A Trip to the Heart of Dixie

Tim: We recently received a comment wanting to have more information on Alabama. Without further ado, I thought I would write about my recent trip to Alabama to visit with family.

For those people who read the blog that do not know, my hometown is Robertsdale, Alabama, population 4,500. If you want more information on "The Hub of Baldwin County", just click the link in this paragraph. The map of the county is posted at the beginning of the post.

It is a small town (that seems to be getting a whole lot bigger) on Alabama Highway 59 in Baldwin County, which is roughly a forty-five minute drive east (across the Mobile Bay Bridge on Interstate 10) of Mobile, Alabama and a half-hour trip to the Gulf of Mexico. It has doubled in population since I graduated high school in 1988. My parents met here and were married here in 1965. My Grandpa Rice always said that if you blink as you drive through town, you just might miss it.

Anyway, back to my trip. I flew into Atlanta, Georgia last Tuesday, then drove down in the rental car I got (I was upgraded from economy to mid-size for no extra cost). It took roughly four hours and forty minutes to make the trip. I stayed at my grandmother’s house in Robertsdale. We have called her “Grannie” for as long as we have known how to talk, apparently thanks to my dad teaching us to say “Grannie” when we were two years old (at least, that is how I was told the name came into existence).

The next day, I got to work helping my mom out in a couple of areas. Her name is Judy…she has had some tough times in her life and it certainly is not getting any easier. She has had problems getting an MRI completed at the doctor’s office (Grannie says the Doc is “from Jerusalem”) because she is claustrophobic. Well, Grannie and my sister-in-law, Tracy, took her back to this doctor in Daphne on Wednesday of last week to hopefully get another MRI. She was not having that either, so they set up an appointment to get an Open MRI in Gulf Shores, Alabama later in the day.

I drove her down to get the MRI done and Tracy met up with us there. Before we got there, we drove down the beach to see how much damage had been inflicted on the coast from the rash of hurricanes the last two years. It was still in bad shape, but nothing like the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Tracy held my mom’s hand while they took care of the procedure. She made it through with flying colors (some really powerful pills helped with this). We headed to Tracy and my brother Tony’s home to meet up with him.

For those of you who did not know, Tony is my fraternal twin brother. He works as a power lineman for EMC Touchstone Energy in Gulf Shores. He has done well for himself and has a great life. He and Tracy have been married for a little longer than Candy and I and they have a daughter, Kristin. Kristin is carrying on the Rice tradition of working at Gulf Shores for the summer as she is working at Waterville USA.

We headed to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant in town, and then Mom and I came back to Robertsdale, where Tony and I started cleaning her apartment. She has a lot of problems with details, and this definitely includes cleaning her place. I finally finished cleaning her apartment on Thursday after a nine-hour day of work. The toughest part was not the cleaning part, but rather it was hearing the same words out of my mom’s mouth over and over again (words I cannot type on this blog). I guess you could say you had to be there to get the full extent of the humor. I washed every single dish or utensil in the house. It was a chore, to say the least.

After spending three nights at Grannie’s, I headed to my dad’s house in Enterprise, Alabama, roughly a three hour drive east of Robertsdale. I stayed there two nights and had a chance to meet some of their friends and even go to a family reunion in Hartford, Alabama (my step mom Carol’s family). Heck, I even won the award for coming to the reunion from the farthest distance! I have two step sisters: Wendy and Courtney. They both live in Enterprise. Carol and Wendy both handle the operations of my dad’s cabinet business, Rice’s Custom Cabinets.

In addition, my dad teaches Instrument Flight at the Army Aviation Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama. In fact, Tony and I were born at Lyster Army Hospital on post (see picture).
He retired from active duty in 1978 as a Major. He is a great example to anyone of hard work, discipline, and believing in yourself.

Dad and I got to talk about a ton of things from the past which helped me understand some things. I headed out for Atlanta at midnight on Sunday morning. I stopped in Union City, Georgia to eat breakfast at the local Waffle House. Candy kept me awake for the trip by talking to me on the cell phone. I got back to Minnesota in the early AM on Sunday.

In both Enterprise and Robertsdale, I had the chance to drive around and reminisce about times past. It was good for me to see a lot of the places from my childhood. I am going through a life/career change right now and needed to know where I had come from to face it the right way.

Hopefully, this post gave you a small picture of my background. Have a good one!