Stars Fell On Alabama
The conversation when I meet someone new these days often sounds like this:
Them, “Wow, I bet it’s been hard to get used to this weather, moving here from Alabama!”
Me, “Oh no. I’m originally from the Midwest! I’m NOT from Alabama. I just lived there.”
As soon as I say it, I feel guilty. It’s like I’m talking about a dear friend behind her back. I’m really saying, “don’t associate me with Alabama!” But I say it because I have a lot of anger, albeit misdirected anger, towards Alabama.
Before moving to the Deep South, I had an idealized vision of what life there would be like. I was lured by the romanticism of southern hospitality. Having read countless books by southern authors, watched Steel Magnolias at least 1,000 times, and being a loyal subscriber to Southern Living, I was certain of the charm that awaited me in the small, southern town of Saraland, Alabama. Certainly I’d have quirky neighbors who wore funny hats and gardened. They’d smile and wave saying, “why don’t ya’ll come over for some supper!” After supper we’d sit on the the front porch, chatting with neighbors while swatting away the mosquitoes and drinking our sweet tea. We’d be accepted there, as all newcomers were in the southern novels I’d read. Sweet old women would take me under their wing, fussing over me and offering me their years worth of motherly advice.
But it wasn’t like that at all.
The day we moved in, we were robbed. Later that week, the Saraland police department refused to help me when I’d set off my own house alarm. Although my neighbors heard my alarm sounding, not one of them offered to help either. A month after moving to Alabama, Hurricane Katrina hit. Even after two and a half years of living there, I never felt as if we fit. We were always outsiders.
I often wonder if things would have started out differently in Alabama, if my experience there would have been different. Maybe I would have interacted with people differently, less suspiciously, without judgment. The robbery, although minor, was something that rattled me to the core. I still feel violated even after all this time, but it seems unfair to blame an entire state on the stupid act of one person. Hurricane Katrina did very little damage to my home, we only lost a few trees, but the sounds from that day will forever haunt me, as will the images from the media that we saw day after day after day.
I so badly wanted it to be different, I wanted us to be accepted. I wanted my idealized vision of southern hospitality to actually exist. Living there, I felt cheated.
It’s odd, though. Now when I think about Alabama, I feel a sense of nostalgia. Partly for what I idealized, but also partly for the all the good things. I miss the warmth in March, everyone’s accents, the beach, and the food. I miss that I didn’t take full advantage of all that Alabama had to offer while living there, but instead focused on my own anger. Being so eager to move and get far, far away, I feel like there is so much still left undone and unsaid.
Goodbye, Alabama. I think that I’ve made my peace with you. Although you weren’t what I expected you to be, you weren’t as bad as I’ve made you out to be, either. Starting today, whenever someone asks me about Alabama, I’ll claim you as my own. Proudly.
well, you are welcome back to the midwest with open arms…oh, and we can drink lemonade on my porch any hot summer night…I’m from Michigan and don’t like sweet tea!
emily’s last blog post..Mod Mum…slingin’ it for the win!
I have a sister who lives in AL and loves it. LOVES it.
I have another sister who lived in AL for about a month and that was a month too long. She packed up her u-haul and headed back north.
Do you love where you are now?
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This is exactly how I feel about Utah. We are not accepted. We don’t fit in and I fear that we never will. My house is the only place I feel good about being and so this is where I stay…rarely leaving the house.
I did try to join the local Mom’s Club and was completely ignored. I’m still trying to decide if I should try again to find Mommy friends.
But….your post makes me think that perhaps I should try again. Maybe I can force these people to like me and to let their kids play with my kids. Maybe I haven’t given it enough of a chance.
There is still a glimmer of hope in me that this place will someday feel like home….but then someone throws their HOT DRINK on it!! How can I live around people that don’t drink coffee or WINE!
Anyway, thanks for this post. It is giving me something to think about……
Connie’s last blog post..The One About Our Crazy Week!
Well honey. You can always come down here to TX and we’ll show you some real southern hospitality! Promise
The title was cute.
rachel’s last blog post..Wam-Whosa?
It’s a lot easier to be fond of something that you no longer have to endure…
Every place has their plus and minus sides - but the plus sides are a lot more vivid once you don’t have to deal with the minuses!
Maggie’s last blog post..Best Shot Monday - Trouble? What Trouble? and Lessons
I can’t help thinking about my upcoming move this summer whenever I read one of these posts. I’m glad you’ve made your peace with Alabama, but still, there’s nothing wrong with embracing the midwest from whence you came, you know? I’m sure Alabama will understand.
Nell’s last blog post..Learning to be Sneaky
I completely understand how you feel. The funny thing is…I feel that way about Indiana…and I LIVE here. I gush about other places I’ve lived…but Indiana is…well, the red-headed step-child of the 5 different states I’ve lived in…the only one with a status very close it it’s poor reputation in my head is NC, and I have some truly fond memories of NC…all sullied by two very bad men on two separate occassions (but bolstered up by the appearance of one very special man…DC was born there). But Indiana hasn’t done anything to deserve it. It simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time in my life. Even coming back to it willingly still leaves it in the bottom with dreams of moving ‘home’ or ‘back east’.
But Indiana holds my memories of high school, which I (mostly) recall fondly…I mean I wasn’t picked on horribly compared to my life back ‘home’. It’s also where I met my husband and my two girls were born. It’s where I live in a small house, but an ideal neighborhood.
So it truly doesn’t deserve the bad rap I give it. My staunch refusal to be called a Hoosier (I’m really not…as stated before, I hate basketball :P). But it accepts it anyway…and still treats me well. I guess I don’t hate the state too badly
That made me cry a little! I get mixed feelings like that a lot - about various things.
So glad you’ve made your peace with Alabama, and I sure hope that Indiana can prove to be as wonderful as you imagine it to be (and then some).
Gotta love the southern hospitality reading. I have read so many books and seen so many movies about the south, I feel like I’VE lived there, and I so totally haven’t.
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Honestly, I think it’s the Mobile/Saraland area. I was born and raised in Mississippi and, of course, loved it. Went to college in Alabama (Mobile), and I will always remember it as the darkest days/years of my life. Way too much crying, unfriendly people, etc. Now I live in Louisiana and absolutely love it and think the people are so friendly and welcoming. And we do sit outside in the evenings and watch the kids play. Don’t feel bad or guilty. You’re not alone. I can’t even drive through there to Gulf Shores without feeling sad.
I think no matter where you live, and no matter how long you’re there, there will always been a sense of nostalgia when you leave. I think I miss just about every place I’ve lived for one reason or another.
I’m sorry that it wasn’t all you had hoped. But you did meet some GREAT people there, right?!
sam’s last blog post..From Behind the Facade
Aw, don’t feel bad. I do think if your time there had started out differently it might have been better for you guys. We live in far N AL, and we actually do love it, even though I was very hesitant to move here.
It’s not at all like Steel Magnolias here either though. lol
Devan’s last blog post..I hate you Little Rock!
I felt that way about Decatur until we moved. I would say “I’m not FROM here, I’ve just lived here for 10 years” and couldn’t go to the grocery store without seeing umpteen people I know. Now that we live in podunkville I’m proud to say I’m from Decatur and a Hoosier simultaneously.
Rayne of Terror’s last blog post..Weekend in Hoosier Territory
Well, no we aren’t Steel Magnolia’s but I hope we weren’t that bad. And Alabama can’t be blamed for Katrina! Everyone knows Bush is responsible for that. HA! I am glad you finally made peace with Bama. And I am glad everything is going better for you.
justmylife’s last blog post..It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood!
I lived there 13 years and never really fit in, my parents were Yankee transplants and I was born in DC, so I could never really be “from” Mobile. But I do claim Alabama as my own and get defensive of her honor when people speak ill about the South.
Mobile is a hard place to love though. It’s cliquish and insular and the crime has always been out of control. The last year I lived there I had my car broken into and I was mugged three times. I feel safer walking around in New Orleans.
K’s last blog post..Triptych - Week 2
I hate to jump on the Mobile-bashing bandwagon, but I think it might be even more insular than the Tiny Kingdom, and that’s saying A LOT.
But I’m glad you’ve made your peace with it, and if you forgot to pack a good collard green recipe I’ll gladly email one!
Anne Glamore’s last blog post..The Girls Who Came To Visit
Aw. I completely get it. I’m glad you’ve made your peace. About all any of us can do is to make the most of wherever we are now. I say that, but it’s taken me years to see/do things in my own backyard here in the Northwest, and if I ever make it back “home” to the Midwest, I’ll gladly reclaim it as home. Where I am is wonderful, but it’s not me. Then again, if I did move, I know I’d miss the mountains and ocean and green and maybe even the rain. I’ve lived a few places and always have trouble answering the where I’m from question because each place has changed me. Indiana is at the top of my list of places I’d be in a heartbeat if I could snap my fingers.
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No, the South is not as it is portrayed in the movies and books. Unless you move here with money coming out your butt, you buy into the right old money neighborhood, and can hang with old money kind of people. Then it’s just like Steel Magnolias.
I for one love living in Mobile. I’ve not found it cliquish, but then I’m not trying to hang with the cliquish old money types that abound in certain areas in town.
People were very nice and helpful when we first moved here. I love the beach, love the old beautiful trees lining Dauphin St, love the architecture, the food.
Perhaps Mobile is insular to isolate itself from the rest of the state? I mean, at least people here are comfortable with liquor and porn, and Baptist don’t rule. Ha!
Queen of Shake Shake’s last blog post..The Goody Bag of Crap Strikes Back
The south is different, that is for sure. I think there would be things to love and hate about it. I live in an extremely insulate place (Utah. See Connie’s comment. It can be TOUGH to fit in here. Hell, I’ve lived her my whole live and still don’t really “Fit”.).
I just think that some places are tougher to live in than others and a whole lot of it depends on the individual and their circumstances.
I hope you like Indiana better.
Loralee’s last blog post..Did you know sweet, little, old ladies can totally kick my ass? Because they CAN.
Don’t feel bad. Just follow up with “we didn’t live there for very long…” I lived in GA for a while…and I HATED it…but I always tell people that I only lived there for a few months.
Sandy’s last blog post..Saw the Surgeon today…isn’t good…
I completely understand how you feel. This last move has been the hardest to make feel like home for the short time we have been here. We were here only a few months before Husband deployed. Then it was the hardest 15 months of my life. Now we are moving this summer, and I can’t wait!
I love your idealized of the south though.
tommie’s last blog post..rain rain go away and a manic Monday
aw, you made ME miss Alabama, and I’ve never set foot in it!
jen’s last blog post..the long list of things I can’t do.
I can’t imagine being robbed after just moving to a brand new place! That’s got to set anyone off on a bad foot with their new “home.”
And I completely understand about romanticising a place before you move there. I’m from Mississippi and always wanted to get out and move “north” to a more cosmopolitan place. When we actually got the chance to move north (northern Virginia), I hated it! Absolutely hated it! It’s cold! The people in the first city we lived weren’t nice either. A lot of people here aren’t nice or friendly. I cried and cried while sitting home searching for a job in a place that I absolutely hated. I blame a lot of that hate on the first city we lived, and the first apartment we lived in here (words can’t even describe how truly awful that place was, trust me.) We moved to a new city and a new neighborhood when I got pregnant and it’s better. I have a better attitude when going to mom’s groups or other outings and that has made a huge difference in how I relate with other people. I still don’t like where we live and long to move down south, but it’s not as bad.
It sounds like Indiana’s already treating you better, no robberies, a beautiful house and the on again off again relationship with Meijer. (seriously, as a southerner, I thought it was pronounced mayor, and didn’t understand how it rhymed with fire at first!)
I was a transplanted northerner in the south for awhile, too, and I have the same relationship with North Carolina as you do with Alabama. While I was there, I was always comparing it to the midwest, but now I look back with nostalgia.
I never did sip tea or mint juleps on anyone’s front porch, but I got to clean up the NASCAR track after a big race as part of a school fundraiser. Good times.
Rima’s last blog post..The Dental Hygienist Makes a Liar Out of Me
Well, you can’t be blamed for taking Alabama personally. If I had been robbed then treated like that, I’d totally be miffed too!
I hope Indiana feels more like home
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this is going to sound like a mom said it, so i’ll apologize now:
at least you’ve had the privilege to live in more than one place. i’ve been here in utah my ENTIRE LIFE and while i don’t want to move, i want to live somewhere else.
how’s THAT for a problem??
lol.
Aw, sweet. Glad you have made peace.
VDog’s last blog post..Weekly Winners, March 9
Never been to Alabamer…but I just may go after this
Worker Mommy’s last blog post..I’ll show you Efficiency
I always imagined every woman there would be like reece witherspoon and Id feel sorely, brunettely, make-up freely, flat hair’dly, and jewishly outta place.
so Im wrong?
MizFit’s last blog post..McFeng Shui
Feeling out of place can happen even when you move within your own state! I begged my husband to get a job in W. Michigan so I could be closer to my family, but after 7 months here, I still don’t feel like I fit in. I feel like I’m not a “good enough mom” because I don’t stay at home with her, I don’t go to church every week, etc. Not that I necessarily miss SE Mich much, but I do kind of miss the granola fruitiness of Ann Arbor. And I miss my friends, dammit!
I kind of know the feelings you describe at the top of your post. Although I don’t publicize it, I grew up in Utah. My parents moved there shortly before I was born because my father was going to go to college there. And although I don’t have anything against them (mostly), I’m not Mormon. So whenever anyone asks me where I’m from, I try to be vague and say something like, “I moved here from California,” or “I’m from the west.”
Unlike you, however, I have not made peace with it.
Stimey’s last blog post..To Parents With Autistic Children:
I can relate moving to the south.I always had the vision that people were so friendly I’d be surrounded by neighbors.Not that people aren’t nice but they keep to themselves
It’s hard being transplanted so far away from what I’ve always known at home so I can relate to what your saying.
Change Alabama to Indiana and I’ll be writing this in a couple of years.
moosh in indy.’s last blog post..Casey vs. The Stairs
There was a geography prof at SMS who grew up in Nebraska and described it as a great place to be FROM.
Which sounds like Alabama.
Dawn’s last blog post..Talkin’ About My Boobies!
That’s how I felt when we lived in Oklahoma (a different kind of “south”). Hubby and I were called Yankees (and darn proud of it!). My hubby had to search high and low for Miller Lite and we dubbed it Yankee Lite. Too many stories to list on this comment form. But I empathize…..
Isn’t it strange how we can not enjoy living somewhere, yet we can still get nostalgic?
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I’ve lived my whole life — nearly 50 years — in the South, the last 10 of them in Alabama. I’m here to tell you there is something different about Alabama. It’s like the good and the bad about the South all wrapped into one and on steroids. One day I hate it, the next day I’m ambivalent, now and then I adore it, and about a quarter of the time I’m primarily grateful I live here because it provides the best material imaginable. The stereotypical image of the friendly, front-porch south is just that: a stereotype. The “not from here” designation never, ever ends with some people; in my experience, if you and your parents literally weren’t born in a particular community, those sorts of people will never accept you in quite the same way as a native. But they may nevertheless come to love you. And the food just can’t be beat.
Betsy Bird’s last blog post..The One Thing Ann Coulter and I Have in Common
Oh my gosh, your description of what the south should be, expectations of “southern hospitality” cracked me up. That’s exactly how we felt moving here too! I totally expected when our new neighbors saw our moving van, we would be greeted with a pie and invited all over the place. Old ladies loving up my kids and becoming our new grandmas since ours live so far away. None of this happened. Nobody even waves. It’s not like we’re unfriendly. I’m super friendly. We just happened to move into the lamest subdivision in Georgia, possibly in all of the south. Everyone keeps to themselves. And “southern hospitality”? I think it’s a myth. People here are nice, but then people are nice everywhere. I’m from socal, and people there are just as nice, you never hear “socal hospitality” or then when we moved to Missouri, “midwest hospitality” and quite frankly, I’ve not noticed any difference in people here and there! People are people everywhere. Well anyways I just wanted to say I had the same expectations. Maybe we just moved in with them set to high?
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I was born and raised in Mobile County, the Satsuma/Saraland/Eight Mile area to be exact. Spent my last two years living near downtown Mobile and moved out to Boulder/Denver, then to DC when I graduated from my second stint in college (my first was at Mobile College). I left Alabama in ‘92 and although I get very nostalgic when I return to DC from a Xmas vacation with family (who still lives in the Mobile area), I have absolutely no desire to move back there. Nada.
You have to live where you feel the most welcome and happy, wherever that might be. As I grew up, I found that I had no future down there and finally packed it all up and moved, along with some friends, who are all now living in various parts of the US, none in Alabama though.
Where abouts did you live in Saraland? When I lived in Saraland, it was in Spanish Trace.
I live in North Alabama and I LOVE it! The people are very friendly
here but we have a ton of transplants - high tech city and an engineers
delight! It has changed a bit over the years but it is not representative
of the old old south because of all the transplants! Love the City!
It’s a great size with lots to do! Had a neighbor who moved here from
Mobile and she was STRANGE! But I agree, so much has to do with
where you are emotionally in your life as to how you feel about where
you live. I lived in NC for awhile and HATED IT! The people there seemed
very remote and behind the times! But I was in a small place where
growth was nil.
My wife and I travelled through Alabama one time and found the locals to be some of the friendliest people we have ever met in our travels. I’d go back in a minute if I had the chance. Sorry that your experience wasn’t as good. Maybe you need to travel down and give them another chance.