David Murdock Column: On when the familiar becomes unfamiliar
It all started innocently enough. It wasn’t one single thing that did it, either, but rather a string of small experiences. Last weekend, I moved some books around the house to make room for … well, more books. All booklovers have a pile of “TBR” books — books “to be read” — that we’ve never quite gotten around to reading.
The books I was moving were TBR. I’d never quite gotten around to them yet. I hadn’t been quite sure where some of them were. Anyway, I kept picking up books and thinking, “There it is!” So, pleasant enough afternoon.
Later in the day, I ran across an article about amateur astronomy in which the writer had referred to himself as an expert in the “northern mid-latitudes” view of the sky. After reading, I wondered, “Now exactly what is my latitude, again?”
It’s been a long time since I dragged out my inexpensive little telescope, to gaze at the night sky in awe. There was a time when I knew the exact latitude of my home, but it’s been long enough that I didn’t recall it.
The first time I needed to know my latitude, I had to figure it out on a globe. This time, I figured it out on Google. There it was in seconds: Attalla lies at 34.0218° North (latitude) and 86.0886° West (longitude). That’s far more precise than my estimate on a globe.
The trouble started shortly thereafter.
I got to wondering — never a good sign — and the next thing I know, I’m Google-searching the climate of Attalla. The website Weather Spark summarizes it thus: “… the summers are long, hot and muggy; the winters are short, very cold and wet; and it is partly cloudy year round.” Then it lists averages temperatures, rainfall and that sort of thing.
I’ll quibble with the characterization of Attalla’s skies as “partly cloudy year round,” but then I started thinking — also not a good sign. They’re right. Question: How many times have I gotten all psyched up to view some astronomical wonder in the night sky, only to be blocked by clouds? Answer: So many that I joke about it in my journal.
Then — and here’s where I went down the rabbit hole — it occurred to me to check Wikipedia for “Alabama climate.” Oh, no. That innocent little search cost me an hour or two of my life. The first line of the article read that we’re “classified as humid subtropical (Cfa) under the Köppen climate classification.” The what, now? What’s this “Köppen climate classification” thing? Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, it was a hot link. I clicked it, and I was done for the rest of the evening.
\First of all, Wladimir Köppen, the climatologist who devised the said classification system? Never heard of him, but the article on him was interesting. Next, the classification system itself? That caught my attention for a while, too. The part that really engrossed me, however, was the “humid subtropical (Cfa)” category. The article on that lists all the places around the world — none of which I’ve visited — that share Alabama’s climate.
Of course, now I have a new TBV — “to be visited” — list.
The thing about it all that really got to me, though, didn’t happen until the next morning.
Driving to work, this strange feeling welled up inside. My little corner of Alabama wasn’t quite as familiar as it had been the night before. As I drove from my home in Reece City to downtown Attalla for breakfast, the familiar landscape seemed somehow unfamiliar, as if I’d never been here before at all. It was like I was seeing it all for the first time.
Then, I remembered something a friend of mine from over in Gadsden had said once. After driving around out in Duck Springs, across Big Ridge from me, he said that it looked a lot like a wine-growing region in Italy he’d once visited. He’d never been out in Duck Springs before, and it seemed to surprise him.
That was several years ago, and about a year ago, I ran across a little tidbit of Attalla history that sort of shocked me. One of the reasons that the Army built Camp Sibert where they did during World War II was because the topography here resembled that of Italy, which they knew they were going to invade. So, they wanted to train the troops in a similar environment, to acclimate them to the conditions they would face.
Now, of course, the part of what was Camp Sibert now contained within Attalla’s city limits is “Siberton,” but many of us still call it “Camp Sibert.” That sometimes confuses younger people who have never heard of the history of that section of town.
It’s a “strange new world” in which we live, to borrow one of Shakespeare’s lines, made stranger every day … if one knows how to work that magic. I’ve heard it said that folks ought to visit their hometown at least once as if they were tourists, and everywhere I’ve been this week has seemed so … unfamiliar.
Unfamiliar … and delightful.
Delightful … but still a very strange feeling.
David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions expressed are his own.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock on a new view of his hometown
