"A Different Time, A Different Place" - Time Out #126

We are all "dealt a special set of cards" during our time on planet earth.

Years ago when I was deeply involved with my education and professional training, I elected to move from the security of Our State to another state far away, or at least I thought, far away.

Alabama was my destination, Fairfield, Alabama, to be exact, at the Lloyd Noland Foundation, Inc. hospital. Fairfield was/is a northwestern suburb of Alabama's largest city, Birmingham (population 212,000). Lloyd Noland provided me a home for 2 years in a nice 2-bedroom, furnished, apartment on this private hospital's extensive grounds. My residency training program also interacted with our sister training program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham just a few miles away in the big city. Fairfield is rather small, with less than 12,000 people.

I knew I was up for the challenge of a cross-country move. Heck, I had already accomplished a cross-state move when after I was graduated from OSU in Our Town in 1969, and stayed around for another year in order to begin to fulfill my military obligation. That move in 1970 to mighty Oklahoma City (OKC) happened because I began attending OU Medical School. The relocation to OKC wasn't too stressful on a guy (me!) who had already spent entire summers in Hawaii and Illinois. OKC was just an extra large Our Town. I repeatedly told myself that phrase....and my message worked, and I lived there for 5 years!!

Well, moving to the Deep South wasn't like moving to OKC, dear friends.

True, most of time there I was totally immersed in my educational pursuits, but I did find some time to see Birmingham,and its surrounding areas. For extra income when I had a few hours available in the late afternoons/early evenings, I would take my small, black leather doctor's bag and wear my classic white doctor's coat, traveling to many crowded neighborhoods and public housing projects. Once there, I would park my Oklahoma pickup truck in any available parking area. As I remember these many trips today, years after the events, I remember my presence attracting lots of local attention. I was performing insurance policy medical checkups on prospective policy holders for various insurance carriers before the carriers would issue the individual policy. It was quite an experience for this late 20-something doctor from Our Town! The suburban and rural towns around Birmingham became very familiar to me, such as Bessemer, Lipscomb, Hueytown, Forestdale, Adamsville, Graysville, Gardendale, Fultondale, Tarrant, Center Point, Irondale, Hoover, Mountain Brook, and Homewood, just to recall a few places I regularly visited during my 2nd job with the insurance companies.

In fact, Homewood holds an extra special place in my heart since our oldest son, Allan, was born there during my second year as a Southerner in Alabama.

Weekends and holidays would allow us to visit Lane Park in Homewood. Here was/is located the 68-acre Birmingham Botanical Gardens, including a lovely Japanese garden, a conservatory and 27 other landscaped gardens. Close by is the Birmingham Zoo, one of the South's largest zoos. Being the animal lover I am, I frequently walked their extensive grounds, and admired the animals in their simulated natural settings.

Another city highlight attraction then and today is the Vulcan Park Museum. This 10-acre urban park is at the top of Red Mountain, just south of the city center, and has as its centerpiece a 60-ton, 56-foot high cast-iron statue of Vulcan on a 124-foot pedestal. Vulcan is the Roman god of fire and the inventor of metalwork. This incredible structure was cast in 1904, and pays tribute to the city's former iron industry. There are a variety of things to see and do at this park, including an observation tower offering spectacular views of the city, especially impressive after dark.

Since I left that area many years ago, Birmingham has also developed many other sites devoted to the study of the turbulent civil rights period in the 1960's. Today's visitor would be encouraged to visit the downtown Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the historic Sixteen Street Baptist Church. If time permits, visits to the Birmingham Museum of Art and Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark would be extremely worthwhile destinations, too.

For two years I concentrated on trying to understand the Southern way of life, and did make considerable progress. However, in order to increase my experience in that pursuit, I next moved from Alabama to Tennessee for another year and a half. Possibly more about my Memphis experience in another installment?