Wednesday, 23 February, 10:15, I-65 to Baton Rouge
Another sunny day with temperatures predicted in the upper 70s. Yesterday was a day like this, with enough sun to redden our faces and enough overcast to keep us comfortable.
After a good night’s sleep, we dressed and walked across the street to St. John’s Episcopal for morning eucharist and a tour of the church. Back to the hotel, we scrounged what we could of the “continental breakfast” (the clerk called it) and were walking by 09:30. The Montgomery capital walk covered much of the historical and cultural sites of the city: Rosa Parks Museum, Hank Williams’ grave in Oakwood Cemetery, Martin Luther King Jr.’s first church (Dexter Avenue Baptist), First Baptist (Ralph Abernathy was pastor in the 1960s), the briefly used Confederate White House, a large field of Confederate soldier’s graves, and other sites and monuments. While giving a nod to their rebellion, the focus was on the struggle for civil rights of African-Americans.
The walk completed, we stopped at Wintzell’s Oyster House. I had a delicious seafood gumbo, Pat a crunchy salad. Gumbo don’t crunch.
Behind the Clarion Hotel (our home for two days) is the Montgomery Auditorium. In a park next to the Clarion is a life size statue of Hank Williams in his prime; guitar, hat, boots, suit, and sly country boy look. Hank died on New Years Day 1953 at the age of 29 of what many young musicians die from. His funeral, held at the auditorium, filled the room while an overflow crowd of 20,000 participated outside.
We climbed the hill in Oakwood Cemetery to Hank’s grave. He lies in his ornately decorated resting place just past a field of 78 French and English airmen who died in training near Montgomery during WW-II. Further on to the west, hundreds of Confederate soldiers sleep by simple military-issue markers on a steeply sloped hillside; only a fluttering rebel flag commemorates their futile deaths.
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