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Show THE ZEPHYR/FEBRUARY-MARCH 2006 human life, limb, and property in defense of an economic paradigm that was doomed from the outset. There’s no point flapping gums over slavery; it was one of those despicable endeavors that makes you wonder why our species was named Homo sapiens. What's wise about apes in neck ties enslaving each other in order to rape the land and churn a few shillings? That so-called Christians actually defended the institution of slavery says a lot about the power of voodoo. Look beneath the thin veneer of civilization in the America of the fom Century and it starts to resemble an LSD party at the nearest Chimpanzee exhibit. But LSD was a far cry better than today’s crack cocaine. Another story. Birmingham morphed into something that can only be described as organized mediocrity, to borrow a phrase from Alan Watts. The city is now a sprawling amoeba with a passion for gobbling vacant turf like a Meth-addled land shark. Comprised of 20+ municipalities, metro-Birmingham spreads over a multi-county terrain, devoid of reasonable green spaces, parks, or public lands. The three major avocations are shopping, golf, and sitting in traffic under an invisible cloud of ground level ozone. Wal-Marts rise from the earth like warts on a toad, followed by Home Depot, Big Macs, and enough Starbucks to fill every vein within 30 miles with enough caffeine to kill a Kentucky race REPORTING ne agn ASeee CRAWL SPACEof HISTORY horse. otes from ED the desk I never understood why a place as funky as the Deep South would strive to become the bland homogenous inflatable culture that the rest of the nation bought into. But we did. And the effect was to rob the soul right out of the land and its people. Young folks here have been duped into believing that Birmingham is a particle of the New South, whatever that is. These urban hipsters have no idea that my generation could drag race down 20" Street with absolutely no fear of police intervention. Or that the L&N Cafe’ served beer so cheap that having ajob was not necessarily a required pastime. Or that radio stations played real music with few commercials, punctuated by weird chanting from the mouth of Allen Ginsburg on his way through town. This is true. of MUDD Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. Henry David Thoreau Birmingham, Alabama January, 1973 Kelly stomps the pedal and his old man’’s Chevy roars through the intersection like a drunk monkey bit on the ass by a Tsetse fly. Kelly is lit on 75 cent beer and has challenged Waldo and me to race him up 20" Street. I’m riding shotgun in Waldo’s atavistic Nash Rambler, which we’ve painted to resemble Broderick Crawford's sedan, as seen on America’s favorite police drama: Highway Patrol. Don’t let the fog of history fiddle with the facts: Dragnet was cool, but Crawford was the bad ass of all cops, which he knew all too well. We're burning up Birmingham’s main drag, long before the Age of Asphalt Freeways and its accouterments: flyovers, flashing billboards, and cell phone junkie drivers plagued with diarrhea of the mouth. 20" Street was the big artery, the city’s aorta of commerce by day and invisible delinquency by night. And we were hauling ass along the shimmering pavement, past darkened alleys and sleeping shops, no fear and no looking over our shoulders. In the words of Alfred E. Neuman: “What, me worry?” Birmingham has known quaint aliases: the Magic City, The Armpit of the South, and my personal favorite — Stinkingham. During the 1960s, the city played the heavy in grainy black & white (no pun) news reels showing police dogs tearing up civil rights protesters, backlit by the spray from mega-watt fire hoses aimed to disable women and children as they marched for the right to be treated as respectable Americans. The name Bull Conner still causes acid reflux in those who remember what went down here: Freedom Riders dragged off Greyhound buses and beat senseless by honky members of Homo erectus asphaltus with blind hate firing across their synapses, and the white spittle of rage clinging to the corner of their thin lips. It was a relatively small town then, the skies a muted brown, tinted by the ferrous shit belching from massive steel mills on the west end of the city. No malls, no tanning booths, and nary a Sport Utility Vehicle, with the possible exception of my family’s Mercury station wagon with the dual carburetors. A little known fact that I’ll reveal now is that my zany friends and I used to hop in that ebony wagon and barrel down Overbrook Road through the S curves; I’d crawl out the driver’s window and onto the roof of the car, relinquishing the wheel to somebody at least as crazed as me. The trick was to stand with the toes of your boots wedged beneath the front edge of the luggage rack, arms outstretched like the wings of some deranged heron, hanging ten at breakneck speed until the traffic light on the Parkway started shining through the leaves of summer. Low hanging limbs and police cruisers were of some concern. But the South, including my home town, was still struggling to emerge from the harsh That so-called Christians actually defended the institution of slavery says a lot about the power of voodoo. Look beneath the thin veneer of civilization in the America of the 19th Century and it starts to resemble an LSD party at the nearest chimpanzee exhibit. Of course, we didn’t have hundreds of Wendy’s back then. Nor high speed Internet, iPods, or web dating services. I can’t recall one person getting their teeth whitened or their breasts enlarged. It was too simple for that: a few decent places to grab some chow with old friends, and streets so devoid of traffic that I could ride a 10 speed bicycle just about anywhere I chose, day or night, without fear of being broadsided by a manic housewife in a Humvee with a phone jammed in her ear. Like the rest of America, by the middle of the go-go 80s, Birmingham was swept up in . the hysteria of what can only be described as a pandemic disease common to Homo erectus asphaltus. Growth&Progress. Yuppies replaced hippies and punks as the tribe de jour, as hippies and punks evolved into what they swore they’’d never become — their parents. If you”re over 40 and reading this, you know what I mean. Somewhere I went wrong, I suppose. The idea that Birmingham would become the South”s next Atlanta never clicked with me, although it must've been a common dream amongst my peers, because that’s what I see transpiring in all directions. The sounds of bulldozers, tractor-trailer tires, and corporate helicopters scouting for more raw land to “develop” — these are common noises in my neck of the woods, replacing the natural music of woodpeckers, katydids, crickets, and the occasional interloping coyote. My little piece of turf is a heavily wooded jungle, backing up to one of the nation’s most biologically diverse rivers: The Cahaba. My closest friends and I have spent the better part _ of 15 years defending this place, mainly to no avail. But it’s been implosions of the Civil War and Reconstruction, events which still haunt the area today, although in ways no one could’ve predicted. As a descendant of antebellum Southerners, let me state for the Record that the Civil War was unparalleled idiocy, a gross waste of WALKABOUT TRAVEL GEAR” Time is of j the essence. Don't waste if. DAVE WAGSTAFF CONSTRUCTION New Essential Gear and Information “EXPLORE THE WORLD BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.” Call us at 1-800-852-7085 for a free catalogue And order On-Line, Anytime, Anywhere worth the effort, considering what the consequences of not putting up a fight would’ve been. The old bars are gone, replaced by neon palaces multiplying like Crab grass across the landscape. Mom & Pop cafes are following the Dodo bird, relinquishing their unique panache to corporate inspired “bistros” and Lincoln Log steak houses bunched up along the new main artery through town: U.S. Highway 280, one of America’s most aggravating drives you never want to make. 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