Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

Today I walked 18 miles (I am tired). The weather was bright and sunny all day. A chilly 50 in the morning and 80 in the afternoon. I walked through Vance, Coaling, and Cottondale, Alabama. I entered Tuscaloosa at the end of the day.

Vance is a small town on Route 11. Its claim to fame is that the Mercedes plant takes up all the land between I-59 and Route 11 at Vance. Do we (the U.S. taxpayers) own Mercedes now? I lose track of which auto companies the government bought. Anyways, there isn’t much on the Route 11 side. I put a photo of the Vance Post Office on its Wikipedia page.

Here is a photo of the Vance Library. This isn’t much, but I love it. Downtown Birmingham had a beautiful library. Collinsville was having a quilt walk to fund their library. Vance doesn’t have much of a library, but it is a library – a place where a kid can read Treasure Island or Harry Potter or books about sports (what I read as a kid).

Coaling is another little town. It has a Dollar General store (the most popular business in America), a gas station, and a fire department. I put a photo of the fire department building on the Wikipedia page for Coaling.

Cottandale doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. That is a surprise as it is bigger than Vance and Coaling put together. Here is a photo of some of the businesses lining Route 11.

Saturday traffic? This is a rural area outside of Tuscaloosa. In this area, Route 11 crosses I-59 (I-59/20) a few times and there are another few places where a short drive takes you to I-59. This is Saturday and “country folk” “go to town.” Basically they avoid the more expensive local grocery stores to shop at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Tuscaloosa. There was no traffic early this morning, so I made good headway walking. Then about 11AM the “country folk” went to town. Heavy traffic (it is all relative) the rest of the day.