Civil Rights and Sculpture Gardens in Alabama

We actually got on the road on Tuesday morning, May 4th. We had been in Nappanee for 16 days. We headed south and made it as far as Louisville and a Wal-Mart parking lot. The next day, we made it into Birmingham, Alabama.
We visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the 16th Street Baptist Church. The church was the site of the explosion that killed four little girls in 1963. Two of the three Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the bombing were not arrested and convicted until 24 years later, in 2000. The Civil Rights Institute was very well done. After a short film introducing Birmingham from its’ founding until the 1920’s, the Barriers Gallery showed the conditions of segregation and discrimination between 1920 and 1954. They had video, audio and photos of the Civil Rights movement as well as the reproduced, charred shell of a bus burned during the Freedom Rides. Across the street from the museum and church was Kelly Ingram Park. (Photo courtesy of Flickr). It was the site of another famous civil rights incident. The public safety commissioner, “Bull” Connor fired water hoses and let police dogs loose on peaceful Civil Rights marchers, many of them children.
After our visit to Reverend Billy’s yard sculpture, we had to make a pilgrimage to the home of Joe Minter, a self-taught artist. Joe, a 65 year old carpenter, had a revelation from God in 1989. He felt led to construct a monument to African-American history. The yard is an amazing display of everything from a map of Africa to tributes to the Civil Rights movement, biblical scenes, and protests to the war in Iraq. We had the chance to talk with Mrs. Joe and she showed us the book (funded by Jane Fonda) on “yard sculpture” across the US. Joe had a major section in the book. Then, we got a chance to meet the artist himself.
Our last stop was at the Barber Motorsports Museum. It was an absolutely amazing display of motorcycles from the earliest days of cycling to today. The museum was on 6 floors with a full floor devoted to restoration of motorcycles. John was in heaven, particularly looking at the old British bikes. (Check out their web site, Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum) On the way back to the campground, we spotted a Persian restaurant, AliBaba. We had a great dinner.

From Birmingham, we headed to Mongomery, home of Alabama’s state capitol. The capitol was the site of George Wallace’s famous speech, “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever”. After lunch at a great Thai restaurant (Lek’s Railroad Thai), we took a trolley ride through the city with a great black guide. He gave us an interesting perspective on the Wallace years. Although branded a segregationist, he told us that the black community supported Wallace and he did a lot of good for blacks. We also learned about their other famous son, Hank Williams. Although he died at the age of 29, he had written over 400 songs and had a remarkable career and life.

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head...

Exhausted, we left on Sunday and headed north to Indiana. We only made it as far as Natchez, MS the first day and we just couldn’t drive any further. We stopped at our favorite campgrounds right on the Mississippi River and promptly took a nap. It made our 2 day trip into a 3 day trip, but after a weekend of Cajun fun, it was the only solution.

We arrived Tuesday afternoon in Nappanee, expecting a 3 day visit. It turned into a two week stop. The factory starts work at 6:00 am—so the service team arrives at 6:00 to fetch the coach. At that point, we were ‘homeless’ until they delivered the coach back to us between 3:30-5:00. So, with nothing else to do, we ate- hearty middle America food. The only place open at 6:00 AM was an Amish bakery/restaurant specializing in things like waffles, blueberry pancakes, fresh bread. Their claim to fame is the annual baking of an apple pie over 2 metres in diameter. After our carb free life in Florida, we started packing in the carbs every day (not to mention the wine every night). John said that he was going to self-combust from boredom.


The first few days back at the coach were fairly depressing. On Day 1, we had a huge rainstorm and once again had a ceiling leak. They had to remove the ceiling panels to get to the leak. So, we were faced with a huge wooden stick in the middle of the living room holding up the ceiling panels. The service team had put red stripes on it so that we wouldn’t walk into it accidentally. We added a “Welcome to Miller’s Barbershop” sign in it and got some laughs from the guys.

The bad news was that we had so many things to be fixed on a brand new coach. The good news was that the service team dedicated to the Essex was spectacular. Ken Miller (one of the many Miller’s at Newmar) was a “jack-Amish” and a godsend to us. He not only was technically competent, but listened and got things done.

In the process of trying to fix the squeaks and creaks in the front of the coach, Nevin (Ken’s brother and one of the Essex service team members) broke the front windshield. Rather than face a night in a hotel (the windshield needed time to cure), we took Gerry and Sandy up on their offer to stay with them and check out their new house. Gerry was busy with the Kruse Auction and took us out for the day to see the auction and check out the classic cars. John drove one of Gerry’s “classic” cars over to the auction- a old 60’s convertible, baby blue—and, according to John, one of the worst driving cars ever.

After a two day respite, we headed back to Nappanee and had our "technical walk-through" on Saturday (our anniversary- what a memorable day- learning all about the heating, plumbing and mechanical aspects of our motorhome- not very romantic.) Then after a full day of a walk-through, with mush for brains, we decided to go out for an anniversary dinner. There we were in northern Indiana- where the best restaurant in town is a bakery and their big claim to fame is Amish style cooking. We had heard from some of the other motorhome owners about a place called Essenhaus. In the pouring rain and freezing cold, we ventured out some 30 miles to Essenhaus. John went in first and when I walked up to the door of the restaurant, all I saw was his face pushed against the glass in a look of sheer horror. We walked in - to a 45 minute waiting line of people and horrible family style eats. We checked the menu- it was all meat, potatoes, gravy and lots of "sides" (potato salad, cole slaw, broccoli salad, mushy veggies). We did a hasty retreat and drove another 30 miles in the other direction to South Bend and to our favorite (and only) Indian restaurant in the area. Sadly, they had no wine, but they did have Taj Majal beer- so we had lamb vindaloo and Taj beers.

We woke up on Sunday morning and got ready to leave. I got the GPS programmed for Nashville and we headed off. We got to the edge of the parking lot and water poured down from the halogen light in the ceiling onto John's head. So, we unhooked the car, and pulled back into space #23 in the factory parking lot. All of our parking lot friends from last week had gone and a new group slowly moved in. At least the sun was shining (although it was bloody cold). We were too tired to be screaming mad....so we settled in with a NY Times and resigned ourselves our fate. It really is a beautiful motorhome when it's parked.....it's just when it's moving that we have problems.
Monday morning and Ken and his team were surprised to see our coach in the parking lot. They were horrified to find out about the 2nd leak. This time, they decided to do a pressure test to find the source of the leak. Turns out that it was another unsealed antenna on the roof. They fixed the second leak and sent us on our way. But first, we had to stop at the Onan dealership to check out the black smoke pouring from the generator.