Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

I walked through Hammondville and Fort Payne, Alabama. I covered 16 miles. Weather: 75 and cloudy in the morning to 89 and sunny in the afternoon.

The day started cloudy and a little drier than the past couple of days. I took a detour to avoid some dogs (more about dogs below). The detour went through a small cemetery that contained several dozen Phillips graves. I guess I am related to these Phillips somehow. That was a odd feeling seeing your family name on so many headstones. Some of these Phillips died in the late 1800s. They have been in these parts a long time.

The morning was nice and quiet with little traffic. This all changed about 11AM. I guess the lunch and afternoon traffic? I don’t know, but it wasn’t much fun constantly stepping off the road half the day.

Dogs – I like dogs. I love dogs (not as much as I love my wife, so I had to give up on owning a dog 26 years ago). I don’t like dogs chasing after me on the highway. There seems to be more dogs unchained, unfenced, unfettered, and un-everything you can think of here. Dogs chase after you harder if you are riding a bicycle than if you are walking. Maybe someone who knows about dogs can explain that one to me.

I had morning coffee and a piece of cake at Shorty’s Cafe in Hammondville. This town is little more than a wide place in the road. It has two yellow blinking traffic lights, a couple eating places (like Shorty’s pictured here), a Town Hall building, and a Volunteer Fire Department. I put a photo of the Volunteer Fire Department on the Wikipedia page for Hammondville.

Immediately upon leaving the Hammondville town limits I entered the Fort Payne city limits. I am not sure why towns extend their limits out so far, but there must be a (money) reason. Things changed as soon as I crossed that line. The little old houses and rusted house trailers were replaced by a number of 3-car garage 2-story all brick homes of various architectures. The sagging barbed wire was replaced by white, freshly painted, wooden fences. Tilting barns with rusted roofs disappeared. In there place were vast lawns with large mowers going full speed to catch up with the recent rains. I don’t think the owners of these palatial estates were cutting the grass. If you can afford the estate, you can afford to pay someone else to cut the grass.

Fort Payne is a nice small city. U.S. Route 11 passes through the old downtown area – a good main street town. About 2/3s of the store fronts downtown have active businesses. There is a great Guitar Store there in the guise of a pawn shop. The majority of their guitars are new, not pawned. There are several restaurant and antique stores combined into one business. I had coffee and a chili dog at one. A great combination.

Fort Payne has two Interstate-59 exits, so it is plagued on both ends with the curse of the Golden Mile. Too bad.

I saw this cactus while walking through the northern Golden Mile. I am not a botanist, but cactus in Alabama? Someone explain please.

Fort Payne is the birthplace of Alabama the music group. In the downtown area is a small plaza with four life-size statues of the members of the group. This town is proud of their “hometown” boys who made good (an understatement – see their Wikipedia page for some of their accomplishments). I wanted to stand next to a

The Alabama Statues in Fort Payne

statue and take a photo, but let that one go as it may have insulted someone. Here is a photo of the statues.

One last photo from Fort Payne. This is at an auto parts store on Route 11. Don’t ask me how they did this, but it is one of those things that you won’t see unless you travel through small towns in America.

A Car