Back on track

I took a bit of a detour to Nashville but am now back on track and nearly in North Carolina.
My first stop was Birmingham, the only industrial city in the south for over 100 years. They made steel there and the mill was right in the center of town. The homes on the hill are still monuments to the wealth that it brought this area.
When I was 16 years old, my father and I drove from Stockton to Washington dc and went through Birmingham and took a night tour of the city in a taxicab. We had trouble flagging down a cab and finally when we were picked up the driver explained only white cabbies drove white folks.  I remember stopping on this overpass and watching the red hot steel ingots sliding across the ways and watching two Birmingham cops beating a prisoner on the bridge. It was a lot to take in. My father, always acutely aware of his heritage, asked the driver if there were any Italia"ns in Birmingham and how they were treated. The driver replied ," they're about the same as the niggers". He and I looked at one another and didn't ask too many more questions. We also went up to the statue of Vulcan which towers over the city as a symbol of the wealth that Iron brought to the region. So today, 52 years later, I visited both the iron works, which are totally shutdown but un-demolished and the statue of Vulcan, of course there were letterboxes there. Gone were the segregated bathrooms and water faucets but so too was the economic engine that drove this area for a century. It's a pretty seedy place.

Atlanta was fun too, many memories here, of being a student at Ga Tech, being recently married, Underground and Stone Mt. Letterboxing was better than Birmingham but the weather is warming up and I have to leave the window rolled down when I leave the car if I don't take Venus with me.  I learned there is no good to come of doing a good deed too. I parked and didn't put any money in the meter and ran to get a letterbox. I encounter a scoundrel in front of the Fox theater who was repeatedly asking folks for their cell phone so he could call his father..Unhuh. I walked away and called 911 and reported him... they thanked me and as I rounded the corner, having been delayed by doing my civic duty another cop was putting a parking ticket on my windshield.

Two more cities,, Greenville SC and Charlotte and Ill be done with the first half of this trip.