this site, but the videos are golden.
Auburn beats Miami 14-13 in Birmingham in 1954. My parents hadn’t even been born when that game was played. Even better, meaning older, there’s this Auburn versus South Carolina game, featuring Shug Jordan and the Phantom of Union Springs, the great Jimmy Hitchcock. That Auburn team was 9-0, they’d outscored their opponents 255-34 before this game. And then Carolina fought their way to a 20-20 draw. The game made Time Magazine, Auburn finished the year 9-0-1, winning the Southern Conference title.
The description on this one says “workers being employed under Works Progress Administration for constructing houses in Birmingham, Alabama.”
Here is the 1939 National Air Carnival and it is clear that these guys might have been nuts. Incidentally, here’s the poster from the 1937 air show:
And here are some driving scenes from Cullman, Ala. and through Birmingham in 1960. The first stretch of interstate-65 you see here might not even be open yet. As best I can tell it would see traffic the next year.
The second stretch you see actually has cars on it, but not many. That section in the middle of the video is supposed to be the drive into Birmingham, but the skyline is wrong. (The last segment of the video, on the surface streets, is actually Washington D.C. The sharp eye of Andre Natta caught the change. A little tour on Google Maps showed me the right street and then it changed again, to this one.)
Check out some videos yourself. When you do, thank Ken Booth; he found the site.
I have another video from there I want to share, too, but I want to shoot a contemporary companion piece. Give me a day or two to get back out from under the weather.
