by Berl Colley
Here are three tours that we haven’t talked about very much in past articles.
On Sunday, July 4, 2004, ACB tours will be going out to Birmingham Southern University to visit their environmental center. The university is sponsoring environmental work in two venues. First, they are utilizing unwanted plants and other life forms to develop interesting, sensory-pleasing botanical gardens. We will be spending about an hour walking through this unique outdoor experience. Then we will go over to the center where ACB tourists will see how staff and students have taken items that we tend to throw away and made useful items or interesting design work. The center also has a small area dedicated to the history of bikes. There is one story slide that simulates what it would be like if you were a little bug and were flushed down a toilet. Now isn’t that something that you all have wanted to do?
The Alabama history tour will be on Tuesday afternoon. We’ll go out to Bessemer, Ala., and visit the Bessemer Hall of History. This is an old railroad depot that houses a large number of items from the early days of Alabama. You will want to be looking for the museum’s ghost. He is friendly, but shows up sometimes when he isn’t expected. While I visited this museum, the bell that hangs on the front door started ringing. There was no train going by, no breeze going through the building and there was no one coming in the door. Was that the ghost? After leaving the museum, we’ll drive by three plantation homes, stopping to tour one of them. We will end up at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park. This is where a lot of the iron used by the Confederacy during the Civil War was made. We will take a 15-minute train ride around the property, learning about the area. Then we will tour the ironworks museum where we will be able to see examples of the products that were produced on these grounds. As we leave, we will stop at the general store for soft drinks and/or souvenirs.
The final tour at this year’s convention will be a visit to the comedy club, Stardom Theater, the evening of July 10, in Hoover, Ala. This accessible club is known as one of the best in the South. We will be having dinner followed by a comedy presentation. I hope that the name of the entertainer will be available before the June issue goes to press.
Please don’t forget about our tours on July 2. The all-day tour will go to the Space and Rocket Center outside of Huntsville, then over to the Ivy Green plantation where Helen Keller was raised. We will have a Southern dinner at the Belmont House. After dinner, we will go back to Ivy Green for a presentation of “The Miracle Worker” in the small outdoor amphitheater. Please note that this tour will be limited to the first 43 requests.
That same afternoon, we will have the first of three civil rights tours. We will visit the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the Civil Rights Institute and Statuary Park, where there are carved scenes of activities in Birmingham in the 1960s, when Bull Connors, the city’s chief of police, used police dogs and other tactics to try and quell civil rights for blacks.
Make your hotel reservations at the Birmingham Sheraton, (800) 325-3535 or (205) 324-5000.