![]() It is a tessellated but uneven map of counties, events, senses that must be read, more than a little bit, with one’s feet and not with one’s predilections. Alabama is swampland, beach silt, mountains, cities and dirt roads, plump gourds hanging from trees cut down and hollowed out to house purple martins and fat finchlike birds called yellowhammers. Put another way: it’s been said, aptly, that Alabama is a long state with its head in Appalachia and its toes in the Gulf Coast-the gateway to the Caribbean and the Atlantic. ![]() I am just trying to shake loose what TV movies and official declarations have told you. But I am not bitter at the status of New Orleans. All that you imagine of the Big Easy: the masks, the parades, the bacchanals, the slave pens, the beads? It’s been in Mobile the longest, if not the biggest, on these shores. NOLA would also claim Mardi Gras and the reputation for being simultaneously the most European and the most African of US cities. ![]() In 1702, Mobile was the capital of French Louisiana, later usurped by New Orleans. At the shore, crisp sea oats jut upward, proud. Mobile Bay is shaped like a baby’s foot, fat and uncallused. ![]()
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