Birmingham, Ala.
Mon., April 26, 1926
Because of splendid roads on Thursday and Friday, we reached Florida’s panhandle, about four hundred miles from Coronet, and camped the first night near Lake City. On Friday it was getting dark, and we had traveled about ten miles beyond Marianna, before we found a farm near which to camp. The spot seemed ideal--on real grass, under real northern oaks without any hanging moss, and quite a distance from the house. It took Bill a long while to get water, as the old Negro farmer had only a two-quart pail to let down into a deep well. Later Bill told me long narrow strips of newspaper hung from every foot of the rafters in the cabin, probably to keep flies away.
In the meantime I started to get supper with the aid of the electric light Bill had fixed before leaving. Soon I heard a car drive up and stop near the tent. Turning my light to see what was up, there, coming through the bushes, with the lights gleaming on his white strips, was a big burly black prisoner. Believe me, my heart jumped. Managing to deliberately walk over to where Bill’s army pistol was kept and to put my hand on it, I said, “Good evening, and what can I do for you?” Politely returning my greeting, he replied, “Is yall in trouble?” I told him, no, that we were camping for the night. Whereupon a white man’s voice from the car said, “All right, Tom, come along.” The car turned around and went down the road--but only two city blocks before stopping.
It was then that I really began to be scared. I kept hearing noises in the bushes and threw my light this way and that. Once, positive that something was moving nearby, I got quite panicky, and sure enough, there was an old sow walking sedately down the road. I thought Bill would never come. Then definitely hearing someone walking up the road, I called, “Bill?” There was just a guttural response, so I called again. This time a negro’s voice answered, “Who-all is you?” I said I had made a mistake, and he went on up the road.
By the time Bill finally came I had worked myself into a “fine state.” Taking the pistol in one hand and me in the other, he walked us down the road to see what this was all about--a black prisoner’s camp. Evidently the guard had seen our light and heard the motor climbing the bank and thought we were in some kind of trouble, so came to investigate. We were greatly relieved to know my prisoner was not an escapee roaming around the woods. It had been too dark when we arrived to notice the prison camp.
The rolling farm country in Florida’s panhandle apparently has more intrinsic worth than the rest of the state that is so greatly touted.
The day after the prisoner episode we made only about one hundred and fifty miles as the roads were terrible--actual corduroy in spots. But we found a nice pine woods in which to camp, fifteen miles south of Montgomery, Alabama. The next day, upon arrival in Birmingham in the rain, we hunted in all four directions for a suitable place to camp, but the farther out of town we went, the deeper we got into foundries and smelting furnaces. We had come into Birmingham over steep Red Mountain, with farms only at the top and didn’t want to climb the mountain everyday, so, as we were tired, wet and dirty, we took a room in the Caswell Hotel and enjoyed the luxury of hot baths.
In the morning, however, we did find a lovely camping location, about seven miles from town, near a village of about a dozen cottages--Fulton Springs, a tiny health resort. They say folks from Birmingham and environs come every day to drink from the spring of iron water, but we have seen no one. The hill on which we are camped overlooks the little village, rolling pasture and wooded land. Eighty-nine cows from a nearby dairy farm, the sound of their bells always in the air, wander over the hills, but luckily seldom come too near. The thrill of spring is in the air, which we missed in Florida.
Thrushes sing all day as well as at dusk, in the dogwood trees under which we are camped. We raise a whole flock of goldfinches every time we come up the hill. Besides lots of cardinals and bluejays, there are stunning redheaded woodpeckers, unlike any I have seen, their bodies divided in thirds, red head, white breast and wings, and black tail. Only a few mockingbirds are about. Thistles in Florida and the north are purple; here they are either deep red or yellow. Many of the dooryards are gay with red or pink ramblers and a low brilliant purple flower, more intense than healall, grows in the grass. In the woods low wild pinks abound, as well as an unusual short-stemmed, large-bloomed purple violet.
Now for the purpose of our sojourn here--coal and iron. We had a most interesting day yesterday, going through the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co., owned by U.S. Steel, a tremendous plant, devoted entirely to the making of rails. Workmen handle four-ton red-hot ingots of steel as if they were rubber, shoot them here and there, turn them over and draw them out into long rails, with miraculous skill and speed. The mechanical perfection of the operation is astounding; everything is on such a huge scale it takes your breath away. It is both thrilling and terrifying to watch several hundred tons of molten metal being poured out of a Bessemer converter into a waiting car. In one place we saw water showered on a full car of hot coke to cool it, causing so much steam one would think a whole village was afire.
The blast furnaces look like huge organ pipes of different lengths, sticking up in the air. Bill, very much impressed by the steel plants, keeps saying, “Wham, blam, go the big wheels.” Actually, there are very few wheels in evidence--just those in Bill’s imagination.
We hear there is coal under one-seventh of the land in Alabama, and we know we are camped right over a mine. It was spooky to see miners, with black faces and little lights on their caps, coming out of a hole in the ground at the foot of our hill. I am anxious to go down in a mine, but Bill thinks we won’t be able to get permission.
The Negroes in the south are lots of fun and very different from their northern relatives. One day while sitting in the motorcycle waiting for Bill, a tall thin Negress, all dressed up, gnawing a gaunt ham bone as she was ambling by, stopped to ask me if I was selling dresses. Upon my negative response, she then asked, “Does y’all tell fortunes?” Not seeming to believe my denial, she stood for some time gazing at me and munching her bone. As she walked off, she said, “Ah sure do want ma fortune telt.”