![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I went shopping for a toilet seat on Sunday afternoon. I rather expected the choice to be easy and limited, but was surprised by the range of nearly indistinguishable choices. $5, $10, and $25: is the $25 one really five times better than the $5? Eventually i made a choice, and the address of the Comfort Seat company caught my attention: 3249 Moody Parkway, Moody, Alabama 35004
I've often been on small highways in the southeast as a child and teen, wondering as i passed the houses, "What do these folks do for a living?" This address recalled those speculations to mind, and i could imagine someone pulling out of their driveway lined with flowerbeds striped with plantings of pink and white petunias and heading off to the toilet seat factory in the hazy summer dawn. "It's gonna be a scorcher." I easily imagine a quite pride in the work. I know i'm romanticizing to some extent, but i think of the rural Carolina folks i knew, the parents of classmates, folks at church, and i don't think it's a stretch.
Google Maps showed me Moody AL: it's a bit up valley from Birmingham, AL, in the tail-end folds of the Appalachians. I put the Google Peg Person on the road where the address landed me. Google's cameras came through in summer. The street address algorithm wasn't quite right so i had a wander a bit to find the Jones Stephens Corporation buildings. I spent some time being disappointed. There was a couple buildings with a shared driveway and "A-1" signage that didn't look like much. I had a hard time imagining that being the location of a nationwide distributor. Across the street was a storage unit facility. My romantic speculations turned sour, as i imagined some family scion moved off to the big city, who had decided to outsource all the manufacturing and for some reason kept the address -- but it was simply a mail drop. But a little further down the road was the type place i'd imagined: the great big grassy lawn between the state highway and the nondescript factory, concrete drive with a familiar curve, brick signage with a circle of "landscaping" around it. Simple pride.
I've often been on small highways in the southeast as a child and teen, wondering as i passed the houses, "What do these folks do for a living?" This address recalled those speculations to mind, and i could imagine someone pulling out of their driveway lined with flowerbeds striped with plantings of pink and white petunias and heading off to the toilet seat factory in the hazy summer dawn. "It's gonna be a scorcher." I easily imagine a quite pride in the work. I know i'm romanticizing to some extent, but i think of the rural Carolina folks i knew, the parents of classmates, folks at church, and i don't think it's a stretch.
Google Maps showed me Moody AL: it's a bit up valley from Birmingham, AL, in the tail-end folds of the Appalachians. I put the Google Peg Person on the road where the address landed me. Google's cameras came through in summer. The street address algorithm wasn't quite right so i had a wander a bit to find the Jones Stephens Corporation buildings. I spent some time being disappointed. There was a couple buildings with a shared driveway and "A-1" signage that didn't look like much. I had a hard time imagining that being the location of a nationwide distributor. Across the street was a storage unit facility. My romantic speculations turned sour, as i imagined some family scion moved off to the big city, who had decided to outsource all the manufacturing and for some reason kept the address -- but it was simply a mail drop. But a little further down the road was the type place i'd imagined: the great big grassy lawn between the state highway and the nondescript factory, concrete drive with a familiar curve, brick signage with a circle of "landscaping" around it. Simple pride.
Tags: