A Souvenir of Muscle Shoals, Alabama

Thursday, 4th April 2013

Map: Muscle Shoals, Alabama to Norcross, Georgia---261 miles

Doesn't Muscle Shoals sound like a gay resort?  Well, it's not---it's merely an archaic spelling of mussels.  And while the glossy magazine in our Key West Inn room pictured some intriguing sites along the river, touring 'The Shoals' was the last thing on our minds that dreary, damp morning.

A souvenir of Muscle Shoals, Alabama

The area is also known as the Quad Cities (Florence, Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Muscle Shoals) and we drove through them all out of curiosity.  At Muscle Shoals my husband demanded a stop at a small Loafs and Fishes Thrift Store, which I thought looked at best a dismal prospect---except for this delightful toilet bowl coffee mug for fifty cents.  We also found a curios tee shirt with lesbian overtones for Our Lovely Lesbians back in California for the same price, although it came with a few small holes on the back hem area in the bargain.  Oh well, they can wear it when they go out to feed their horses.

I loitered, listening to the rabid preaching of some radio evangelist as my husband cheekily presented the toilet mug to the cashier, a Southern Lady of a certain age.

"Oh my," she chuckled.  "I didn't know we had that on the shelves."  She started wrapping it up, and continued: "You know, my beautician has a funny picture at her station.  It's two cats looking into the toilet and saying the dogs highly recommend it."

The Pez head preaching fell away from my ears.  That's the way it should be: a nice Christian lady with a sense of humor volunteering at a thrift store.

We drove by Helen Keller's home in Tuscumbia, and I mused with my husband about how long she'll continue being on the pop culture radar---particularly out of the South.  The next day a younger second cousin assured me she was still big in school some fifteen years ago, but I'm more interested now in the radical, intellectual woman she became after the miracle---something the schools pointedly fail to mention.

There was an antique store in Sheffield of the likes that haven't been seen way out West in thirty years.  Piled and layered, it was full of good stuff---and while not particularly bargain-priced, the prices were reasonable.  We bought a pair of monk salt and pepper shakers---most appropriate for my husband---for four dollars, and a pair of circa 1950s cheesy plastic lady golfer cake toppers for a dollar.  Intended as a hostess gift on up in New England, the two lesbians will have to decide which of them is the golfer with the paint worn off her breast.

We left the Quad Cities area without even a whiff of knowledge about its music history---particularly strong in the 1960s with expected singers like Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding, and the less expected, such as George Michael recording an early version of Careless Whisper in Muscle Shoals in 1983.

Driving east on US 72, we stopped for an early lunch at Subway in Rogersville.  My husband, as usual, placed the order and came to an impasse when the woman behind the counter asked him what kind of meht he wanted.

"I'm sorry...?"

"MEHT."

"I---I don't understand."

She good-naturedly pointed to the trays of meats.

It was a better outcome than a few years ago in Tennessee, where he could not understand the sweet young thing behind the Subway counter and she couldn't understand his Way Down East accent.  I finally had to step in and interpret for them both.

We continued east through Athens and Huntsville, where everything is moon rockets.  The landscape becomes more interesting east of here, but unfortunately it was largely veiled by low clouds.  The area where US 72 crosses an arm of Guntersville Lake is particularly nice.

At Scottsboro we crossed the Tennessee River and climbed the palisades on Alabama 40.  Then we continued east over high rolling farmland and forest marked with extensive tornado damage at Henagar, where a mansion remained without most of its second story and roof.

We dropped back down into another old river valley on Alabama 117, driving through the little towns of Hammondville and Valley Head and climbing back up to Mentone in the aptly named Cloudlands region.  This is a popular vacation area, mindful of more Western terrain, such as California's Mother Lode in springtime.  Charming cabins and bungalows nestle in the beautiful forest.

Alabama 117 becomes Georgia 48 at the state line, and we dropped down into Menlo and its mixture of old orchards and vacation homes.  The drop continues to Summerville and US 27, which we cut away from again on Georgia 140 to avoid the congestion of Rome.  Exurbia creeps into view as we reached I-75 in Adairsville.

Time for a pit stop, and to be amused by two feral cats hunkered down in the mist at the drive thru menu at Wendy's, as if they were waiting to take some one's order.  I do forget to take photos, don't I?  Down the Interstate we stopped at a Dairy Queen for the obligatory Blizzard and found another cat camped out under a shrub with a can of Bumble Bee tuna.  The chafing outskirts of Atlanta definitely has a feral cat problem.

We largely avoided rush hour traffic by traveling in its opposite direction until we hit Sandy Springs on I-285, where an earlier fender bender and commuter traffic slowed us to a crawl---making for a forty-five minute drive for the last ten miles to Norcross.