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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormborn" data-source="post: 2343269" data-attributes="member: 14041">Sweet Home...Ranger Wickett said:Alabama - Rural, full of racists, but birthplace of the Civil Rights movement.Mostly yes to the first one.  There are 3 basic areas:  North, Central, and Lower (LA as we call it.) The Birmingham/Hoover metropolitan area is the biggest city and dominates the center of the state, but only about a 45 min. drive from Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama.  Built in,on, and around Red Mountain its a steel town that recovered from the 70s.  We have the 2nd largest free standing metal statue, next to the Statue of Liberty, in the world.  Its from a World Fair at the turn of the last century, Vulcan God of the Forge.  In fact, Birmingham has a great deal of strange mystical totems, like a suburb named for Vesta, because a former mayor had a replica Temple of Vesta built on his  property.  Birmigham is a strange place geographically, becuase of the mountains, its very broken up into lots of smaller neighboorhoods.  Birmingham also has the richest zip-code in the US, in Mountain Brook (recently in the news as the home of Natalee Holloway who is missing in Aruba)  and what was at one time the poorest, near Birmingham Green.In North Alabama, Huntsville is worth noting, as was mentioned by a previous poster.  Its where they took Van Braun after WW2 to jump start the US space program.   Huntsville could be another state any where in America if you only moved in Arsenal/Space realated circles, otherwise its very North Alabama.  NA is very hilly, being well into the Smokey Mountains, with several notable waterways and lakes.In LA, there is Montgomery, Mobile (built on the only real bay in the Gulf of Mexico), and other places.  Mostly flat, 99% rural, one has one of the poorest counties in the nation.  It to is like another state compared to the Birmingham area.If he has said "full of rednecks" I would have agreed with him on his next point.  A "redneck" is a slang term originally applicable to rural agrarian people who would work out in the sun and burn their neck.  Now it basically means any poor, and largely uneducated, person who possesses a kind of hubris about that state, a kind of mean and unfounded pride in being poor and uneducated.  Like most stereotypes its easier to point out than define.  Typically these people are also racists, but not neccesarilly.  But then not all poor and largely uneducated people are rednecks either.  Racism in Alabama is highlighted in the American mind becuase of his next point.  It is the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.  Something you can learn more about here:  <a href="http://www.bcri.org" target="_blank">www.bcri.org</a>.   On the one hand a point of pride, that our citizens would have the will and determination to stand up against injustice and act.  On the other a point of shame, that the actions of other citizens would make the first part neccesary.Other than that Alabama is known for college football (American style of course) and the achievments of Bear Bryant among others.  If you have seen Forrest Gump, he was Forrest's college coach in the whole "run forrest run"  segment.It is HOT and HUMID, summer lasts from about the 1st of May until the end of Septemeber, if we are lucky.  We are frequently the target of Hurricanes, and they tend to only loose enough power to be Tropical Depressions by the time they make it to Birimingham.    It almost never snows.  And when the weather man says "chance of flurries"  there is a run on milk and bread in the stores, for some strange reason.  One time it really did snow, the Blizzard of 93 dropped about a foot of snow in Birmigham, shut the city down for a bout a week.  We just don't deal with that often enough to have the resources on hand to adress it.Hmmm... lots more tha could be said, but Iwil be glad to answer any more questions.Interstingly enough, I have lived in Europe, travelled fairly exstinisivelly, and would still come back to central Alabama to live.Oh, one more thing about regions in the US:  "Delaware ain't the South!"  North Carolina is only vaguely the South.  When someone around here says "South" they mean "Deep South."  If you refer to it as a "Pea-Con" Pie you are from the south, if you say "Pe-cAn" you might be a Yankee trying to pass.Florida isn't "the South" either.  It just happens to live down here.</blockquote>

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