Arab was not a large city. I don’t believe it is now either.  But at the time of my childhood, we boasted a population of approximately 8,000 people. As it turns out, 2005 estimates place it around 7,500.  So it seems we might have been a bit ambitious some two decades ago.

But I gotta say that I love it when people ask me where I’m from.  ”Arab,” I say.  Of course I pronounce it appropriately. Not like /ˈarəb/ as in “Arab Muslim.” Most of us were Baptist or Methodist.  But /āˈrab/ as in “a rab-id coon bit my dog and now I have to shoot ‘im.”  There’s always an odd silence that follows.  Once I savor that moment, I continue.  ”It’s a little town just south of Huntsville.”  At this, I almost always get one of two responses.

Some just shake their heads.  But most – and I do mean most – will say, “Oh, sure. I know Arab.”  How so many people have come to be connected to Arab is beyond me.  Sometimes they have relatives there.  Sometimes they recall having sold such-and-such to so-and-so (who is usually related to someone in the first group).  Regardless, it’s one of those freaky rules of nature, like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  Almost anyone can be traced back to Arab in six steps or less.

Don’t get me wrong.  Arab is not without its famous events and people.  For starters, there’s the annual Poke Salat Festival.  But perhaps even more noteworthy is the fact that  the short list of hometown successes (according to Wikipedia) includes actress Monica Potter (Along Came a Spider et al). I should note that I find no other evidence of this anywhere online. But regardless, she  joins my friend Jill King (Country singer and songwriter) as the only two mentions.

I am predictably NOT on the list.  Apparently they don’t consider winning the University of North Alabama “Ugly Walk” Competition worthy of recognition.  Well, I’m not bitter.  But I would also like to point out that I was the star of the brief-but-popular morning radio segment “Breakfast with Brandon” on AM 1380 – WRAB (Your Friend and Neighbor).  That listening audience spanned from Joppa to Scant City. So it was a pretty big deal.

Regarding the name, (and this could just be the product of myth – but one which also eventually found its way to Wikipedia) I’ve always understood it to have come from little more than a clerical error.  The city’s founder was also it’s first postmaster, Stephen Tuttle Thompson. His son’s name was Arad.  Yes, that’s A-R-A-D.  When the city decided to incorporate in 1882, three options were given for the name: Ink, Bird, and Arad.  Apparantly, we went with Arad, but a tragic typo in the process of incorporation deemed us forever . . . Arab.

I’m glad they went with Arad.  If one of the other names had been chosen and misspelled, I might have ended up being from Jnk. I can only guess how we would have pronounced that one.  Or we might have been known as Bord, which was what most of us were anyway growing up in that town.

Make no mistake.  Arab is, and forever will be, at the very top of my list of favorite places to grow up – and that’s not just  because it’s the only place I grew up. I love that city.  Ask any one of those 8,000 7.500 people, and they’ll have their own stories, their own history, their own notable people, places, and things.

Got a good Arab story? Click “Read More” and post it below.  My friend Jackie works for Otelco, so I know they have internet now.

I was born in Tuscaloosa. That’s how far back my allegiance to Alabama football goes. Everything I owned was red and white and featured an Elephant somewhere. I remember as a kid having a Roll Tide metal trash can that doubled as a desk seat. Yeah, we had nice things.

Unfortunately, I never attended the University of Alabama. Nor did I ever truly understand football. I was in the band, which meant I simply had to learn when to cheer and when not to cheer (and even that was a process).

Eventually I attended the University of North Alabama, home of the three-peat Division II national champion UNA Lions. It was then that I learned more and grew more interested in the sport. The Crimson Tide had just been crowned national champions as well, so I had another good reason. Even still, my interest in football was marginal.

But now that I seemed to have somehow crossed the threshold from young adult to irrelevant bore, football is providing a new kind of solace for me. I can’t wait for September each year. I find comfort in tracking the latest NCAA FB news. And my interest in Bama has found a new level.

That’s the long explanation to why I downloaded Crimson Nation by famed Alabama announcer Eli Gold. I wanted to understand the history behind the heritage that is Alabama football.

The book was fascinating. To read of the great coaches like Wallace Wade and Frank Thomas and then trace their impact through players like Paul “Bear” Bryant gave me a great sense of the big picture.

To read about Bryant as a coach, the ups, downs, controversies, and historical moments really put modern-day football drama in perspective. Mike Leech lost his job last year at Texas A&M for allegedly mistreating a player. Paul Bryant nearly killed half of his team one summer in the town of Junction, TX as the coach for . . . Texas A&M. One of those boys, by the way, was Gene Stallings, coach of the ’92 national champion Tide.

Lane Kiffen was skewered after coming to Tennessee, stirring up controversy, then leaving suddenly to coach for his true love, USC. Want to guess the name of another coach who took a job, stirred things up, then left after only a year to coach his true love? That’s right, The Bear.

Also interesting was Gold’s extensive commentary on a socially color blind Bryant who recognized the need for a racially diverse team in order to win. According to the book, Bryant lobbied for the inclusion of black players long before he was allowed to integrate. As I read this chapter, I also read a headline in the that day’s news revealing that the FBI had actually investigated Bryant for civil rights offenses. You gotta love history.

The book isn’t particularly well written. But then again, neither is this blog post. Yet unlike this post, the book is full of great stories, and it is structured in a way that keeps you from getting lost in the minutia of dates and names. It’s a quick read and well worth it if you’re in the market for a quick primer on Alabama football history.

As I write this, the first Alabama game of the season is one week away. And once again they are defending National Champions. When I was a kid my grandmother used to bet me $1 that Alabama would lose. Once we went double or nothing and I had to ask for an advance on my allowance to cover my loses. She cured me of any tendencies to gamble. But she only strengthened my interest in and love for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Rammer Jammer!

A big thing in our house right now is the History Channel series America: The Story of Us. Our recent home-schooling experiences have taught us the value of history told in unique and creative ways. We keep recording these programs and getting sucked in by the “I-never-knew-that” factor upon which these types of series seem to be built.

Yet despite the flashy reenactments and deep-voiced cinematic narration, there’s still no substitute for first-hand experience.  My children learned this on a recent family trip to Logan Jr. High School, the historic institution where my wife attended kindergarten, first, and second grades.  I should immediately point out that my wife is in no way historic.  The school, however, is.  In fact, it’s not even a working school now, but rather a community center safely in the hands of local preservationists.

Logan Jr. High School is an unassuming, ancient structure with tan rock walls and hardwood floors that bare witness to years of young feet finding their way through life. Thanks to the afore-mentioned preservationists, almost every detail of this facility is still in tact, right down to the trophies displayed proudly in glass cases along the main hallway.  Fading class photos chronicle a legacy of neatly posed children sitting in ordered rows of desks. Of the few classrooms, most are large and designed to accommodate more than one class at a time. According to my wife, her second grade classroom and its teacher were shared by an entire other grade – at the same time.

The large rooms still have all the trappings, including the manual pencil sharpeners and chalkboards of solid and dashed parallel lines.  But perhaps the most intriguing fixtures are the small hallways hidden behind each of the classrooms.  These narrow spaces, called cloak rooms, are lined with wall hooks and low shelves.  Designed for quick one-way traffic, cloak rooms facilitated the in and out rush of children as they hurried to beat the bell or were saved by it.  It’s not so odd, even now, to find an area of a classroom devoted to coats and books.  But this space was different.  It’s placement, it’s design, it’s feel were all oddly reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie.

I’ll spare you the true historical facts surrounding the school.  Suffice to say that it housed more than one generation of the local community.  Even older family members touring with us remarked several times how much smaller things were than they had remembered as a child.

As we strolled through the dark halls (apparently the preservationists are also energy conservationists), my wife began to laugh.  She told our girls about a particular morning when she decided NOT to go gentle into that good school.  After being dropped off, she cried and kicked and screamed and employed all sorts of unorthodox diplomacy.  Her teacher, unyielding, tightened her grip and hauled her into the school.  My wife’s subsequent protests turned to kicking which resulted in the unfortunate flight of one of her shoes.  The flight ended when the shoe struck the principle in the forehead.

As she laughed, she told us that neither she, nor her teacher, nor the principle were laughing at the time.

She could have shared that story sitting in our living room.  But now my kids have touched and smelled and felt what it was like for their mother to be a kid in school.  They’ve walked those halls, seen those pictures, and heard those stories, even as they stood in the very spot where that history was made.

And so, on a Sunday afternoon, in a little town from which we get the name of our third child, our family gained a true understanding of, and perhaps even an appreciation for, one episode of The Abbotts: The Story of Us.

I have a print hanging on my wall by Steve R. Skipper called “Up Where We Belong.”  It depicts (of course) coach Gene Stallings in the triumphant moments just after Alabama’s dramatic win over Miami in the 1993 National Championship game.  All week, this painting has lived in my peripheral as I have read about the demise of yet another Alabama coach. 

Now, let me stop right here and provide a disclaimer of sorts.  I did not graduate from the University of Alabama.  In fact, I never attended school there.  Here’s one better.  I’ve never even been to a game in Tuscaloosa.  (Collective gasps from my fellow Roll Tide fans have just decreased the world’s oxygen levels.  Be on the lookout for another book by Al Gore.)

But I remain as I have always been, a member of the crimson guard when it comes to who I support each Fall.  The reason why this makes sense in spite of my lack of official ties to (T)he university will most likely not be clear to anyone outside the Southeastern Conference.  And that’s OK.  It’s not important that you understand why I have a tattoo of Big Al on my right butt cheek, just that you know I do.  (I really don’t.)

End disclaimer.

Now, I’m not what you might call a “serious” football fan.  Don’t get me wrong, I love it.  I watch a lot of it, much to the chagrin of my two daughters who would be perfectly happy watching “The Suite Life of Zach and Cody” for the rest of their lives.  But I couldn’t name the starting offensive lineup for Alabama or any other team for that matter.  But that’s the great part about football in the South.  It’s not so much about the plays and the statistics as it is about the legacy and the legends.

Unlike many of my friends, I’m kind of sad to see Mike Shula go.  I can’t say I agreed with every play he called.  I can’t even say I agreed with most plays he called.  But I loved the fact that he was a Bama boy.  How poetic would it have been for a guy like that to build his coaching legacy at his alma mater.  The problem, I suppose, is that it takes more than an alma mater to build a legacy.  You actually have to win a few games, especially against Auburn.

So why do I care?  I had absolutely nothing to do with the success of any Alabama team since the existence of the program.  Yet, because of the emotional stake I’ve invested in this team, I somehow feel the right to act as a shareholder, voting an unofficial “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” at every turn.  This gives a whole new meaning to “arm chair quarterback.”  The Crimson Tide owes me nothing, nada.  Yet, I need something great with which to identify.  I need that print glowing upon my wall reminding me of the time when “we” did it.

A few years ago, after a loss to Tennessee ended our current streak in the series, my pastor (who did actually attend the University of Alabama) commented from the pullpit that we shouldn’t worry.  It would not be long, he assured his congregation of mostly orange and white, before The Crimson Tide was back on top of the mountain.  Then he stopped as if to reconsider.  “What am I saying?” he asked with his hands turned up.  “We’re Alabama.  We ARE the mountain.”

So to the mountain, the trustees and button-pushers in Tuscaloosa, give us another legacy.  Give us another print to hang upon our walls. We are depending on you to provide us with the greatness we so earnestly seek, yet never seem to find in our own lives. How can we live vicariously through the successes of an organization to which we hold no real affiliation without a new legend, a new legacy?

There are thousands, dare I say millions, of us who long to return to that place where we ourselves have never actually been, that mountaintop way up high, up where “we” belong.