Bama Bound

NOT loves the city. But sometimes he needs to get away from it if he can. So he found himself joining his friends the Burkes in a trip to Possum Bend, Alabama (pop.25).

Sarah Burke shows him that it really exists along Route 10 just west of Camden. Notice all the traffic on the road.

While there, he visited an actual sharecropper's cabin in Possum Bend. When NOT Duck's hostess Kathy purchased her property in 1980, "Manny" Williams and his cabin were part of the deal - Manny was to be allowed to stay in his home as long as he wanted. There was no heat or running water in the cabin. Manny lived in this cabin until his death a few years ago. The building has fallen into disrepair since Manny died, but his flower garden still blooms in the spring. 

NOT also got to do a bit of horseback riding - joining Princess, a steed of questionable breeding and unruly temperament who lives near his hostess.  NOT sang to her, for music sooths the savage beast. At least here it did - NOT was not bucked off. 

The group took a side trip to Selma, where NOT paused thoughtfully at a monument for fallen Confederate Soldiers. 

At the cemetery, there was also a monument to Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. General Forrest was a distinguished officer and after the Civil War, he lent his name to a group of enforcers of the Democratic Party known as the Ku Klux Klan. 

And finally he also visited the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River. On Marcy 7, 1965 ("Bloody Sunday"), 600 civil rights marchers including Dr. Martin Lewis King, Jr., John Lewis, Jesse Jackson and many others were attacked by state and local lawmen with billy clubs and tear gas and prevented from crossing this bridge to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Two days later marchers crossed unhindered. 

Photos and most travel text courtesy of Jennifer Burke

Last Updated November 2002