Marvelling at the beauty of southern Georgia.
The turkey is lowered into the boiling fat.
Preparing the collard greens.
Naturally everybody thinks this is hilarious.
‘Well, he’s never done that before…’
‘I declare!’
‘Who’d a thunk it?’
‘I should have made it clearer,’ I say. ‘Every time I have ever got on a horse it has ended with the remark you have just made: “He’s never done that before!” “But Snowflake is usually so calm…” I have heard that and remarks like it twenty times at least. There’s something about me and horses. Well. Make the most of the comedy, because that is the last time I shall ever, ever be seen on the back of a horse for the rest of my natural life.’
I dismount with as much dignity as I can from my last-ever horse.
On the way back to the big house I stop off at the old kitchens, a separate dwelling now. Some family members have boiled up peanut oil in two enormous vats. I help them drop a large turkey in each one. Southern fried turkey. It is going to be an interesting Thanksgiving.
Before eating we gather on the porch where prayers are said and ‘America the Beautiful’ is sung. The Schmoes are a very musical family and once again my eyes are pricked by the words and music of an alien anthem.
Thanksgiving Dinner at Blackwater Plantation, GA.
The fried turkey is more delicious than I ever believed turkey could be. The whole dinner is wonderful. Actually it is lunch, but as with Christmas in Britain, custom allows one to call it dinner. Collard greens, sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted inside and black-eyed peas give it a Southern, soul-food quality, but the New England cranberry and the delectable pumpkin pie keep the whole meal firmly within a traditional framework that has been repeated up and down America for over two hundred years. It is to America what Passover is to the Jews. An annual ritual that retells the (largely fanciful and untrue) story of a people and their tribulations and in so doing reinforces identity and national belonging.
A fine Thanksgiving tradition is for everyone around the table to say what it is in life they have to give thanks for. When it comes to my turn I have no difficulty in being thankful for Southern hospitality, for astoundingly good food and for the privilege of being invited into the home of strangers and asked to join them in celebrating America’s unique festival.
I do not add, for no one need know, that I am also profoundly thankful that my trousers have an elasticated waistband.
ALABAMA
‘There is no “You’re welcome” quite so believable as the one you get from the South.’
Alabama will probably take many, many decades to recover from the sorry reputation it earned for itself during the 1960s. Images linger of buzz-cut racists in short-sleeved white shirts screaming hatred at black children on their way into school, shouting That Word in the streets and defying the Federal government’s attempts to abolish the segregation that had stained the South since the Civil War.
I have come to witness another kind of civil war.
The Iron Bowl
If I were asked to find one example of cultural life in the United States to use as proof of how different America is from Europe, I would choose college football. Until one can unravel all the signs and meanings, tribal codes and weird social nuances behind this powerful and bewildering phenomenon I do not believe one can come close to approaching an understanding and penetration of American life. But aside from what it means, there is the simple question of scale.
Imagine Leeds University paying two million pounds a year to a manager for coaching their student soccer team. Imagine Leeds University having a stadium big enough to seat ninety thousand. Imagine Leeds University’s annual match against Sheffield University drawing not just a full attendance to their ground (all their games would do that) but also hundreds and hundreds of thousands of others who would drive to the campus on the night of the match, park there and set up satellite equipment and barbecues and chairs and tents. Imagine that just about everyone in Yorkshire, for the weeks leading up the match, talked of virtually nothing else. Imagine people being unreservedly and proudly passionate in their support for Leeds or for Sheffield, despite never having gone to either university or even knowing anyone who has. It seems impossible to picture such an odd state of affairs. I suppose the closest one might have got to it in Britain would have been the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race some time in the 1920s. In the US that is how college football is: the American variety of course, not soccer. It is not quite as mad as it sounds. There are many states where no major National Football League professional team plays. College Football is all they have and it has become, over the last century, their chief outlet for sporting loyalty and passion.
Of all the great local rivalries in America none is fiercer or more celebrated than that between the University of Auburn (the Tigers) and the University of Alabama (the Crimson Tide). The event, which always takes place late in November, is known as the Iron Bowl and is taken very, very seriously all over the state of Alabama.
The venue alternates between the two universities: this year it is to be held in Auburn, a town some fifty miles east of the capital, Montgomery.
Six hours before the game is due to begin it takes me the best part of an hour to drive the taxi through the dense traffic in the outer parts of the campus. On either side, every spare piece of land is already occupied with trailers, pick-up trucks and cars. But this is not the car park; this is where the ‘tailgaters’ come to watch the match, over a mile from the stadium. It is like some vast refugee camp. A refugee camp where everyone has beer, food, television, electric light, a sound system, barbecue sauce and more beer. Down both sides of the road thousands march, chanting, cheering and waving scarves, as at Wembley. But this event is bigger than the FA Cup Final. It sounds absurd to make such a claim, but in terms of logistics, attendance, police presence and sheer hoopla it really is bigger than Britain’s biggest sporting fixture. And it is between two teams of student amateurs.
* * *
ALABAMA
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
AL
Nickname:
The Yellowhammer State, The Heart of Dixie
Capital:
Montgomery
Flower:
Camellia
Tree:
Longleaf pine
Bird:
Yellowhammer
Amphibian:
Red Hills salamander
Motto:
Audemus jura nostra defendere (‘We dare to defend our rights’)
Well-known residents and natives: Rosa Parks, Condoleezza Rice, Zelda Fitzgerald, Helen Keller, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Walker Percy, Jimmy ‘Wikipedia’ Wales, Tallulah Bankhead, Dean Jones, John Badham, Fred Thompson, Courteney Cox, Hank Williams, Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynette, Lionel Hampton, Nat King Cole, Wilson Pickett, Lionel Richie, Bobby Goldsboro, Dinah Washington, Jimmy Buffet, Percy Sledge, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Willie Mays, Carl Lewis.
* * *
We are allowed on the pitch to film the pre-game build up. Americana writ large: marching bands with those strange toy-soldier hats, cheerleaders with pompoms and hoops. As the atmosphere becomes more and more heated a man appears on the podium and leads the crowd through the chants. The University of Alabama ‘Bama’ fans shout ‘Roll, Tide’, the Auburn supporters scream ‘Go Eagles!’ Despite being officially Tigers, Auburn are also War Eagles it seems: they have the home advantage of course and outnumber the Crimson Tide by at least ten to one.
One night of greatness for the students.
Go Eagles!
I am recognised from film and TV roles by a group of sailors in the front row and by a dense orange bank of Auburn students. Before very long I have had my hand painted in their colours. When I walk over to the other side, where the Crimson Tide are seated, I keep that hand firmly in my pocket.
An eagle is released over the ground and circles the grid
iron imperiously before returning to the arm of its trainer. An eagle. I wonder if they release anything for the Manchester and Salford University match. A ferret perhaps.
The band strikes up the American national anthem. Everyone joins in with great passion and (literal) hand-on-heart sincerity. The last line swells…
‘The land of the free and the home of the brave.’
The ‘v’ of ‘brave’ is not off our lips when the entire fabric of our world is ripped open by three F18 fighters screaming low over our heads. The part of me that is a film and TV professional is simply flabbergasted by the accuracy of the cueing. They can’t have been nearby hovering. How on earth did they time it so perfectly?
The teams emerge from the tunnel. At least sixty young men experience the greatest moment in their young lives. Only a very few will go on to make it in the NFL as pro footballers. This is it for them. The rest of their days will fizzle out into bitterness, failure and flabby alcoholism. Well, that is the film and novel cliché at least, which has always been cruel when it comes to the projected destiny of the college sporting hero. We hope for better.
The match is played. An enormous anticlimax. All this excitement, so superbly orchestrated, at the service of a duff game like American Football. Not a sport that I could ever find even remotely interesting. Baseball I love, basketball I can just about take (repetitive as it is), but gridiron football leaves me entirely cold, with its stop-start spasms, preposterous armour and tedious playbook tactics. This match, perhaps because of what is at stake, is more than usually uninspiring and you can feel the tension and thrill leak out of the atmosphere like widdle from a nappy.
Auburn triumphs again, achieving their winningest streak in the history of the Iron Bowl. But by the time the final whistle is blown I am safely tucked up in bed dreaming of eagles, jet fighters and pompoms.
A walking humbug.
The Board of Pardons and Paroles
The judicial and penal systems of the South have always had a quality of their own. Cinema, literature, music and folklore have long revelled in the special cruelties and indignities of crime and punishment, Southern style. That mixture of vengeful Christianity, social conservatism and racial disharmony combined with a record of dreadful violent crime leaves little room, it seems, for mercy or progressive thinking.
Many years ago, Alabama’s state legislature brought into being in the capital, Montgomery, an institution called the Board of Pardons and Paroles whose job it is to hear both sides of an appeal for parole petitions. By both sides I mean that both the representatives of the convicts and the representatives of their victims get the chance to speak.
I talk with the three members of the board, Robert Longshore, William Wynne and VeLinda Weatherley. They sit at their long bench, the seal of their office on the wall behind them, exuding Southern charm, courtesy and authority. I cannot believe that any equivalent British institution (were there such a thing) would ever allow a film crew to come poke around their proceedings with so little supervision or bureaucratic impediment. Mr Longshore explains to me in a drawl of stupendous charm that the pardons are the most enjoyable part of their work: as a rule these take the form of applications from criminals long since released who need a pardon in order to be able to vote or own a gun. There is rarely if ever anyone from the ‘other side’ to oppose their applications and it gives the Board pleasure to restore to a citizen their constitutional rights. Paroles however are an entirely different matter. This is where the pain of crime comes home; this is where the wisdom of Solomon itself cannot guarantee to bring about a happy outcome.
The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles in session.
On either side of the back of the tribunal space, which is laid out not unlike a courtroom, there is a door. Each door leads to a waiting room, one for parole petitioners, the other for families and representatives of the victims.
After a few straightforward cases of pardoning, a parole case begins. A family shuffles through the victims’ door. A late-middle-aged woman is so tearful she has to be supported. With them is a pale young white girl who works for an organisation called Victims of Crime and Leniency (VOCAL) who automatically, whatever the circumstances, always support the victims and oppose parole, whatever the case. Their default position is never to favour early release. For any prisoner. Ever.
Through the other door shuffles another, equally distressed family. The young man whose case for parole they are making is not present. The prisoners themselves never are, only their families and occasionally (if they have money, which is rare) their lawyers.
A story emerges that is so sad, so squalid and so unfair that within minutes I (and many in the court, including some of the camera crew) are wiping away tears.
The prisoner is twenty-seven years old and has been in jail since he was seventeen on a charge of manslaughter. He was given a twenty-year sentence. He had been horsing around with a gun when he had shot his fifteen-year-old friend in the head. Apparently it was all part of some game that had got out of hand. No one in the original sentencing court and no one here at the Board believed that it was anything more than a terrible accident. The two boys, the two families, had been friends, but the mother of the dead boy will not hear of clemency for the imprisoned one.
She stands up now, a central casting picture of tottering maternal woe. She wails, she screams, she cannot put into words her continuing upset and has to be led from the proceedings sobbing and keening. The woman from VOCAL speaks for her. The boy in prison is still alive. He has only served half his sentence. The court wanted him in prison for twenty years; the board should respect that. He should not be allowed even to apply again for another five years, the maximum length.
The family of the imprisoned boy make their case. Their son has served exemplary time: not one punishment for infractions of prison rules. He has learned new trades and has passed examinations. He was never a criminal. What good can be done by keeping him locked up? It was an accident after all, a terrible accident.
To me it is, as they say in America, a slam dunk. Surely the boy must get his parole?
He does not. It is not the Board’s duty to look into the rights or wrongs of sentencing, only to respond to the case as it is. This boy’s first appeal will not be accepted, says Mr Longshore; it is too early. However, his good behaviour is noted and he is therefore given the right to appeal in four years. Another four years of hard time ahead of him.
I am astonished. Astonished that the family of the slain boy should want such revenge against the friend who so tragically took a game too far. Surely they should let go? It could have been their son who shot the other boy, had fate dealt different cards. Surely they should embrace the boy who killed their son, wouldn’t that help them heal? I am astonished too by the callousness of the woman from VOCAL and her absolute lack of sympathy for the killer. I am no Christian, but I know that the founder of her religion would feel differently. Is it not possible to care for both victim and perpetrator?
I bid farewell to the Board and to Alabama, mixed feelings churning in my breast. Rarely have I met people more charming, more polite and more hospitable. The boy who pumps the gas in the forecourt really does call you ‘sir’, the receptionist at the hotel has a wide smile when she asks ‘how y’all doing?’ and the smile is warm and real. But this is not a place where I would ever want to be poor or independent-spirited, and certainly not a place where I would want to fall foul of the law.
Pleading a cause.
FLORIDA
‘Strange how the young of such warty and frightening creatures can be so adorable.’
The Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Léon landed on the shores of the tropical peninsula that forms the southernmost part of the Northern American landmass in April 1513, during the festival of Pascua Florida, or ‘flowery Easter’, and thus the twenty-second largest state of the union was christened.
The year-round sunshine that gives Florida the nickname that adorns its licence plates, its thousands
and thousands of miles of coastline, the Disney resorts and other family-friendly attractions of Orlando, the Latin vibrancy and cosmopolitan chic of Miami and the tropical beauty of the Keys have caused Florida to be one of the most visited states in America. Certainly one of the most visited by Britons.
I participate, just like any one of those hundreds of thousands of British tourists, in two of the most popular activities available in Florida.
Swimming with Dolphins
First I point the taxi’s nose to the south of Miami and travel down the famous US Highway 1 which takes me to the resort of Key Largo. The Keys are long, low islands at the very south of Florida, the drops of wee that fall from the tip of this most phallic of states. The last one in the line, Key West, is only thirty or forty miles from Cuba, for this is America’s Caribbean. Key Largo was made famous in the forties by John Houston’s movie of the same name but is now a destination for those who want, amongst other things, to swim with dolphins.
Two dolphins enjoy the privilege of swimming with humans.
Although the sheer pleasure of sharing the water with these amiable mammals is reason enough to do it, there has over recent years grown up the practice of Dolphin Therapy. I am due to swim with a boy, Kyle Crouch, who lives with cerebral palsy and has been coming to swim with bottle-nosed dolphins in Key Largo since he was ten years old. A young therapist called Eli has been swimming with him and supervising the sessions and it is clear that they both believe the experience has been wholly beneficial. Kyle’s mother agrees.