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On Alabama Tidbits

Although I’ve been to the state of Alabama before, staying a month allows ample learning opportunities. I present tidbits you may not know about the state of Alabama.

Embed from Getty Images

1) These people are football crazy! During the month and no matter the day of the week, the newspaper’s Sports section features college football – even weeks after the season is over. Ohio is enthusiastic about football. Texas thinks they invented the game – but Alabamians are just bonkers over football.

2) Grapefruits and oranges in the store were of pathetic quality. I get better tasting citrus in Ohio. Being close to Florida, one would think the quality would be better. After all, Florida thinks they invented grapefruits. Why we couldn’t find pink grapefruits from Texas is beyond me.

3) We stayed in Orange Beach – where sales tax is 10% on everything!

4) The Alabama coast is only 100 miles (160 km) – but the beaches are very good.

5) Restaurant menus offer many fried foods – they may be willing to fry anything.

6) Politically, Alabamians are very conservative, therefore all troubles can be traced back to presidents who were Democrats – especially Obama and Clinton.

7) Alabama is home for manufacturing/assembly plants for Toyota, Airbus, Honda, Hyundai, and Mercedes-Benz.

8) Alabama is home to the first Mardi Gras in the U.S. (Mobile).

Image from Tennessee’s Boll Weevil Eradication Program

Image from Tennessee’s Boll Weevil Eradication Program

9) The Atlas rocket that launched astronauts to the moon was built in Alabama (Huntsville).

10) Alabama is home to the monument honoring an agricultural pest – the Boll Weevil (Enterprise).

11) Alabamians described President Trump’s inaugural address as uplifting, refreshing, unifying, powerful, great, and amazing.

12) Alabama has the longest Constitution in the world: over 300,000 words and 775 amendments.

13) Alabama is the only state naturally possessing all the raw materials for steel. No wonder a statue of Vulcan sits on a hilltop above Birmingham.

14) I’ve never seen so many billboards advertizing attorneys – and the number of TV commercials for attorneys is very high. I saw this commercial 10 times in 45 minutes – while wondering about the content. Any thoughts?

53 thoughts on “On Alabama Tidbits”

    • Mouse,
      We see attorney TV commercials here, but not as many as we saw in Alabama … let alone this guy. (We also saw a second one). The number of billboards for lawyers also surprised me. It must be a very fertile state for the legal profession!

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  3. After reading your post, especially point No. 11, and envisioning the path of human rights destruction about to be carved into the nation’s legal structure by Trump’s Attorney General, Alabamian Jeff Sessions, you can no doubt guess my thoughts on why attorneys advertise so much in Alabama.

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    • George,
      A few other attorneys also had TV commercials, but they seemed more normal that this guy. The number advertising on billboards was also high. Alabama is a long state (over 300 miles), and I saw one particular attorney having who knows how many billboards along I-65 the entire way … and into Tennessee!

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  6. Yes, you’re right I don’t know much about Alabama. My former editor is now at University of Alabama Press, so I know there’s some interesting archeological stuff going on there (from what I see of her posts), but your list did not make me want to go visit, even with the nice beaches. 🙂

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    • X,
      Lines in it include “not going after small dough” … “Going for the big bucks.” … I simply shake my head at the thought of that commercial.

      And he has another one around the theme of bullying.

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  11. Alabama doesn’t sound like much fun, for me.
    That commercial is very upsetting to me, a vegetarian who likes animals. It must have been made by a meathead….. and I don’t mean carnivore.
    Hey, 10% is better than 13%, which is what we pay on almost everything here!

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  12. You caught the state’s “feel” quite well. I lived there for a year in 1980, teaching at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Football does reign supreme. But what I remember most are two things: the door-to-door evangelists that were knocking on my door all the time and the KKK that was active in the area, including Klan Youth Corp members announcing themselves in my classroom.

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  14. Frank, great post. I have read a great deal about Alabama in literature, but I am not sure if I ever want to visit the place. Sometimes its nice to have an idealised version of somewhere in your head. However what you have described sounds just like the Alabama in my head! Also, they like to fry everything, that sure did tickle me lol. I think back in the day people had more right to fry stuff. Now that we drive everywhere and there is very little manual labour, frying things seem almost blasphemous to health! But, that is not to say that fried foods aren’t delectable. Once I had deep fried ice cream, that was an experience and a half.

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  15. Lenora,
    Alabama was in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, so I imagine that history has made it into many pieces of literature. In terms of a fried meal, it’s easy to get a meal with four different items and all are fried! … Fried pickles is an interesting appetizer that I don’t see in my area.

    Oh yes … gotta love fried ice cream. Carnivals and festivals here can provide some interesting fried foods … fried Twinkees, various fried sandwiches, and many more.

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  16. We looked at homes on Dauphin Island. (Off Alabama coast) In the end many of the items you listed caused us to settle in Texas. BTW the reason you get nice citrus in Ohio is we locals send it all North to fetch better prices. If you go to NYC you’ll find the best of everything since the market supports higher costs. The locals in Alabama would no more pay a good price for a grapefruit than give up tobacco.

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  17. I’m a Northern gal all the way. Nordic ancestry, can’t abide heat, sun and humidity, I’m vegan, and I don’t believe in frying everything. I would never fit in in the South. I’m sure it’s lovely in many ways, but its just not for me.

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      • Thank you, you were accurate, I live in northwest Alabama, Muscle Shoals, very historical if you would like to read up on the area here, just like to add, the further south you go in alabama the more northern it becomes, the further north you go, the more southern it becomes, the same goes for Florida, the more north you are the more southern you are, the more southern you are the more northern you are lol

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        • What I meant was, northerners tend to lean towards Liberal ideals, and Liberal politics, while southerners tend to lean towards conservative ideals, and conservative politics, so when I say the southern parts of the state’s are more northern, that’s what I mean

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