It’s raining in central Alabama. I am on my porch, barefoot, watching the rainfall, hypnotized by the sound.
Rain can do strange things to a man.
I come from a long line of rain-watchers, horse thieves, and used car salesmen. We are a barefoot people.
And although my wife keeps telling me to put on shoes because it’s so cold outside that ketchup takes a week just to come out of the bottle, I am a Florida man. Shoes are for going to town.
There is a specific cadence to Alabamian rain. The tone is wholly unlike the rain from my home state. This is the kind of thundershower you can only get in the foothills. There’s a different ring to it. It’s similar to the difference between a clarinet and a kazoo.
Birmingham is in the mountains. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. People from more precipitous states such as, say, Colorado, will outright laugh when you suggest that Birmingham has actual mountains.
“Those aren’t real mountains!” Colorado people will say while chewing their
gluten-free granola. But don’t listen to these people. Their brains have been pickled by generations of Coors abuse.
This city definitely has mountains. They might not be the huge peaks of Wyoming, but they could inspire American hymns nonetheless.
Birmingham lives in the Jones Valley, flanked by parallel ridges which run northeast to southwest. These iron-ore hills are the tails of the mighty Appalachians. They are short. They are the Danny Devitos of the alpine world.
Still, to a guy from Florida, they are Mount Kilimanjaro.
I come from a long, flat, state, also known as the Tourism State. Our main crop each year is Midwesterners. There are no mountains in Florida. Even our singing is flat.
The highest point in the whole state is located in my home county. Britton Hill. Britton Hill’s summit is 345 feet above sea level, slightly higher than a…