Update:
Check out the e-card from New West. Email it to your friends!
Rednecks like to go fast. So they put a rocket makin' factory in Huntsville, Al, brought over some German rocket scientist for "rehabilitation", then, blamo, we went to the moon. Here's to Cooley!
Pioneer John Hunt, for whom the city is named, occupied a cabin alongside a spring here in 1805. A town soon flourished and was the largest in the Alabama Territory by 1819. That year the leaders of the Alabama Territory met here to petition the U.S. Congress to grant Alabama statehood. The recreated 1819 Alabama Constitution Village, a block from the courthouse square, commemorates the historic events through tours given by costumed guides.
Huntsville was the cotton trading center of the Tennessee Valley during the 1840s and '50s when planters and merchants originally from Virginia and the Carolinas built impressive town homes.
Its one hour away from as close to the moon as anybody down here is ever gonna be.
(I'm assuming Cooley is referencing the drive from Tuscumbia to Huntsville and not his current home of Birmingham to Huntsville):
Time was when Huntsville was content to be the "Watercress Capital of the World"; the great leap forward came after World War II, when the army consolidated its rocket and missile research efforts in the city. Spearheading the project were Dr Wernher von Braun and 118 other German scientists, who came to Huntsville after a token period of rehabilitation. Von Braun's contribution of the V-2 ballistic missile to the Nazi war effort is ignored by the city, which prefers to laud his later space-age achievements, such as Explorer I, the nation's first satellite, and the mighty Saturn V.
The giant USSpace and Rocket Center, five miles west of downtown on Hwy-20, off I-65 (summer daily 9am–6pm; $15), contains a mind-boggling array of technological exhibits, hands-on displays and weightlessness simulators, as well as a giant IMAX cinema. Outdoors, in the surreal Rocket and Space Shuttle parks, redundant rockets protrude skywards in the blazing Alabama sunshine; the 120-yard, four-story Saturn V rocket is laid on its side to emphasize its immensity.
"While over there in Huntsville, They puttin' people on the moon..."
"While over there in Huntsville, even NASA shut down, too"
The following are some pics I snapped of the recently cut cotton fields in north Alabama over Thanksgiving last year. When you learn about Alabama history in junior high school there is an enevitable conversation about King Cotton. My granddad and grandmom use to tell me stories of being sharecroppers and going out into the fields to pick cotton. Brutal, brutal work:
The Cotton Plantation State: Cotton production in Alabama was a major influence in the growth and culture of the state. In fact, Alabama'a farm economy was ruled by "King Cotton" at one time. When crops were poor or prices were down, Alabama farmers suffered. Conversely, when prices were up, Alabama's farmer prospered. In the early 1900s, Alabama farmers suffered extensively due to massive cotton crop failures.
The Cotton State: For reasons given above, Alabama was called the Cotton State. While many southern states were referred to as Cotton Plantation States, Alabama was singled out as THE Cotton State because of its central location in the Cotton Belt. Cotton is Alabama's leading crop and Alabama is considered a leading cotton producer.
....or cotton picking lies
Now, I'm guessing at the route Cooley and Co. use to take when they raced the trains. Take a look at the map below. If you extend the purple line past the "end" to George Wallace Blvd (gotta love that) you'll see where you had to go to beat the train on Avalon. When I took these pics we were lucky enough to have train running on the track and, yes we did beat it!
Here is the train as it ran along 2nd St.
This is the Avalon crossing
And there is the train comin' on through.
And Finally:
Cooley's favorite place in the world. Wayne's Package Store. Listen to Patterson tell the tale before "Sink Hole":
