Coal | Southerly

Your Southern Stories

“The Cahaba is the last of central Alabama’s wild rivers, lined by longleaf pines and flowing freely over spider-lily-cloaked shoals. Dams destroyed rivers like this all over our state, but the Cahaba flows on, a fragile relic of a nearly obliterated past.”

—Charles Miller, Birmingham, Alabama

“Those houses were backed against a crick, which was backed against an unidentified Appalachian Mountain. Wide and green. Near vertical, in my childhood mind. The street behind 806 has since been completely demolished. It was cheaper for the city to get rid of the structures than it was to reimburse tenants for the recurring flood damage. Each time I look at the house on the screen a little fire lights inside me: how close I was to such vertical beauty; how I never took a few extra steps in to explore; how I yearn—with no discernible reason—for that home.”
—Christa Iwu, Louisville, Kentucky