Welcome Home

         A young Billy Newell's first construction job was to lay out and pound the very road that the Devil himself parades on. If you've ever lived in Prattville or traveled through it on the way to Birmingham or Panama City, you don't think twice about hell fires or stop to take a picture. Imagine the conversation of a family from Maryland, on their way to their beach home in Seaside, passing by the wooden words “Go To Church Or The Devil Will Get You!”, and for the first time in a long time praying to God not to break down. These Yanks come through our parts wanting a passport and phrasebook, and some are unlucky enough to actually need one. We laugh as the one State Trooper on patrol sniffs out the foreign license plates on the road, barely going 5 over. Behind the wheel, Mr. Cleaver curses at Sgt. Gamble for this very reason who barely listens over scratching his gut and the swishing spit pool of his chew filled mouth. This ticket will be the trooper's revenge somehow for all the big and little problems in life, and The Cleavers forever think of us as a hostile people continuing our fight. They will say we are bitter about the war, because we still fly the flag high over Clanton, but we aren't. Books call it the Stars And Bars, but my grandfather called it our cross to bear, and told me that history repeats itself only if you forget it. Something very true in that. We aren't known for our reading, but we do remember an awful lot. Like our past, our promises, and our manners. Years later when Billy Newell bought the land to build his sign, it wasn't to scare off company, it was to invite them in the only way he knew how.