Montgomery Alabama

Three weeks in the Gulf Shore area doing very little was enough for both of us, so today we hit the road and headed to Montgomery. We got there and set up early enough to get over to Martins Restaurant  in time for lunch. When we were here two years ago we found this place and had their famous fried chicken which was great and almost as good as their corn bread muffins (the best we've ever had, a beautiful golden crust all around and when you bite into them the centers just melt in your mouth). Well today we strayed and ordered something different, rather then the chicken, it was good but not memorable like the fried chicken was, so when we go back Wednesday it's going to be Fried Chicken for two.

After lunch we decided to make a few cemetery stops, yes we like exploring cemeteries, a habit I picked up from Cathy. Our first stop was at the grave of George C Wallace in Greenwood Cemetery, four time Governor of Alabama. If you look into Wallace history you're going to get pretty dizzy, In his first run for governor he was defeated in the primary by some one who was backed by the KKK, Wallace was endorsed by the NAACP. In his next attempt he turned pro-segregation declaring “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. During the 60's he became known as one of the biggest opponents against Civil rights in the country, during the 70's he apologized to the Civil Rights leaders for his treatment of African-Americans and during his last term as Governor he appointed a record number of black Alabamians to government positions. Told you you'd get dizzy.

After this we headed over to Lincoln Cemetery to find somebody that everybody loves, Hank Williams. This one was easy since they have big signs pointing you right to it. While we were their a fellow showed up with an out of town friend and was showing her the grave, he told us that behind Martin Luther King's church this is the biggest tourist attraction for Montgomery. Hank and his wife’s graves are surrounded by Astor-tuft, he told us that they had to do this because everybody was stealing hand fulls of grass as souvenirs. Things were so bad that almost everything was stolen at one time or another and they had to rebuild the monument, bad enough that his son had this stone made up and placed there.

While were there we noticed an area that was filled with identical shaped stones, about twenty of them and all in French and just beyond that another 78 stones all marked with Royal Air Force. All the stones were dates 1942, it turns out these were all English and French pilots that came over here during the war to receive flight training and died in training accidents. They trained thousands of pilots here but over a hundred killed during one summer seems mighty high.