Archibald: What do you show your guests, Alabama?

This is an opinion column.

I was in Marion, Virginia, for a family gathering over the weekend. My brother, a devoted Marionite, arranged a tour of The Lincoln Theatre, a restored 1920s movie house billed as one of the last remaining Mayan Revival-style theaters in the world.

I’d never heard of Mayan revival, much less seen it in the flesh. And I’m still not sure how that giant painting of Robert E. Lee qualifies as Mayan or revival. But hey, I live in the South. I’ve seen that mug of his everywhere from barstools to barbecues to barbershops. And more than a couple of Bibles, unless I’m confusing him with Moses.

The theater was a fun, quirky place in that town in the shadow of Hungry Mother State Park. It made me think.

Just a day before I’d spoken to visitors in my own home town. They were staying a few days in Alabama and wondered what they should see. I told them about barbecue in Decatur and Huntsville and Birmingham, museums in Huntsville and Montgomery, and perfunctory things that sounded like a chamber of commerce brochure. But I could see in their eyes they knew my heart wasn’t in it.

I asked myself where a proper Alabamian should take their guests.

There really are well-known tourist spots that ought not be missed. The civil rights trail in Birmingham, including Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Kelly Ingram Park and the Civil Rights Institute, captures a critical moment in the history of Birmingham and the world. The Equal Justice Initiative’s museums and parks in Montgomery are a punch in the gut and the conscience, in the very best way. Huntsville’s Space & Rocket Center is a blast, the Orion Amphitheater there is hot, hot, hot, and Alabama’s beaches are like sugar.

But that stuff is too easy. What I really want to show my visitors are quirky things. Things that may not explain who we are or why we do what we do, but demonstrate it pretty well.

I do take my visitors to the touristy thing closest to me, the statue of Vulcan atop Red Mountain in Birmingham. Sure, it says a lot about the town – how it was formed in a unique geological spot with easy access to all the ingredients needed to make steel. But mostly because it’s weird. Vulcan, let’s face it, is a giant Roman god in the heart of the Bible Belt, but that’s not all. He is the largest cast iron statue in the world, because cast iron is a really dumb thing to make a statue out of. And he is a blacksmith, a god of the forge, who is naked beneath his apron.

I have been an amateur blacksmith. I’ve built a forge or two, though I am no god of it. But I can say, unequivocally, that you need to get dressed before you bang on hot steel. Vulcan’s naked bottom, though, is worth showing off.

I take my visitors to Niki’s West, not for the food so much as the experience. The steam table is a wonder of the modern world, or perhaps the mid century world, and it is arguably the most diverse and representative place in all of Alabama. And since the farmer’s market is just across the street, I take my guests there too.

I want them to see my town on the ceiling of the spectacular Alabama Theatre, in the art of Joe Minter, in the music of Sun Ra.I want them to drive to Forkland, where a funny old guy named Jim Bird – may he rest in peace – turned a pasture into an art gallery in a bizarre but beautiful display of love for his wife.

When people ask me what they should see in my town or my state I often gape, because I don’t know where to begin. It depends on who they are, what mood they are in and how long they have. Choices are hard.

I want them to see the primordial mists of Dismals Canyon – they can pretend to be Hobbits there, as a friend said – for there is no wild place north of the Okefenokee swamp that has made more of an effect on me. I want them to drive over the hills in northeast Alabama to see Lake Guntersville sprawl before them, in what I contend is the most beautiful view in all the state. I want them to climb Mount Cheaha. I want them to canoe the Cahaba. I want them to fish one of a million quiet ponds, early in the morning, as the mist rises off the water.

I want them to travel the Black Belt, from Selma to Demopolis and beyond, to feel the essence of Alabama, to see its beauty and feel its sorrow and understand where we came from and where we need to go. I want them to head up to Greensboro to the Safe House Black History Museum, a little house where Dr. Martin Luther King sought refuge in the days before his assassination.

You see my problem. I cannot stop once I begin.

This place is so full of history and food and music and art and sound that it is always a surprise.

There’s Fame Studios in the Shoals, where the Swampers found that funk, and the nearby Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Music seems to bubble up from everything in the Shoals – though the region’s most famous native, Helen Keller, was deaf and blind. It is said that the Tennessee River sings a tune of its own, and that’s why a guy named Tom Hendrix’s spent his life moving millions of pounds of rocks to honor his Native American ancestors.

I wish I could take the world to see it.

To Rickwood Field in Birmingham and the booth at the Bright Star in Bessemer where Paul “Bear” Bryant used to hold court.

To the American Legion in Fairhope, with its Tiki Hut and – as aficionado J.D. Crowe puts it – “the Bubble Guy making bubbles the size of a Volkswagen from the pier and fabulous sunsets almost every day of the week.”

To the town of Monroeville’s production of To Kill A Mockingbird, at the right time of the year. To the Nick in Birmingham, for Rock & Roll like it was meant to be. To Mentone. Period. To that weird unclaimed baggage place in Scottsboro, which I admit I have never set foot inside.

I am not equipped to tell a visitor where to go. I’d recommend the Boll Weevil statue in Enterprise, and Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, if you can find it, to understand the lengths some people will go to to maintain power and status quo.

I’d tell them to drive by the Cahaba River bridge on U.S. 280 where Klansmen once gathered to plan bombings and murders – a part of the civil rights struggle that is not marked, but is as chilling as any museum.

I’d tell them to go to Decatur and eat barbecue at Big Bob Gibson’s and at Whitt’s down the street, and decide for themselves.

I’d tell them to go to Africatown, but to stop along the way at a barbecue joint they’ve never heard of. I’d tell them to stop at Bates House of Turkey in Greenville, because where else can you find a house of turkey – other than the Alabama Statehouse, I mean.

Which is a place all our visitors – and residents – should go. If only to understand our history, and contemplate our future. And question why those things have to look just alike.

People ask why I love this place. It is not because it is perfect. I think, sometimes, that I love it because it is not.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner at AL.com.