Muscle Shoals, Ala.
Mon., May 17, 1926
Here we are at the famous Shoals! We left Birmingham about noon and drove the hundred and sixty-odd miles in time to camp before dark, on the shore of the Tennessee River. Traveling home is certainly easier than our southward trip. Then, with a good start, we felt lucky to make a hundred miles. It is not only the better roads and more comfortable weather, but the machine is behaving splendidly--we haven’t even lost a carburetor or a rear wheel!
While in Birmingham we visited both the Alabama Bi-products Co. And the Lehigh Portland Cement Co. Everything seems handy there. Coal, iron, lime, cement rock, clay, water power, as well as good farming and lumber land, are all close by.
People were so friendly that almost every evening we were invited to visit one acquaintance or another. Bill had a glorious time hob-nobbing with presidents, and chinning with colonels. But I didn’t dare call up Winfred Ager (the son of the minister who married us) because we are so raggedy after our year’s adventure.
Our drive yesterday was lovely, through weeded country and good farm land, crossing several large rivers, the Black and Tennessee among them. We ferried across the latter on the strangest boat, a rear-wheeler with flapping wings on either side and a one-lunger gasoline engine. As there were no decks, the ferry slid sideways like a crab, to the bank, let down one of its wings and ashore we rolled. More fun!
There are great plans for the development of the whole area around Muscle Shoals, because of cheap water power, but Bill does not agree with the idea of government ownership or management.
We are not stopping in Pittsburgh as first planned, but are driving straight home, in order to be on time for Kitty’s wedding. Now that we are on the home stretch, we can hardly wait to get there.
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NOTE 1973
Because of an accident on the motorcycle I discontinued my diary. The following account is set down from memory.
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Just outside of Dayton, Tennessee, I was driving on a sandy road, which apparently ran straight ahead, when suddenly, hidden by a large barn, it made a sharp angled turn to the right. I tried to force the wheels, but the sand was too deep and over we went. Bill, in the sidecar, was thrown over my head, breaking his collarbone as he landed; I twisted my leg, causing water on the knee; the equipment flew in every direction; and the trunk burst open.
Luckily a man in a car soon came along and drove us, dazed and badly scratched, to a doctor in town who set Bill’s shoulder, bandaged my knee, and there being no hospital, settled us in a hotel room over his office.
During our week’s stay there, Bill and I tried to picture what the town had been like the year before during the Scopes Evolution trial. We imagined William Jennings Bryan as he paced back and forth on one of the hotel’s five fancy grill-railed balconies rehearsing his speech, and Clarence Darrow with his chair tilted back against the wall and his feet on the rail, haranguing a coterie of youths; while the streets were crowded with visitors come to hear the great orator and see the show.
It wasn’t too long before we were able to return to the fateful corner. The man who had picked us up had collected all our duffle and put it and the motorcycle into the barn, as he said he would. Although the door was left open, and more than a week had passed, not a single article was missing; even such attractive and easily packed items as the traveling clock, compass and radio were all there.
We made arrangements to have the motorcycle and most of the gear shipped to Brooklyn. Then in a few days, when the doctor said we could travel, we took the train for home.
Although we were in plenty of time for the wedding, I made a sorry looking matron of honor, when, with red gashes on my face, I limped up the aisle.