States: 14 Days: 75 Miles: 22,483
My detour to Birmingham was beautiful and moving in many ways. Firstly, I was able to spend some time with my brother, who I rarely get to see even in our own country, strolling down memory lane whilst fate and nature somehow contrived to illustrate many key aspects of our childhood. And second, as we were in Birmingham, Alabama, the centre of the Civil Rights movement. The air was thick with it.
Strolling through the centre of Birmingham, past the 16th Street Baptist Church, site of the 1963 bombing that killed four young girls, we walked through Kelly Ingram Park. This was the staging ground for many a Civil Rights protest and there are memorials abound in the hopes that people will never forget what happened here. This was the site of the school protests, where children were arrested, and, when they ran out of space to keep arrested children, the police attacked them with water cannons and attack dogs. The police attacked them with water cannons and attack dogs. It beggars belief. The monuments in the park are a moving tribute and a stark reminder that this all happened in recent memory. A man walked by us and mumbled that his mother was killed in the park.
There is a passageway with three savage-looking metal dogs straining on leashes at passers-by, a sculpture of a young boy being accosted by a police officer and his attack dog, two children behind bars defiantly stating “We ain’t afraid of your jail”, and wrought-iron replicas of the water cannons, with two children cowering behind an archway, trying to protect themselves. Whilst walking through the emotional park, Paul and I spotted two squirrels running up, down, and around, a tree-trunk, and with one simple sound: “Chucook!?”, we were in giggles, remembering one of our favourite childhood films, The Sword in the Stone, with a heartbroken she-squirrel chasing the love of her life, the boy-squirrel Wart around and around the trees. An odd juxtaposition of laughter in such a reverent place.
On walking up the steps of the Civil Rights Institute, heavy with apprehension, I remarked to Paul “I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself”. Referring to visits to Hiroshima, Srebrenica, Tuol Sleng, and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, amongst others. As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true – I knew exactly why I did this to myself, which Paul then confirmed. We do it because it’s important. It’s important to not turn away from these events. Not to embrace them, or treat them like tourist activities, but to learn, understand, and hopefully change because we remember and do not repeat simply because we forget or choose to turn away. My High School history classroom had the quote painted on the wall: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Unfortunately, this sentiment does not always prove to be true, but I maintain that knowledge is better than ignorance and acknowledgement better than turning a blind eye.
Walking around the Civil Rights Institute was another sobering experience. The subject matter was not new, but an entire museum dedicated to the history of the movement was a heavy reminder of the long path people had taken. I recognised a photograph from my school textbooks: Two men being lynched and a crowd of people surrounding them, as if it were a social activity. Perhaps it was then. There is a moustachioed man in the foreground, staring menacingly at the camera and pointing at the men behind him, as if to say, “This is what you get”. It’s chilling.
Both Paul and I met our emotional end in 1963. For me it was reading the ‘Letter from Jail’ and imagining the slow and painful damage done to children of that era. For Paul, it was listening to the full ‘I have a Dream’ speech – too often curtailed to the highlights, also emphasising the children. The whole experience was emotionally draining and was a theme kept up by later days’ travels: Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, complete with stone benches memorialising the Little Rock Nine; the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where many a blues performer stayed, but where later, Martin Luther King Jr. would be shot and killed outside room 306; the Emmett Till Memorial Highway in Mississippi, which I drive down behind a white pick-up truck with two confederate flags in the back window. An image now burned into my brain. I have no doubt that the whole country – and all other countries for that matter; I do live in Bristol after all – have their painful pasts, but none has been more apparent to me so far in America than Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi.
We could have spent hours, or indeed, days in the Institute; there was so much information. However, Paul and I were politely asked to leave, as it was past closing time. Paul and I needed a respite after the heavy emotion of the day, so we asked the security guard where was good to go for a drink. He mentioned The Saturn: A Games café, sporting retro games consoles and board games. After hearing that our childhood games console was a NES, he exclaimed that we must be “older than we look”. The games café was a bit of a mish-mash of too many things. Decorated in a retro-space theme, with a wall of board games, a wall of retro-games consoles and a wall of MMORPG computers, it felt like it was trying to do too much all at once. Nevertheless, Paul and I had a great time. I introduced him to Azul, a new favourite of mine, and then we attacked the consoles. First off, finding Mortal Kombat, but not being able to figure out two-player mode, we moved on to PacMan. This engaged another of our childhood games (one that has lasted into adulthood!). I have no memory of how it started, but I can only imagine that we were parodying the cartoons of the time, where a bad-guy is chasing a good-guy, but then all of a sudden lightning strikes, there is a short-term power-cut, another magical event, and suddenly the chaser becomes the chasee. Both look at each other with shock for a split second, often with screeching of heels to stop the running. Then, after a moment of realisation, the good-guy starts chasing the bad guy in an unexpected reversal of fate. My brother and I used to (and still sometimes do) re-enact this cartoonish parody, usually when there was a table or other free-standing obstacle between us that we cound run around. At some random moment defined by the chasee, they would suddenly stop and turn around. Both of us would throw our hands up and mock scream in shock, then the chaser would turn around and run the other way around the table. And so on, and so on. All the while, both of us singing our own chase song: “Duddle-de-duh, duddle-de-duh, du-du-du-du-du-du-du, duddle-de-duh…” a la Sir Digby Chicken Caesar of Mitchell and Web fame (although we clearly came up with it first, good to know that great minds think alike). Anyway… this was all played out in PacMan land, when the ghosts turned blue and all of a sudden, PacMan became the chaser and he and the ghosts turned around immediately and furiously ran the other way. Realisation of this computerised re-enactment of our childhood game had us collapsing in laughter and tears and consequently made Paul lose a life.
And finally, whilst randomly selecting folders in an endless folder loop of unnamed games, we came across the Holy Grail: Super Mario Bros. We only ever had a NES as children. With small, grey, rectangular, painful controllers. We had a few games, but the only ones I can remember are Super Mario Bros. and Micro-Machines. My brother and I spent a large chunk of our childhood playing Super Mario Bros. So much so that, playing as 35- and 37-year olds, we still remembered where all the secret bricks, shortcuts, cheats, and warp-zones were. We got to level eight in three minutes. Unfortunately, our controller skill was not where is was when we were kids and I couldn’t remember how to run, jump, and shoot at the same time, so was continually killed by Spiny. Paul was continually defeated by Lakitu, due to trying too hard to kill him, and having sore thumbs.
All of the Super Mario Bros. nostalgia brought back one of my most favourite memories of childhood. I cannot remember what level it is on, but somewhere towards the end (as we didn’t get to it very often), there is a screen in a level that my brother and I called “Flukey Shot Castle”. So called, because my very first time getting to that level, I somehow managed to run, jump, hit a secret brick, get 1UP, avoid falling down the cracks of the turrets and get out the other side, all within about half a second. This raised my Mario playing ability to partial-legendary status, so much so that every time Paul got to this part of the level, he handed over the controller to me and got me to do the same for him. I was average at computer games, mostly following my big brother’s footsteps, but this was my crowning glory, if only for half a second. I was so proud that my brother (whom I idolised and still do) believed in me so much that he would hand over the controller to me. That was a big deal back then. Playing Mario Bros in a games café in Birmingham, Alabama brought back all of those feelings and made me appreciate Paul and the childhood we had together. If our thumbs weren’t hurting so much after an hour of playing, I’m sure we could have spent all night feeding our nostalgia.
The next day, we lamented that there was not enough time before Paul had to leave for Australia for us to visit his Birmingham pilgrimage site: The Vulcan Statue, on a hilltop overlooking the city. Paul has many a time recounted to me his first foray up to the statue and this time, he likened it to another childhood pursuit: Taking the shortcut from our house into town, by cutting through the Old-Peoples’ Home Next Door. Except the Old-People’s Home Next Door was separated from our house by a large metal gate. In early years, this gate could easily be scaled, a it was a bar-gate that could easily be climbed over, due to the many foot-holds (except when it was snowing and icy, in which case, you would slip and get a metal spike in the back of the leg – I still have the scar to prove it). But in later years, when replaced by a sheer gate, we could no longer scale it. Instead we foraged through the trees and undergrowth by the side of the gate, and Bear Grylls-ed our way around the gate through the undergrowth. This experience was apparently akin to Paul’s experience of not wanting to take the path laid out to Vulcan Park, but to make his own way there, and as such, adventuring his way up through untrodden paths and undergrowth up to the statue. I made it up (the normal way) after Paul had left for the airport and it was a beautiful view of the city. An oasis of peace and calm, overlooking an industrious city with an emotional history.
My final emotional experience in Birmingham happened later that day, when I arrived at the Alabama Booksmith. A book shop that sells only signed first editions. I was in heaven. I walked slowly around, looking at each and every title and listing in my head the ones I would buy. When I got to 14, I realised that I had to scale back, so picked up only ones that I had not yet read. I have a Jodi Picoult, two Gregory Maguires, and a Mark Haddon. It took everything I had not to also buy a Mitch Albom, Salman Rushdie, and Neil Gaiman, amongst others. I must have spent at least two hours in the small shop, but it was a beautiful experience for me, surrounded by hard-backed precious books. I topped off the day with lunch at MELT – a restaurant that sells everything with cheese. Experiencing a macaroni and cheese grilled cheese sandwich (with bacon) just perfected a 36-hour period in my life that I will remember forever.