It was nice in Tuscaloosa last Saturday, no football crowds bringing loud noise and rowdy behavior to the Capstone. But there was good music along the Black Warrior River at the city’s new amphitheater that Nancy and I thoroughly enjoyed.

It’s a great venue, seats just over 7,000, and was good enough to attract the Prairie Home Companion cast of National Public Radio and its host, Garrison Keillor, there to perform.

Keillor, who Nancy and I consider to be of our generation, our decade to be more specific, entertained a middle-aged-up audience for three full hours in weather than became more suited for blankets as the night engulfed us.

The cool weather was made more tolerable though as Keillor and the Prairie Home cast of musicians kept the air warm with singing, conversation and audience participation in the music. It was called the Prairie Home Summer Love Tour and ended Sunday night in Memphis.

It was a weekend void of Crimson Tide football fans as Tuscaloosa’s favorite team was off to Pennsylvania to return victorious over Penn State. But in the Tide’s absence, the audience along the waters of the Black Warrior was entertained in great style by the Prairie Home cast, including sound-effects man Fred Newman of just across the state line in Georgia. Fred, I believe, may be the person who will succeed Garrison when he retires in a couple of years.

We’ve been fans of the variety show for years and have had the opportunity to get to know Garrison and Fred on a couple of Prairie Home cruises.

Moundville,

an Alabama treasure

The trip to T-Town afforded us the opportunity to make our first visit Moundville State Park. Many fourthgrade classes in the state tour the park every year. When we were in the fourth grade the tours didn’t exist so it was something we had both missed as children.

So we headed to Moundville Saturday morning as Auburn was preparing to host Mississippi State and the Tide was rolling into State College, Pa., to do battle with Penn State. Alabama and Penn State have now played each other 15 times and, with its win last Saturday, Alabama now leads the series with 10 wins to five for the Nittany Lions.

I had the opportunity to watch perhaps the most exciting game of this intersectional series, the 1979 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. I was in the end zone about 20 rows up when the Tide made its famous goal-line-stand to win a national championship by a score of 14-7 against the No. 1 ranked Lions and provided artist Daniel Moore with his first best seller.

The Moundville Archaeological Park is a National Historic Landmark. The 320-acre park contains 26 prehistoric, Mississippian culture-era Native American earthwork mounds, burial sites and artifacts and a museum along the Black Warrior River just south of Tuscaloosa.

Moundville, occupied by about AD 1120, was a regional capital of the Mississippian civilization. By 1150, the site had become a civic and religious center, with a population of around 1000. The height of Moundville’s Mississippian influence came between about AD 1200-AD 1450. By 1300, most of the residents had left Moundville.

And a lesson in Alabama culture

Jim’s Barbeque, located on Highway 82 between Montgomery and Centreville is a favorite stop for Tide fans who take that route to Alabama games. We stopped at about 2 p.m. on the way back home Saturday to get a “to go” order. 

The place was almost empty so I walked to the “sit-down” area to catch a few minutes of the Auburn-State game which was on TV.

Shortly after I began watching the game the picture suddenly went blank, and after a few “sputters,” up came the pre-game show for the Alabama-Penn State contest. I walked to the front and asked if we could get the Auburn game, which was in the fourth quarter, back on.

It was politely explained to me that the TV was set so that when an Alabama game begins, everything else goes off. I got my barbeque first then standing there under my UNA cap, uttered in mock defiance: “Hey man I like Alabama too but I’ve got Auburn plus seven, so War Eagle to y’all.”

Bob Martin is editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent. Email him at: bob@montgomeryindependent.com.