Sampiro: Publish your stories. I’m serious. Do it.
If the idea of your family reading it worries you, have them published post-humously.
The world needs more laughter!
Ohh yeah, it does. I’ve wondered long and hard about how to publish anything autobiographical while my mother is alive because she wouldn’t come off terribly well in any of it, even though I really and truly do love her very much.
Relatives I’d like to write about it: my pyromaniac grandmother, her lobotomized exhibitionist sister who lived with her (one of my jobs as a kid was “Lucy wrangling”, which means "getting Lucy out of the road when company is coming- Lucy was my grandmother’s baby sister [one of 8 of my grandmother’s 10 siblings who’d done time at the “state hospital”, and how she got there is a horror story in and of itself] who enjoyed standing in a busy highway with her dress over her head singing and urinating), my great-aunts Kitty & Carrie (identical twins who babysat me and slept in the house [a “dogtrot cabin” if you’re familiar with what those are/room/bed they were born on my father’s farm for the 92 years before Kitty went up in a fireball and Carrie came to live with us (and I learned some most interesting and scary things from her as her mind left and she discoursed), the aunt who made a Nativity Set out of her dead cats, etc., but all of these things require some context and context requires my mother and that requires the "White Nights’ (what I called her suicide events) and her mood swings, etc., and tales of my father’s alcoholism and his own weirdness (he was terrified of being thought a redneck [mainly because he grew up dirt poor in a log dogtrot cabin {see above} so he was apt to quote Canterbury Tales in Middle English while buying food for his cows, which was loaded into his block long Cadillac- which had the trunk lid removed so he could use it as a pickup truck, because he wouldn’t drive a pickup truck because somebody might think he was a redneck, etc.).
My family would kill me. My mother would bring a 9 mm to any booksigning and while I’m not that concerned about what my sister and brother would say, always the chance I’ll need a kidney one day.
Augusten Burroughs’s mother doesn’t speak to him and Sedaris’s mother is dead. Some guys get all the breaks.
Sampiro (and anyone else who enjoys these stories),
I must tell you about a friend of mine who doesn’t have the same issues with family, exactly, but is a true weirdness magnet and a gifted storyteller.
He’s known as Sailor Jim Johnson, and can be found here and here. He has a book which was published by Quaternion Press entitled Naked Through the Snow. He also has stories out there on usenet on alt.callahan.
You could be published, Sampiro…Quaternion Press is good people. Thanks for sharing the stories…
FLIPPED TRUCK AND BIBLE METH STORY (aka HACKSAW: THE MUSICAL) part 1 (one of the few stories not to feature my mother)
It had been a great summer. I was driving the first new vehicle I had ever owned- “could still smell the new”- a beautiful midnight blue Chevy pickup, and it still didn’t seem real that I was going to be doing the “A Different World” thing (only much whiter) and going off to college. The whole college experience- apartments, friends coming over to discuss the mysteries, pizza parties and keggers, the like. I had spent that morning loading furniture into my pickup, strapping down a tarp onto said pickup (having to leave a drop leaf table I’d bought at a yard sale the week before, which I realized was going to have to travel on the truck almost alone the coming weekend) and headed off down country roads to a college town, where I unloaded them into my student bachelor pad. All great moments in the history of my testosterone.
When 5:00 p.m. came I knew that my soon-be ex-co-workers were dressed in business casual (no banded collars or jeans- you’d get sent home for that, even though your job consisted 100% of answering phone calls), their dead eyes pressed to the opening of their cubicles awaiting the liberators of the 1700 Hour Force, while I, 100 miles away from them, was on a college quad, dressed in my college T-shirt and cut-off shorts surrounded by others in their T-shirt and shorts, all of this on a weekday! And I sang to myself “I’ve gotta feeling thirty-three is gonna be a good year…”
Little did I know the BLAIR WITCH meets DUKES OF HAZZARD horrors that lay ahead, and just how powerful extreme short-term nostalgia can be.
I left Tuscaloosa just before sundown. Thirty minutes later I was in Centreville, the tiny dying Mos Eisley that’s the gateway to 70 miles of places that have names only so that there will be something to write other than “damned if I know… bout thirty minutes from the McDonald’s in Centreville I’d say… wouldn’t you Buck?” on the death certificate.
Fifteen minutes after Centreville I’ve just entered what is technically Maplesville, but not really. Maplesville itself is blathering senile unwashed amputee of a town (a thrift store, a pool parlor, lots of boarded shops, a collapsed but occupied house on its one street that has Christmas tree lights year round, all standing in the shadow of a strangely enormous Baptist church) that is several miles down back-roads off of the highway I’m on, but this is technically considered Maplesville because otherwise they’d be ineligible to claim any kills in the state’s traffic mortality Olympics.
You know you’re entering the highway portion of Maplesville (which again is not actually Maplesville) when you pass the rest area that is Maplesville leading employer (about 7 people). You know you’re leaving the highway portion of Maplesville (which is yet again not actually Maplesville) five miles later when you see the sign for the conservative Bible Methodist Church that (swear to God) simply reads, without punctuation or anything else,
BIBLE METH Þ
I was about halfway between the rest area and the holy meth lab when, there being just a tiny amount of twilight in my rearview mirror and starless black night ahead, I never saw the piece of black tire on the black asphalt in the black shadows of the black trees until I was right up on it. I heard the thud as it attacked the undercarriage and the next thing I know my S-10 and I are dancing the James Dean Polka over the river and through the woods into somebody’s grandmother’s yard we go as my mind calmly and rationally entertains two thoughts, those being
1- I’m going to crash and there is not shit I can do about it (this rational acceptance of impotence is by far my least favorite part of a car crash, always reminding me somehow of how some believe a person knows for a few seconds they’ve been guillotined [although the analogy falls apart when you remember that nobody is expecting to have a car accident, while if you’re bound and shaved and carted through a howling mob pelting garbage at you and forced to lie face down under a guillotine you’ve gotta suspect that something is up]
2- How in the hell am I going to get that drop leaf table to Tuscaloosa this weekend without this truck (assuming I’m alive)?
tbc
Part 2: The Zapruder Tire
As the truck is going off the road and rolls onto its side I’m thinking “Well this is new… I haven’t had an accident like this before…”. It flips twice and would have flipped a third time but it’s stopped by a pliant but sturdy Crepe Myrtle tree that’s obviously decades old and easily as tall as three Tom Bosleys. The Crepe Myrtle breaks it’s advance, reverses its direction and it lands with on the driver side, there now being grass and solid earth and shattered chards of shatter proof glass where my driver side window had been a second before. The excellent stereo system of the truck (best sound system I ever had) was ironically blaring Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence, channeled from Birmingham’s Home of the Oldies 106.9… I guess that’s where the verb channeling comes from.)
The thought currently in my mind (other than bodily function related expletives) is “I haven’t got a clue how to get out of here.” I was afraid of climbing through the passenger door because I can tell the truck is on a slope of some sort and while I can’t seen any real damage in staying in the truck I could definitely see being slightly killed if the truck rolled back over or catapulted me while I was climbing out the passenger side window (or, as it’s now known, the skylight).
The problem was solved by two locals in whose debts I will legitimately and eternally remain. They had seen the accident from a tiny storage-shed sized gas station diagonally across the road and ran over, calling “YOU ‘KAY IN THERE? YA A’RIGHT? YOU LIVIN’?” They helped pull me through the passenger door/skylight/escape hatch, and (totally unembellished) the first thought that hit me as the older of the two, whose name I at some point learned was Gary, helped pull me through with his hand was “He could be Colm Wilkinson’s twin”. (For straight males, Colm Wilkinson is the Irish singer/actor best known for originating Jean Valjean in the English language version of Les Miserables.) It’s always strange the stuff that goes through your head when you’re crawling out a myrtle covered demolished truck in Maplesville. I have a cut on my chin that’s smaller and less bloody than a minor shaving cut and that’s the extent of my observable injuries. I’m pretty damned lucky I suppose, but at the moment rejoicing is not on the menu. But wear your seatbelts.
Gary/Valjean asks “You want us to call 911 for ya? You need an ambulance?” His buddy quickly adds “Have you been drankin’? If you have we’ll wait a while ‘fore we call the sher’ff”. (Southern hospitality is dying, but it is quite real and thorough.) I tell them I’m sober and to go ahead and call and I want to walk around for a second to calm down. About this time the old lady in whose yard I’ve landed, who has watched the entire accident, who has seen me climb out of the passenger window and walk around a few steps, asks the logical question
“Is he dai-ud?”
She’s completely serious.
Thought: Yas’m, I’m daid… but gay library school students in trucks are kinda like those chickens get they haids cut off- his nerve endin’s lasted just long enough to get him out the truck but he’s a goner now and oughta be droppin’ on your lawn any second… either that or the Rapture has started. Why don’tcha go down ter the cemetery see if your dearly departed have got up or if any those civil rights workers from the 60s are wondering around the landfill…
Said: No ma’am, I think I’m okay.
Old Woman in Whose Yard I Have Landed (later identified as Miss Luverne): “I seen you run over that tahr” [Maplesvillian for tire, hereinafter spelled tire but pronounced “tahr”]… I seen that tire come off a lawg truck earlier in the day. Said to myself then ‘that’s gonna cause somebody ‘have a wreck. I sure said that.”
“Did I run over a tire?” I wonder aloud, because it’s all happened so fast I don’t really know what’s happened.
“Yep” says Jean Valjean, “there was a lawg truck tire in the road over yonder and you run right over it.”
“M-hmm. It’s been out there in the road since about 4:30” says the non Valjean. “I ‘uz afraid somebody was gonna go run over it. Ain’ you sure did…”
Sounds of an old giant pickup pulling into the lawn and stopping, its headlights visible from space left on when its one-armed old owner (who still manages to smoke and chew tobacco at the same time) gets out on the lawn. “Gary… hiya doin’… whoever drivin’ that make it?”
“Yessir… “ either I or somebody says (I get us confused).
“Good… bet he run over that tire diddun’ he?”
Me: Yessssss….
“Mmmmmm-hm. Me and Tyler Ann, we seen that thang in the road and said, somebody gone have a wreck if they hit that… mm.mm.mm…”
Tiny towns around the county are depopulated as their entire populations very quickly begin to fill Miss Luverne’s yard. “Luther Nell and Clovis told Sheila Ed and Bobby that Sonny saw a truck turned over up in here… and yep there it is” and the CBs and bongos ring out and the villagers get Big Mee-maw out of the shed and head on over. A couple of trucks stop by the yard just long enough to yell out “Anybody kilt?”, then speeding off disappointed, their hopes of videotaping the wreckage for inclusion in AMERICA’S FUNNIEST TRAFFIC FATALITIES once again dashed, but most stop, park, get outta the car, look at the truck, agree “you can still smail the new in that truck!” There haven’t been this many people in one place on this highway since the Great Northern Civil Right’s Worker Sighting of ’62. Even the man from the Rest Area shows up as all of them forming an impromptu recital of the Maplesville Southern Baptist Greek Chorus and taking turns as choragus.
CHORAGOS: I seen the tire…layin’ in the road…
CHORUS: Said, somebody’s gonna have a wreck. Shore did… [strophe]
I’m stunned from the wreck and more stunned from the fact that more people saw this goddamned tire in the road than saw the Zapruder film and a question formed in my mind… let’s see now, what was the question that formed… oh yeah, I remember…
WELL WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU MOVE IT!
I think to myself, these are the ancestors of the Eloi! The people in THE TIME MACHINE who are so calm and serene and peaceful but watch with tame disinterest as one of their own falls into the river and starts to drown. What the hell is their justification for not moving something that anybody could see
CHORUS: ‘is gonna cause somebody ‘have a wreck…[anti-strophe]
Reconstructed conversation based on purely speculative theory:
Gilroy: Well I ain’t movin’ it. The Lord obvious wanted it there.
Jimmy Titus: That ain’t my road, ain’t my tire, don’t sees how I got a right…
Willie Hank: That road’s state property, that tire’s lumber comp’ny property… I ain’t gonna be called a’thievin’ it. I ain’t goin’ back to jail for nobody!
I don’t say anything of course because… well, I’m standing in a yard surrounded by a dozen or three Eloi hillbillies without a way out of there. Pissing them off would not be a good idea. And then there are the less than dulcet Sounds of Silence, which can always be dangerous in large groups of people in rural Alabama. Then one of them has an idea.
“We can turn that truck back over for ya if you wan’ us too…”
Massive agreement. “Oh yeah… “ “We could do that easy like…” “we could have it back upright in two pulls of a goat’s tit!” “…bet you could drive it on outta here for the sher’ff and wrecker even get here… save ya’sef some paperwork and money!” “Bob, don’tcha think me and you and Lemay could git that thang righted?”
I decline… very politely… because I don’t know if the truck needs to be in its original position when the sheriff comes to make the accident report or if it could somehow void the insurance coverage or if it won’t do more harm htan good. I’ve hurt them, I know.
Then the sheriff arrives.
TBC
I never caught his name, but in my mind he’s Fred Earl Cliché. If I’d seen him in a movie he’d have been played by Gailard Sartain and I’d have been furious that once again Hollywood was stooping to stereotypes of southern law enforcement… but sometimes you have to remember why stereotypes exist in the first placement. “Sheriff Cliché” is middle aged, has a massive gut that pokes through his tan uniform, is wearing mirrored sunglasses at night (his deputy is driving), and so help me God I am not embellishing when I mention that he was chewing a piece of straw. He assays the scene and says (I swear on my holiest oath, which is something close to ‘May I live to be a very very old man and spend every minute of it in Maplesville’ that he said this)
“Truck turn over?”
Sheriff think good. Sometimes in life you simply must plagiarize: HERE’S YOUR SIGN. (No sheriff, the truck stayed still, but the world turned sideways.)
Sheriff Cliché walks to the truck with a flashlight. “Damn… you can smell the new in this thang… lessee, you got ooooone….two… flat tahrs… what blew ‘em out, reckon?”
“I ran over a log truck tire in the road…”
CHORUS: “We saw the tire in the road…[strophe]… said that’s gonna cause a wreck [antistrophe]
The sheriff’s light continues scanning the undercarriage when somebody calls out “Sher’f, take that light back to the driveshaft…” and when he does there’s a collective “ahhhh”. There’s a dodgeball sized ball of steel wire from the nation’s most viewed blown tire wrapped around said driveshaft. “Looka there!” “Steel wahr from that tahr done locked up the shaft…” “that’s what caused him ta turn over, betcha anythang…” “that’s what I call some bad ass damage”
The Sheriff is very obviously very self-satisfied at having solved the “crime” and is ready to share his wisdom. Stranger still, the throng is ready to listen.
“That there steel tahr wahr is the strongest stuff on Earth! You ain’t gonna believe this, but you caint’ cut through that shit with a hack-saw! I ain’t just sayin’ that. I tried it! I sure did. That wahr is stronger than a hack saw…”
[This was when the tuba started]
Tuba: Bome bome bome bome bome bome
CHORUS (loud musical stage whisper): Hack-saw…
Tuba: BOME BOME BOME BOME…
CHORUS (loud musical stage whisper): Hack-saw…
Tuba: BOME BOME BOME BOME…
.Tuba/Chorus together: Hack-Saw/bome bome bome/Hack-saw…stronger than a hack-saw!
Sheriff: Cain’t cut it wid a
CHORUS: Hack Saw!
Sheriff: Wire’s stronger than a
CHORUS: Hacksaw! Hacksaw!
SHERIFF: Now me an’ my two boys we took an ol’ tahr
Back into our barn and we pulled out the wahr
Aw, we was able to gut it
But then we couldn’t cut it wid a…
CHORUS: Hacksaw! Hacksaw!
SHERIFF: We sawed and we sawed but I say by the Lawd
That stuff wouldn’t budge, my hand raised to Gawd
Now you can b’lieve me if you wanna
But tell you still I’m gonna… you cain’t cut it with a
CHORUS: Hacksaw! Hacksaw!
SHERIFF: I tried it before, won’t try it ag’in
Cause it’s futile I tell ya, gimme a big Amen!
That steel cable wahr
Just gonna stay thahr
Cause you cain’t cut it with a
CHORUS: Hacksaw!
SHERIFF: Did someone say a…
CHORUS: Hacksaw!
SHERIFF: Sher’ff Fred Earl took a…
CHORUS: HACKSAW! HACKSAW! HACKSAW!
The Highway is Closed as the car vehicle lights turn on bright and the entire highway becomes a stage for the MAPLESVILLE BAPTIST GREEK CHORUS CLOGGERS and their rousing but too long and too choreographed salute…. Fred Earl’s kick turns and splits are amazing for his girth and who knew that a bagpipe could be that spirited and just when you can take no more of the musical orgy…
SHERIFF: Can’t cut it with a hacksaw!
CHORUS: Sher’ff Fred Earl took a hacksaw!
SHERIFF/MISS LUVERNE/ALL (arms raised and on their knees):
HACKSAW!l
Adorable snaggletoothed waif: I said that’s gonna cause a wreck!
[End Number]
[Oh alright, I made the tuba and the musical interlude up.
But not the part about the hacksaw. If that flatulent old cliché said couldn’t cut must have said “cain’t cut it with a hacksaw” about twelve times, each time sounding just a little more self important than the last.]
TBC
The sheriff gets out binder and informs us "I’m gonna make out a ree-port… goll-damn but I hate writin’… ". I’m terrified for a moment that he’ll only have the forms for accidents involving fatalities and I’ll end up with a .44 slug in my chest and 22 witnesses who swear I was driving the truck that way, but it goes smoothly. Of course the next thing out of the Sheriff’s mouth is… “Aw hell, I’ll just git the info and do this later. How bout we turn that truck over for ya?”, this to an enthusiastic CHORUS of “yeah… we can shore nuff do it…bet you can drive it on outta heah… is he day-id?”
So I decide fine, let them have their teambuilder. Half of the county and myself bring the bed of my truck (like a barricade due to its angle… I half expected Gary to start singing “Bring him home…” or ideally hold it on his back like a runaway cart) whilst the sherifff attempts to choreograph. “Y’all push it over on my say, count o’ three! ONe… two…”
“WAIT! WAIT!” cries out one of the women watching. “Carl’s underneath the truck!”
Carl had gone to take a closer look at the Gordion Wahr around the drive shaft. What series of synaptic ricochets had convinced him that the gathering of villagers to push the truck over would be a good time to look at the drive shaft I can’t guess at, but I’m hoping that Carl isn’t the night manager of the MAPLESVILLE SUBATOMIC PARTICLE ACCELERATION PLANT (a subsidiary of ‘FAT GIRL’S CHICKEN AND BISKITS’).
Carl removed, the truck is pushed back down, and they’re right. The driver’s side is smashed to hell and gone of course, two tires are blown out and the window’s are broken, but otherwise it’s driveable. Their fun now had, the villagers depart. I’m still waiting for the wrecker as the sheriff sits in the passenger seat of his car, either working on his reports or perhaps trying to make a Power Point presentation on showing what that steel wah’r did when he took the hack-saw to it. Gary and his buddy talked about how nice it was not to be standing waist high in the swamp or worrying about snakes, cause as truck crashes go this is one of their mild ones and they didn’t have to go into the swamp that’s just half a mile down one side of the road or the kudzu field half a mile down the other. “Fact, I reckon Miss Luverne’s yard’s bout the best place in Maplesville to turn your truck over.” I’ll contact AAA and have them recommend it, thanks.
A state trooper arrives, not so much because he’s needed as he just happens to see the sheriff’s light going, but no sooner has he pulled his car into the yard than an 18 wheeler has decided to pass three cars in a no-passing lane while the only light in the county is a blue sheriff’s light. “HAW HAW! Somebody’s gonna get theyselves a diss-tinguished drivin’ award!” says Gary’s bud while Fred Earl says “Shit! That shoulda been mine…” but otherwise all is well.
All in all it could have been worse, but not to have happened at all would have been better yet. Of course there’s also “The Wrecker’s Tale” (he did have one, but that’s another story) and the “Chevy Apocalypse Tale” that are tangential, but the moral is wear your seat belt. And take a carton of cigarettes next time you go up the road to any Colm Wilkinson lookalike who pulls you out your passenger window. And don’t drink and drive, but if you do let them know to wait a few minutes before calling 911, but above all things to thine own self be true and you can’t cut steel wire with a hacksaw. (Actually, yes you can, I learned- I later tried it and it was disappointingly easy.)
I actually cried laughing through the truck story. I tried to read it out to my husband but couldn’t get the words out without collapsing into laughter. 
Get a copyright on that song, guy. If Ray Stevens gets anywhere near this message board, he’ll snap it right up before you can say “Hacksaw!”
ohhhhhhhh, I’m gonna save the truck story for when I get home. Hate to rush through a new story. Thanks Samp.
Sampiro I know exactly where you run over that there tahr! Gary and his buddy were right. Had you gone down one of those embankments that stretch of US 82 is famous for, you wouldn’t be entertaining us with these great stories. :eek: I have had the thrill of driving US 82 from Greenville, MS to Albany, GA on more than one occasion. I’ve driven US 82 from Albeeny to Tuscaloosa more times than I would have ever thought possible. See, I lived with a guy from West Alabam for almost 15 years. I declared that 102 (seems like I saw a sign in Montgomery that said 102) mile stretch of highway to be the Satan Memorial Highway. Also, I have a good friend who grew up in Maplesville. That rest area in Maplesville has provided blessed relief many times. One should never buy a Big Gulp in Montgomery to sip on while traveling from Montgomery to Tuscaloosa. I never quite learned that lesson. Thank Gawd for the Maplesville rest area!
I think I’m in love.
I was afraid where that was going for a minute…
I lived in Albany (al- Benny) for a few months and got to see that side of 82 as well. The weird part is that as often as I drove it I was never not able to detour through Union Springs to see the bird-dog statue and I was never not able to shake my head in sorrow for the students at that iddy biddy college in Quitman.
PS- Albany GA is the only place I’ve ever lived where the gay bar shared its parking lot with a Ryan’s Steakhouse, which must have made for some damned confused looks from the Friday night senior citizens who wondered why that man in the dress wouldn’t bring them anymore catfish nuggets “cause it says right on the sign ‘all-you-can-eat’… that looks like two gals over there a kissin’.”
Why not write under a pseudonym? If one of them happen to pick it up, they might recognize some of the other characters, but never themselves. They don’t act like that! They might say that Mildred character sounds just like aunt Lucy… Your mom might recognize something of your sister, and visa versa, but they’re both too civilized to ever mention it to the other…right?
Sort of like J.K. Rowling says about Gilderoy Lockhart, the only character purposefully based on a real person.
The iddy biddy college is in Cuthbert. It is Andrew College, a two year college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Not to be confused with the Bible Meth Church. Or maybe the Bible Meth Church is a part of the United Meth Church. I’m sorry you’ve never seen the bird dog statue. It’s a sight to behold. Ranks right up there with the boll weevil statue in Enterprise. I once had a job interview with the prison in Union Springs. I interviewed for the position of Diagnostic and Classification Specialists. Which means I would have tested all the new “guests” of the Alabama Department of Corrections to determine where they were to be sent to complete their time as “guests” of the Alabama DOC. Interesting sounding job but I turned it down cause the idea of being shut up in a prison for eight or nine hours a day five days a week did not appeal to me anymore than it appeals to any of the “guests.”
As for the gay bar/Ryan’s, I never went there. It used to be a sporting goods store before it was the gay bay but now I don’t think it’s anything but the ex gay bar. See, any gay bar around these parts seems to be infested with dqs. The dqs and me don’t get along too good. Especially the hack ones around here. Although once, when the gay bar was in another place, I got talked into being a judge for the “Miss Gay Albeeny” pageant. This just further proves that I’ll do anything for free beer. Not Red Dog. I’m a Miller Lite man myself.
I, along with your many other adoring fans, anxiously await the next installment of your family history.
In case anybody is wondering about that monumental piece of sculpture known as Bird Dog Statue, please click on the link. Next to the prison, it’s the most exciting thing to do in Union Springs, AL.
You mean, other than gawk at the palatial mansions along the Chunnenuggee Ridge district, as they quietly rot away, right? If I worked in Montgomery and made the same salary I’m making now, I’d gladly commute to and from Union Springs in order to buy one of those old manses. Last time I was there, we saw a 6400 square foot mansion, 3 stories, with a wraparound balcony on each floor, wrought iron fencing, 200-year-old oaks, a mother-in-law house, a grand staircase, and original leaded glass windows selling for $160,000. This thing was built in the 1830’s, I believe. Granted, it would need a ton or restoration work, but I’d tackle that with pleasure.
God, what a gorgeous house, and it was far from the only one.
Also, for those with librarian tendencies, Union Springs still has one of the only Carnegie Libraries left in the state.
Welllll over the $160,000 purchase price. You could drop a half-million on those things easily, which is why they’re for sale at $160,000. (Plus, once you fix it up you’ll have the nicest mansion in Alabama that’s a block from a check cashing place.)
Of course keeping on Hiway 82, Eufala has some freaking gorgeous homes (a bit later timewise- many of them are post-war). They also have a pretty downtown area.
The odd thing about Albany is that the entire time I was there I never could find the antebellum area. I found it everywhere else. In Americus, where I lived much longer, it’s all over the place, but that Victorian monstrosity The Windsor Hotel was the undisputed queen of southwest Georgia historical buildings. That place is absolutely awesome- I never got tired of going there.