Both She Who Must Be Obeyed and I field questions just about every day as to our sanity.
Those that know us well understand those queries aren’t all that unusual, though of late the questioning focuses on our decision to head South instead of back home to Montana. We recite the usual responses (..it was business for both of us, not personal..), though we love to throw in our love of travel and a long-secret desire to live in the South for a bit.
Sniggering friends back home (it’s been a very decent summer and damned nice fall fishing season) ask at least weekly what we think of things down here; I figured it was time for another summary of recent topics that have been high on the discussion list of late…
Redfish. Big. Brawny. Sightfishing. Screaming reels. Crab flies. Delicious blackened. What’s not to love?
Southern BBQ. For a couple of kids from brisket country, true Southern Que has been a revelation; who knew pork could be so outrageously tasty. So far Saws in Birmingham wins the pulled pork game but the ribs at Dreamland (the original of course) in Tuscaloosa might just be the best on the planet.
Tarpon. 1) see Redfish above, points 1-5; 2) see Dan Decibel’s OMG short here if you haven’t already. If that doesn’t make you want to drop everything and go chase tarpon today, stop right now and check your pulse – you may be dead.
Smallmouths. Pound for pound, a feisty smallmouth has to be one of the gamest fish to wriggle on the end of a fly line. Trout dogmatists may roll their eyes at this, but the smallmouth guys seem to be the ones with some of the biggest grins.
Real Grits. A Southern staple, though you haven’t tasted ’em until you’ve had the recipe we ran across last week – stone ground grits with fresh corn scraped from the cob, cooked in whole milk and corn broth (yes, corn broth) with a bit of parmesan grated it. Every bit as rad as chasing tarpon with Dan in Florida.
College Football. For a family that has long viewed college football Saturdays as one of the best days of the week to fish uncrowded rivers and roam regional hunting grounds, beholding the spectacle that is SEC (the SEC West even) football has been akin to an out-of-body experience.
Having been spawned in Texas She Who Must Be Obeyed and I know a bit about high school and college football culture, though we were shamefully unprepared for the fanatical devotion to regional teams (Auburn and Alabama for those geographically and otherwise football challenged).
No matter where you go or who you strike up a conversation with (and regardless of race, creed, language spoken, religious affiliation, social position or bankroll), everyone and their dog is ready, willing and able to share their devoted allegiance to one mighty team or another. (It almost feels like a religious experience.) In the sight of the respective fan bases, their hallowed University can do no wrong.
But there’s a chink in one of the titan’s armor. An ugly chink.
The University of Alabama’s dalliance with the proposed Shepard Mine, which would dump effluent into the Black Warrior River a few hundred yards from Birmingham’s water intake just doesn’t, at least in the eye of this newly transplanted river guy from the West, pass muster as behavior befitting a benevolent and beloved institution of higher learning and Football (capitalized in due reverence).
The Black Warrior River Keeper team has been all over this; they’ve dug deep and have well documented the issues at hand. We’ve asked them to chat with us about it in more detail; the delay has been entirely my fault and we’ll have more from the BWRK team soon.
We get it that public universities need funding sources and that endless extraction of a state’s tax revenues and tuition hikes don’t play forever. That said, the University of Alabama’s plan for the Shepard Mine as written is simply a bad idea, something that more and more folks in the neighborhood are beginning to realize.
More to come.
