The Heart of the Heart of Dixie

Alabama has long been known as the Heart of Dixie. We even had the slogan on our license plates (which we call "car tags") until a few years ago when our esteemed legislature decided that the phrase might be offensive to some groups and decided to change it. We can't have a thing like history standing in the way of potential economic promise. All those Koreans and Japanese with their new car factories and jobs might not understand such things. They are surely much more comfortable with something innocuous like Sweet Home Alabama, a reference to an old song that is no doubt played on every Asian jukebox.

If Alabama is the "Heart of Dixie," then Coosa County is the heart of Alabama. A small county near the geographic center of the State, it is still primarily rural, sparsely populated, and amazingly beautiful. In spite of these advantages, it is one of the few counties in Alabama that has actually lost population since the last census.

A high percentage of Coosa's population is elderly. This became apparent to me when I attended a Country Songwriter's Showcase in one of the old high schools last Saturday night with a gymnasium full of old folks. The old school in Weogufka community is now vacant, as are all the schools from her remaining small towns. All were consolidated into one location in the center of the county in 1990. There are not many young people, and not many reasons to stay after high school. No manufacturing industry equals no jobs. You grow up in paradise and you leave. There's no work to allow you an opportunity to stay. It is a story that is repeated in small rural communities all across the "New South." The little towns are slowly dieing in a country that doesn't make anything anymore. Store fronts in the old towns are boarded up, and people in Coosa have to seek employment and basic services like groceries and health care in neighboring counties.

Still, she is strikingly beautiful. This is the place where the Appalachian Mountain range finally ends in low blue hills. There are thick forests of pine and hardwood dotted with the remnants of pasture and quaint small farms. Wild rocky-bottom creeks flow into man-made lakes that were once wilder rivers. A sportsman's paradise to be sure, where whitetail deer and wild turkey probably out number the human population. It is country in which you can ride dirt and thinly-paved asphalt roads for miles without meeting another vehicle. The kind of place a man could lose himself--or maybe find himself.

I have an enduring love affair with Coosa* County. It is a long-running romance that began in my youth. I grew up a stone's throw from the county line in a neighboring Talladega County, but I wiled away many youthful hours with friends roaming her ridges and deep hollows in search of squirrel, deer and turkey. She is the reason I became a forester. A summer forestry job there between by sophomore and junior years in college led to a change in career paths that defined the rest of my life.

My attraction to her physical beauty is still strong, but like all love affairs, my feelings have matured into something deeper and more tangible. Now I am also attracted to her people and especially their stories. Coosa county is a place filled with stories. They are not Old South stories of mint juleps sipped on columned verandas, but rather tales of bootleggers, crooked sheriffs, farmers, and country scholars. Share cropping, poverty, Holiness preachers, and land swindlers all thrown in the mix. The best and the worst of people's lives played out on dirt roads and in crumbling old towns. These are stories told in country stores and old churches, logging sites and fishing holes where the characters and their tales are still remembered. Old times there are not forgotten, nor should they be.

I believe it may just be time to write some of them down. I know I'll enjoy the research.

*Coosa is often pronounced "Coosy" or "Coosie" by locals.