Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Labor Day Weekend, Part I

I considered trying to squeeze the whole weekend into one post, but it would have taken too much thoughtful editing, and I'm pretty worn out from all the fun!  So Part II tomorrow.

On Saturday we went to a local dive for Mickey Mouse pancakes, then to the farmer's market for summer fruits and veggies.  Owen is sampling a hard pear in the photo on the right.


My favorite part of Saturday was taking Owen to explore some abandoned railroad tracks just east of downtown.  For you non-locals, Birmingham has an interesting history in the mining, iron, steel and railroading industries.  From what I hear, we never reached our potential as "the Pittsburgh of the South" because we had trouble being competitive: first with Andrew Carnegie (of the actual Pittsburgh) and his government connections and then with foreign imports.  Today, most of Birmingham's furnaces are gone, and we have a whole lot of railroad lines that lead to nowhere.

That's a railroad spike in Owen's hand in the left photo.  We made off with 5 of them.  Is that theft of government property?

1 comment:

Grandma DD said...

Oh what fun!! I miss my railroad track days as a kid. Wish I could have been with you all!! Hugs and Kisses!! 2 days :o)