It’s Rooster Day in Demopolis, Alabama, the second annual festival commemorating the famous Rooster Sale of 1919. The auction of over 200 roosters and one hen, donated by Helen Keller, was to be the local contribution toward a bridge across the Tombigbee River, outside “the City of the People.” It would be the last link in an overland highway from Savannah, Georgia, to San Diego. The sale garnered pledges of more than $200,000, though accounts say many were never honored. I encourage you to search the subject, and be sure to search “Tombigbee flood Rooster Bridge towboat.”
When I was a young whelp in the early 80s, I hitched on with The Jackson Daily News in Jackson, Mississippi. As I was a native of east Alabama, on the Georgia line, I would travel home several times a year to visit family. This journey took me through west Alabama on U.S. Highway 80, then a narrow two-lane road from the Mississippi line to Selma, a distance of about 100 miles. This was before the rapacious scalping of southern woodlands for the export of wood chips, and for some distance forests would grow close along both sides of the right of way. It was like something out of Hansel and Gretel. Right in the middle of this stretch of “the widows’ highway” was the original Rooster Bridge outside Demopolis. It was a rickety iron structure high above the water that carried only one lane of traffic. There actually was a stoplight at each end. If it was green, it was safe to proceed; it it was red, you waited for oncoming traffic to clear. I managed to survive many a crossing at all hours of the day and night, and it was always a macabre highlight of the long drive.
That entire stretch of road is divided four-lane now, and the old Rooster Bridge is gone, replaced by a wide modern span just upstream, also named “Rooster Bridge.” A historical marker that stood at the old bridge has been moved to the new, and it details the unusual history of the rooster sale and the ambitious plan to “span the ‘Bigbee with cocks.” Really. It says that, cast in bronze on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 80. You can look it up.
165 responses to “Rooster Day, 2017”
Did you hear about the young lady who was always going off the subject?
She was a damsel in digress.
Great story. Highway 80 rather than 82, though. I remember that section of road very well.
Jimmy I LOVE your ribald sense of humor, possessing one myself!!!
Wait, that’s why we’re all here and not there, right?
This seems worthy of an A & J strip some how.
I bought a new pillow top and moderately expensive mattress for the Eufaula B and B.
It got delivered while I was hiding from fleas in motel and help set it up.
Found they’d left plastic wrapper on and put pad, linens on over. I slept on it, remarked on firmness to furniture store. They said no, heavy pillow top. I blamed plastic cover.
Took off to take off the plastic and make up correctly, found they put bed upside down and I have been sleeping on bottom and entire bed upside down!
I cannot lift the bed of course.
…“span the ‘Bigbee with cocks.” Really?
Even Siri scolds me if I use “that word”. Even though it is a perfectly good word, of course.
Jimmy, here in Michigan, we have lots of bridges…and the remains of many more. It’s not possible to look at those vestiges in the water or on the banks and not wonder about the people who built them and used them. There’s a bit of concrete bridge abutment in the park near my house. Though close to a trail, it’s far enough off it that no one comes there. It’s buried in the undergrowth. There’s no sign of a road having led to or from it at that point of the river, but I do know there was at least one farm near by. I like to stop there during a walk and sit awhile, watching the water and the trees, drinking tea from a thermos, and thinking about the people who walked and perhaps rode over it. And how someday, someone else will do the same thing I’m doing.
It’s still dense woodland up here in Somerset County, Maine. Population Density 2010: 13 people per square mile.
200 roosters and 1 hen? Boy howdy…that must have been one exhausted hen!
So… here’s the story of the towboat. There’s a link to the pictures it references at the end of the story:
http://gryder.com/istories/towboat/story/
The pictures are amazing!
http://lookingback.blogs.tuscaloosanews.com/files/2010/07/881108.jpg
The old bridge Jimmy is talking about.
And more: https://bridgehunter.com/al/marengo/rooster/
TruckerRon, saw this on FB and thought of you: https://scontent-dft4-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/12654337_910686522372281_5330363335115259341_n.jpg?oh=5ea8ba28a167124687a93851e809bcb6&oe=595ACA9A
Mark:
Spent some online time on those back-country roads, in the 10:07 post. Did not see evidence of any economic land use. Is the area mostly grazing? None of the woods look more than 50-70 yr. old, so presume it was lumbered, say early 20th c. Kudzu, I think, on some utility poles, but wasn’t sure of much overgrowth on the rest of the trees and such. Haven’t been in real country in the Deep S. since early teens in the ’40s, except for a family winter auto trip over Christmas ’73, in and en route to NOLA and Houston. Miss the crawfish etoufee.
Peace,
Good signs, Mark! What made trucking interesting were the differences in state laws regarding how trucks could use lanes and flashers. About 95% of the time I’d be in the rightmost lane — the exceptions being avoiding lanes going where I wasn’t wanting to go, stopped emergency vehicles on the right side, and obeying signs to use the left lane because the ruts from trucks in the right lane(s) were too deep.
Yet even the rules regarding emergencies on the right varied in some spots… the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain was infamous among truckers for having “disabled” vehicles on the right shoulder; if you went to the left lane to give it extra room, a waiting trooper would give you the ticket a mile or so later.
California was the only state I drove in where using your flashers for non-emergency purposes earned you a ticket… some of the neighboring states required you to use them when a hill forced you to slow below 45 mph.
I swear, some of those pokey* left-hand-lane-Interstate drivers would not move over for one of these.
http://www.military-today.com/tanks/m1a1_abrams.jpg
*Not to be confused with “pokies”, of course
Where did Brigadoon go?
🙂 LOL Thanks Jimmy!
emb, from Wikipedia on Marengo County: The population began to diminish rapidly after World War II. People left the farms for manufacturing jobs elsewhere, particularly with the wartime buildup of the defense industry on the West Coast.[3] The movement of blacks out of Mississippi and other parts of the Deep South was considered part of their Great Migration, by which 5 million African Americans left the South from 1940 to 1970.
The former cotton fields were gradually converted to other uses. Some were used for pastures for cattle and horses, others for woodlands for timber, and others developed as commercial catfish ponds for farming grain-fed catfish.[3] Beginning in the 1960s industry began to move into the area; and the work force started to work in paper mills, lumber mills, and chemical plants.[3]
They had a large auto show at the Tulsa Fairgrounds today and I went. Very nice displays, both modern and classic cars/trucks. I took some pictures of two Ford Cobras that were there. If I can figure out how to get the pics on my computer I will post links here. My phone uses a new, non-standard USB plug and I don’t have an adapter for the old style port.
Back to bridges for a moment. One of the most impressive suspension bridges in the U.S. I have seen, or driven over is the Mackinaw Bridge connecting the Lower Peninsula of Michigan to the Upper Peninsula. 5 miles long entry way to entry way, 200 feet off of the water. Built under time and under budget in the late 1950’s. The bridge authority will even drive your vehicle across while you cower on the passenger side floor if it is too scary for you. A real thrill is riding it on a motorcycle on a rainy windy day with a passenger on the back of the bike. Of course a visit to Mackinaw City is not complete without visiting the Bridge museum over Mama Mia’s Pizza. By the way the pizza is real good too.
Did an eagle actually take the trouble to nail that fox squirrel, or is this another roadkill? For those of you from the Deep S. or the Atlantic Coast, this is the standard Midwestern tummy pelage of fox squirrels, hence the Latin ssp. name, Sciurus niger rufiventer. People in S. MN, the Dakotas, NE, IA, MO, IL, IN, etc. commonly call them ‘red squirrels’, a name better reserved for Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, the Amer. red squirrel, which is much cuter than any fox or gray sq. De gustibus, etc. Peace,
http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles
Have driven that bridge a few X, w/ young family. Didn’t cower, but didn’t enjoy it either. Glad the weather was nice. Peace,
Mark, are your computer and the phone both Bluetooth capable? That’s how I’m getting photos onto my laptop.
Phone is, not sure about the computer. At the time I bought it, WiFi was what I was looking for.
Mark, if it’s just one or two photos you should be able to email them to yourself, and then you can move them out of the mail onto your computer.