Montgomery, AL

Tonight we’re in a Fairfield. We’re going fancy in New Orleans and Memphis, but not tonight.

Started the day by visiting the final resting place of Flannery O’Connor. I’m not much for cemeteries when it comes to people I know, but in recent years I’ve paid my respects to some heroes. Back in 2012, I visited Ritchie Valens’ grave and then it was Ernest Hemingway a few years later and ever since, it’s been something I’ll do. I don’t spend a lot of time, I just kind of check it out as a way to say “thanks” for whatever that person did in life. Afterwards, we went to Andalusia Farm for a tour of her house.

If you read this blog at all, you know my love for Flannery O’Connor. If you’ve ever had a platonic crush on someone who died thirty-six years before you were born, you’d know how I feel. It’s not romantic, it’s I wish I could have been her close friend. Not that she would have taken my help, but I would have liked to have offered it. I picked up a book on her writing process and I’m excited to dig into it. Her ability to observe and analyze others, in both the horizontal and vertical sense, is beyond anyone I’ve ever seen. Her ability to extract the truth out of a species as dishonest as ours is a talent I’m not sure God gave but to a handful of people, ever. People couldn’t hide from her - she could always see through their bullshit.

While I love and respect Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and others, the songwriter works in way much closer to poetry than prose - no matter how hard we ignore rhyme and meter sometimes. Flannery was a wonderfully descriptive writer, but with an economy of words, meaning she only showed you what she wanted to show you. There wasn’t anything there for the sake of itself. Much like her I want to write about the people I know, in an honest way, and if I piss them off, so be it. She was once blessed by a pope and, even though she was dealing with lupus (the “French wolf”), she asked him not to bless her for health but to bless her with stories. That’s the kind of thing that makes me love that woman.

After Andalusia, we made our way on two lane American blacktop across Georgia, through little towns with cafes and white wooden churches, and the occasional town square with the antebellum courthouse in the middle. We hit the interstate just east of the Alabama line and drove it all the way to Montgomery. After checking into the hotel, we hit up Hank Williams’ grave site, Old Montgomery and had dinner before returning to the hotel. We’ll hit Hank’s boyhood home on our way to New Orleans tomorrow.

My crowded brain has managed to thin out a bit amidst the high temperatures and humidity (and thunderstorms). It’s so hot, even though I hate wearing shorts, I put on shorts earlier, exposing my pale Scots-Irish skin and blinding everyone within a country mile of me. However, the miles of rural Southern roads lined with the greenest of trees and pastures has calmed my spirit some. Hopefully, it’ll allow me to put those people and thoughts into context in order to write about them honestly, not just to be mean or point fingers, but to expose the truth in the human condition like Flannery did, but with my own cast of characters.

Last time I was in New Orleans, it was to eat and drink for four days and I got roofied at Jean Lafite’s Absinthe House on Bourbon Street. Zero chance any of that happens this time, though I am looking forward to the food. Until next time.

Thoughts from the Road, Volume 2