Background
Music: "Stars Fell on Alabama" performed by Billie Holiday.
Composed in 1934 by Frank Perkins with lyrics by Mitchell Parish.
The title refers to a spectacular occurrence of the Leonid meteor shower
that was observed in Alabama on November 12-13, 1833.
In 2002, the phrase "Stars Fell on Alabama" was added to Alabama's
license plates.
Birmingham, the first of our three stops in Alabama. This is the largest
city in the state, but it doesn’t have a large city feel. There are
plenty of things to do, all within a short distance of each other, and
the attractions are unique.
We didn’t get a chance to do everything on our “to do” list here, but
really enjoyed what we had a chance to see, and learned some interesting
things about Birmingham. The main appeal for anyone coming to Birmingham
in the 1800’s might have been the large iron-ore deposits, and
subsequent mining and iron working jobs. During the Civil War, the
Confederates built the first blast furnaces, and relied on Birmingham
for much of the iron used for weapons and other necessities. Not
surprisingly, this area was seen as a threat by the Union side, and the
blast furnaces were destroyed. After the war, many were rebuilt, and
Birmingham became one of the major iron and steel producing centers in
the United States. The iron and steel industries have declined over
time, but there are still many landmarks honoring their iron making
past.
The first landmark that we visited was Vulcan Park. This park is home to
the world’s largest cast iron sculpture, Vulcan. Built in 1904, Vulcan
stands atop a tower on Red Mountain, a symbol of Birmingham’s birth in
the iron and steel industries. There’s an observation deck on the tower
that overlooks the city, and a visitor center where you can learn all
about Birmingham’s past, from its part in the Confederacy, difficult
times during the depression, and the critical role it played in the
Civil Rights Movement.
The next landmark was Tannehill Ironworks Historic State Park. The park
contains a campground and numerous picnic areas that were bustling with
dozens of families enjoying the sunny day. The museum and Ironworks
buildings themselves were much less crowded, and we took our time going
through them, learning about how iron and steel are made, and touring
the large blast furnace building, where hundreds of slaves had labored
to create molten hot iron that could be worked into tools and ammunition
for the Confederate soldiers. In 1865, Tannehill was attacked by Union
soldiers, and thankfully, all of the work ceased.
After a day of education on some heavy topics, we decided to start our
second day with something a little lighter, and so visited the
Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Not much was in bloom, but we enjoyed the
spring flowers and walked around until the sky started to get dark. As
the clouds rolled in we made our way across the city to the next
landmark on our list, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Park.
Sloss Furnaces is a 32-acre, 20th century blast furnace plant where iron
was made for nearly 100 years. It’s vastly different from Tannehill,
with its neat brickwork, quaint furnaces and picnic tables for the
families. Sloss is a large, dark maze of oily machinery, huge criss-crossing
pipes, sharp metal stairways and heavy iron pour-pots towering overhead.
And it was easily one of the creepiest places either of us has ever
been.
We arrived to find the gates open, but nobody home. The monument office
was closed, and so we proceeded to take the self-guided tour. It was
like a city out of a Mad Max movie- ominous- one of those types of
places you can imagine a street gang calling home. We didn’t see any
other people, though, (in fact we didn’t see another living soul our
whole time there), but I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that someone
was watching us. Maybe it was an idea put into my head by the visitor
guide: “Sloss even has a ghost- Theopholus Calvin Jowers- who swore that
as long as there was a furnace in Jefferson County, he’d be there”, but
I didn’t think this was the kind of place someone should be walking into
on purpose, and alone. Travis, though, isn’t easily put off by threats
of ghosts, or even the idea that a deranged transient could be lurking
in some dark dirty corner, just waiting for an overly-curious tourist to
cross his path. That would explain the half-dozen cars in the parking
lot and no riders to be seen, after all. But no, he brushes off these
ideas as “silly”, and so I am forced to sulkily follow along down even
the darkest corridors or be left standing alone in this place, which is
not an option.
We go just a little further in, a little further in, just around this
corner, just up ahead there might be something really interesting that
we don’t want to miss. This is how we make our way into the main
building. The place is crammed full of oily black pipes, old dusty
turbines and rusty catwalks, the only light filtering in through filthy
panes, in high up windows. I keep looking around me as we move- so many
places for someone to hide if they wanted to, and you’d never see them
until the last second. Travis spies a ladder up to the catwalks. I know
that we’ll be going up before he even suggests it- this is an adventure
after all- no guts no glory. We climb up the rusty ladder. When we get
to the top Travis says, “This looks dangerous, we’re probably not
supposed to be up here.” That doesn’t help me. He sees another ladder
that goes further up to an even more suspect looking catwalk. I elect to
stay where I’m at. He goes up and I hold the ladder, as if I could stop
him from falling if the thing decided to give way. He walks out of sight
and I look around. I realize that there aren’t as many shadows up here
as there were on the floor- but almost. And, wouldn’t someone living in
this old building stay up on one of these catwalks, say maybe just on
the other side of that machine standing next to me? I think about
climbing down, look down into the darkness below me and decide I’m
better off where I’m at.
Travis finally comes back and we climb down. We continue our tour, and
luckily it leads us back outside. We walk to the other side of the
Ironworks where the blast furnace is. Below the blast furnace is a
tunnel where at one time ore carts would have been filled and hauled to
the top. Now the entrance to the tunnel looks unused. Blackberry vines
hang over the entrance and we hear water dripping inside. Travis starts
down the stairs. “Wait a minute, wait a minute”, I protest, “Are you
crazy?” I’ve gone this far, walked through some dark places, climbed
onto some old scary scaffolding, but go down there? No. That’s not
happening. He gives me his, “No guts, no glory” grin and continues down.
I wait at the top of the stairs. A few minutes later he walks back out
of the shadows and points at another staircase, going even deeper down,
through a doorway I can’t even see. Now I’m in disbelief. Surely, he’s
seen movies? I’ve seen enough movies and read enough books to know this
is prime real estate for the scary stuff to happen. I watch him go,
shaking my head, pleading with him to “be careful, for God sake!” I
imagine myself telling the news people, “and then he pointed down at
that stairwell, and that’s the last time…” No, no- I won’t even think
that. I’m sure he’ll be right back. I wait and I wait, imagining I see
him coming up the stairs, and then, no, just a shadow. I look around me
and I’m not very comfortable up here, but the thought of going down
there is much worse. Still, if he doesn’t come back- I have to go down
there, don’t I? Finally, I take a deep breath and start down the first
flight. My first obstacle to overcome is a room on my right, made out of
brick. I walk by it cautiously; peeking in quickly to make sure nothing
is about to jump out. I see nothing through the open metal door but a
dirt floor and a lone metal chair. “Who sits there?” I wonder. I get to
the first landing and look to my left, where the upper tunnel begins. I
can see the water now, coming in a steady stream from some long
forgotten pipe. The water flows along the floor and drips into the
tunnel below this one. I look down into the lower stairwell. There’s a
small door at the bottom of the staircase. The stairs are lit, but
beyond the door, the light is dim. A board above the door reads, “watch
your head”, in graffiti letters. I have a thought, “I wonder if anyone
has really lost their head down there”, and push that thought out
quickly. I whisper down the stairs, “Trav?” No answer. I clear my throat
and call louder. “Trav? Hello?” Still no response. “Okay, then”, I say
to myself and start down the next flight. I go down slowly, looking for
movement in the dim light on the other side of the door. When I get to
the bottom, I stand at the entrance for a couple of seconds before
slowly sticking my head through. “Watch your head”, I think to myself,
my neck exposed under that sign. This makes me rush the rest of the way
through the door. On my right side is a long tunnel, blocked mostly by a
large piece of machinery. Behind that is complete blackness. A good
place for someone, or something, to hide.
I look the other way, and with great relief, I see Travis walking
towards me. He’s a few yards away and doesn’t see me at first. He does a
double take at something in a dark alcove, steers away, stops, watches
it warily, and then continues walking. When he finally does see me, it
startles him so much that he jumps and lets out a yell. He turns
slightly away and then back, as if he can’t decide whether to run or
charge, and then realizes it’s me. “I came to save you”, I say. “Thanks-
but you scared the crap out of me instead,” he says. “Do you believe me
now this place is creepy?” I ask. “Yep, let’s get out of here”.
But, we had one more task to complete at the Sloss Furnaces.
You know how people are sometimes drawn to terrible things: train
wrecks, horror movies, Dancing With the Stars? It's a
natural human tendency to want to be scared sometimes. We think
this is the reason that we decided to take our Alabama picture in one of
the spookiest spots at the plant. We went back to the truck, got
our sign and camera stand and proceeded to the very heart of the plant.
There in a narrow courtyard enclosed by an old brick building and tall
steel cooling towers, is a small little pond- not meant to be there, but
accumulated over time by dripping water and passing storms. The
water is black, and there is definitely something moving around in
there. We stood in front of the pond and posed for our picture.
"Click"- the first one was okay, "click", the second better- why not try
for one more? Third time is the charm, after all. We stand,
waiting for the familiar "click" of the camera. But instead of
"click", we hear a louder, closer sound. "URP!" The sound comes from
directly behind us- the "something" in the pond. In the split
seconds after this- "Click", goes the camera. "Splash", goes the
pond behind us. "Clack" goes the camera stand as we grab it,
running by at full speed, and out of the park we go.