Florida and Alabama: A tale of two cities

Sun staff writer Chris Curry (the journalist, not the local real estate salesman) completed months of in-depth research for this analytical comparison of Florida and Alabama (the states, not the football-crazed universities).

Tourist attractions

Florida: Nothing draws them in like Disney World. But the place hasn’t been the same since it got rid of that last bit of subversive fun: Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Now, it’s “Three’s Company” without Larry or The Who without Keith Moon, or the 1970s Oakland Raiders without...everybody.

Alabama: If Disney was in Alabama, Nick Saban would make the seven dwarfs stay after the park closed to run gassers because their line didn’t protect Snow White.

True Alabama tourist attractions don’t come touristy. What’s wrong with that? Absolutely nothing.

The state’s best may be the circa 1863 whiskey bottle tombstone of William T. Mullen in Clayton, Ala.

Legend has it that Mullen’s wife came up with the tombstone as a form of posthumous humiliation because he wouldn’t quit drinking.

True humiliation would have come if Mullen had been around for a wine cooler tombstone.

Dessert

Florida: The Legislature named key lime pie the official state pie in 2006. I heard it required a special session, but it’s good public policy in the end. A great slice of key lime is as much a part of the Florida Keys’ lifestyle as hurling off the side of a fishing charter in 8-foot waves.

Alabama: Debate rages to this day whether the best state dessert is pecan pie, peanut butter pie, sweet potato pie or the Alabama mud cake.

Why pick just one? Let’s make it the Alabama Chocolate-pecan Jumbo Christmas Fudge Pie. Consult a doctor before eating.

Writers

Florida: Again, why settle on one? Hemingway worked on “For Whom the Bell Tolls” while living in Key West. The underbelly of the Miami mob scene never seemed so fun as in the books of crime novelist and sometimes resident Elmore Leonard.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings took home the Pulitzer Prize for “The Yearling.” Zora Neale Hurston became a literary legend for her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

But nothing can match the powerful prose of inoffensive Jacksonville-born singer Pat Boone’s autobiography “Twixt Twelve and Twenty” except his second autobiography, “New Song,” and maybe his third autobiography “Pat Boone’s America — 50 Years.”

Alabama: It’s a tie (so former Auburn coach Pat Dye would be satisfied) between childhood friends Harper Lee (“To Kill A Mockingbird”) and Truman Capote (“In Cold Blood”).

If you grew up in their neighborhood, you probably would have had no trouble guessing which two kids wouldn’t be watching football games on Saturday.

State birds

Florida and Alabama are home to war eagles, hawks, ospreys, falcons and the coolest of coastal birds — pelicans. Yet the northern flicker is Alabama’s state bird and the mockingbird is Florida’s winged mascot.

These are not the birds of two Southern football states. It would take a flock of them to sully a sidewalk. It’s time for change. Change we need.

Give us a pterodactyl or a condor or at least that dude in the hawk suit on the old Buck Rogers television show — something.