Exploring Rural Countryside

Right now I am out exploring the 11 county areas of Rural Southwest Alabama cataloguing assets so that we can decide what things to see we have that are worth bragging about. That would seem easy enough on the surface, but what we locals think is valuable might not always be what you would want to see if you came visiting. It’s like years when years ago I was traveling around to schools on my job and the principal would always want me to eat in the school cafeteria because the food was so good. Let me tell you, that was rarely the case. There were two or three schools that had good food on a regular basis, but most did not. Some of them could even mess up a hamburger. The only thing that could be counted on to be consistently good was fried chicken. Stick enough grease to it and it’s hard to ruin a chicken. The rest of the time, the food was, as my ninety year old friend Mr. Earl Huggins would say, “nothing to write home about”. The thing was that they got so used to eating the food, the staff lost perspective. It was what they had, so they ate it.

There is a parallel here. When you ask people in a community what there is to see in the area, they don’t often have any more perspective than the people at the school have about the cafeteria food. They either refer you to whatever museum they may have with local history or a ball field. The museums may or may not be good. I know recently a friend of mine came to me and said “You need to help the people in Podunk (name changed to protect the obvious) start a museum. Well, Podunk is a dying town that has very little appeal. Why, even the people who used to live there moved off and left the town to die. The history they wanted to preserve might appeal to the grandchildren of the lady who wanted to give you her mother’s wedding dress, but wouldn’t be much in interesting the steady stream of visitors they hoped to attract. Let’s face it, what interests us because we included it because of our links to it won’t mean much to somebody else unless viewed in a larger context. It Mrs. Vanity’s wedding dress were part of a curetted bridal exhibit with information about several periods of history and marriage customs of the rural south, it might be worth a shot. Visitors want context, not random objects jiggled up together in a musty place for them to see. If the random objects are for sale at a bargain, the visitor might be interested in buying them and fitting the objects into their own personal context. However, just to come to Podunk and see some random local things don’t have much appeal to the visitor from somewhere else.

By the same token, some of the things that the locals take for granted might be the very things that appeal to visitors. I ran across one of those things recently in Evergreen, Alabama. I was going out exploring. I happened to mention my destination to my friend, Norman. When I mentioned where I was headed, he said “There’s an airport there that is really cool. You can be riding down the road and see fighter planes coming in to land right over your head.” I had passed that little airport a thousand times and never thought much about it. Nobody in Evergreen had ever said “You need to go out to the airport and watch those Navy pilots do their training maneuvers”. Well, that day I started asking questions. The field is owned by the City of Evergreen, but is a training facility for the Pensacola Air Station. I found out that one of the guys who work at the library where I frequently go to get information had a brother who works there. He called out there and found out that the place would let tourists come by any time and see the planes flying in. In fact, they had two fighter planes displayed up in the air on poles that people could come to look at up close. They have a special event every fall where planes fly in for a weekend festival with all kinds of interesting activities. This place is just off the interstate. I couldn’t help but wonder how many people ride that interstate highway every day who would love to know about Middleton Field.

Probably there are just as many who come down the road who would love to know that there is a City Park in Evergreen that has a good place fro them to break up their journey. There’s a playground for the children, a walking track, and a place to ride horses, fish, or watch birds. How many weary travelers would jump at the chance for just such a break in their journey? Sometimes, we just don’t know what we’ve got.

We’re so hot on getting a new industry to come to town, but we don’t count the travelers who buy gas, shop with us and eat in our restaurants as being a continuous streak of economic development. We locals just don’t appreciate what we’ve got, or know how to package it. We focus on the food in the cafeteria instead of the banquet that is all around us.