5:41 p.m. - 2005-05-10
Cross Garden
First of all, let me say a big hello *smooch* to my man, Dr. Bruce, who is off visiting his dad in Baltimore.
I really hate it when Bruce is gone. I don't know what to do with myself, and I wander around feeling like a ghost with no one to haunt.
And speaking of ghosts, I have retained a childhood fear of the dark, so I won't be sleeping for the next few days either. By the time Bruce comes back I should be a real prize to come home to...
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Here's a tiny travelogue from Hobbstweedle:
Last week we went to the beach! And on the way we stopped by a place I have been meaning to see since we landed in Alabama five years ago. I love folk art, and Alabama has some of the finest, including the beautiful Ave Maria Grotto which I need to rave about sometime. But there is another spot I had to see, a place more along the "hellfire and damnation" end of the folk art spectrum.
It's the late W.C. Rice's Miracle Cross Garden
Tucked away in a run down, "Open Pit Bar-B-Que!!" and junk car dealer type corner of Prattville, the Cross Garden is a testimony not only to one man's determination to save souls, but also to the power of many cans of spray paint and some old washing machine.
What can I say? In this case the photos are definately worth 25,000 of my totally inadaquate words.
This is a view of the main part of the cross garden. It's what you see by the side of the road when you drive up. Wow.
In case this photo is a tiny tad blurry, here's some close ups. Yup, these are old stoves and washers and big pieces of scrap metal and parts of cars.....
....and air conditioner condensers. Did you know hell is hot, hot, hot?!! And HOT!!!!
In true academic fashion, Bruce is pondering the question of what connection Mr. Rice was making between "rocks", "Jesus", and "blood":
Dare I say, there is just junk all over the place!! I think earlier on Mr. Rice tried to have bible verses, but then it seems like it degenerated into "Hot, hot, hot!" and "Sex pit".
Of course, like every good folk art site, there has to be a grave in there somewhere. This one is of Mr. Rice's grandmother, I believe.
Across the road are these little chapels:
As I was photographing them I noticed some really beautiful "Fairy" roses growing along the roadside. It really struck me (and here I'm going to wax philosophical - don't say I didn't warn you!) that these gorgeous tiny, positive, little roses were growing in the midst of all this overwhelming, stark, negative "you will go to Hell" stuff.
I don't really know how to explain the feeling I had. Ok, so I do know how to explain it but it's really corny sounding. What I felt was that those little tiny roses, growing there really bravely in the middle of all this negative stuff that was trying to scare people into repenting, those little roses were really doing more to glorify God than all the "Hot, Hot, HOT!!" signs in the world.
I started feeling sorry for Jesus. He seems to have all these grim suckers on his side.
And even though I admire Mr. Rice for his vision, and for being willing to put his vision out into the world (and Lord knows, it must have taken some guts to transform his land like that, even in the midst of Bible thumping 'bama) I really admire that little rose more. I think it takes fortitude and strength to put anything of beauty into this really pretty hideous world.
A rose among scrap metal. That's what I'd like to be.
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Ok, so on to the beach!!
It was somewhat uneventful. Usually I wind up getting a serious flare up of lupus when we're there and lay around moaning, but this time we sort of lollygagged our way down and it was much less stressful.
Spent Saturday at the beach. I wandered along looking for shells and kept noticing a large woman in a bikini walking up and down the beach talking to herself. As we were leaving I noticed this same woman with a man and a baby in a stroller. The woman was screaming.
"AHHHHHHH! It's a SNAKE!!!!"
There was, indeed, a snake. It was a garter snake, about two feet long. It obviously not thrilled at being screamed at, and was beating a path into the undergrowth.
"AHHHHHHHH!!!! Watch out for the BABY!!!" The woman continued to scream, even though the snake was long gone and the man had wheeled the baby down onto the asphalt.
"What kind of f*cking snake WAS that?!" she screeched when it was over. Bruce and I pretended not to notice the whole drama, and went off to our car. But for the rest of the weekend whenever something weird happened we'd look at eachother and say "What kind of f*cking snake WAS that?!"
When we weren't chirping out "Hot, Hot, and Hot!!" that is.
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