Day 4

This day we got in the car and drove out to Fairhope, some 30 minutes away on the east shore of Mobile Bay. It’s the town where Rett and I would have spent the night on the way into Mobile if the ferry hadn’t worked out, but we would have seen essentially nothing of it besides the inside of our motel room, so Mom and Dad enabling us to do a driving+walking tour was a far superior way to visit.

After first checking out the waterfront parkland, we circled up (yes, “up”, Fairhope is unbelievably hilly!) to the downtown area. The high-end shops and art galleries, visited by people in their sharp-pressed clothes and trailing expensive fragrances through the air behind them, showed that we weren’t the only people for whom Fairhope was recommended as a Mobile day-trip.

But Fairhope’s soul is birthed of weirdos and nerds: the town was founded as a utopian colony to put a novel taxation theory into practice, and then continued to attract thinkers and creators throughout its history. Like most cultures driven by weirdos and nerds, its relative uniqueness compared to the bland homogenization of 21st-century America has created an atmosphere that has now been “discovered” by the one-time prom kings and queens trolling its streets, even if they don’t understand why the town feels attractive, and their presence is likely co-opting its culture and unintentionally flattening it into the rest of the American pancake. Luckily we were soon to discover a still-flowering creation of a couple of those weirdos and nerds, one that would leave those cultural freeloaders just as baffled and confused as they would be if they ever truly listened to the verses of “Born in the USA”.

When we were walking downtown, Rett had noticed the words “storybook castle” on a tourist map posted in a shop window. There’s no way we were leaving Fairhope without seeing that, so an hour later we parked outside the small compound (containing multiple storybook houses), and tentatively approached up the driveway, not quite sure how much we were trespassing, but drawn in to view the fantastical architecture. Five minutes after that, we somehow found ourselves inside Mosher Castle, being offered beers from the fridge by its owner/builder, Dean Mosher. We let that offer slide past, just as I let slide past his references to Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow sitting at his living room table, right along with his claims to have his artwork hanging at various museums (up to and including the Smithsonian). Obviously you need to be a bit crazy to build a fairytale castle for your family to live in in 1980s Alabama, so the fact that the fantasy extended to his tall tales wasn’t really a surprise.

Except, the more we talked with him, the more “normal” he seemed, and his exaggerations morphed into the plain truths of someone who has simply led a remarkable and unusual life. Which is perhaps the reason he invited us in: he saw something kindred in our spirits, after Rett told him of our remarkable and unusual lives (and, also enthusiastically gushed at wanting to live in his house). Because while Dean and his wife Pagan are amazingly open and inviting to random strangers coming onto their property, I don’t get the feeling that many get casually invited inside. And in fact I felt bad for Pagan (who is just as remarkable as Dean), since she was busy tending the planting beds and looking for help from her husband while he was happily “distracted” by us for half-an-hour!

We’ve probably seen half of the storybook houses in the country by now (Dean was very aware of the cluster we saw in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California), but these were the first where I could see the DIY-possibilities, with simple tricks like “asphalt shingles, but multi-colored” being surprisingly effective, and clear similarities to Rett’s dad’s self-built house (with the “Fantasy” knob simply cranked up from “Whimsical” to “Literally From a Fairytale”). Dean was even happy to share some of the construction details when Rett inquired.

It was a completely unexpected experience that hadn’t even been on our radar until we arrived in Fairhope, and would have been a highlight even without the special personal connection. Dean and Pagan are inspiring for their embrace of unconventional choices, but even moreso for their embrace of strangers visiting their home, hoping to be inspired by their unconventional choices!

At night we returned to more Mobile Mardi Gras parades. This time as experienced old-hands, we really just “stopped by” on our walk to a late dinner celebration at The Noble South. So instead of waiting for an hour for the parade to reach us, we just walked upstream on Dauphin Street until we reached the parade, watched the two krewes roll by, and then continued two more blocks with nearly-perfect timing to reach our dinner reservation.

The Pharoahs had a cool Egyptian theme on all their floats, while the Conde Explorers mostly reused floats from the Conde Cavaliers who we had seen parade two days earlier. The Explorers are the first “integrated” (aka, non-segregated) parading group in Mobile, founded in…2004 (yikes), so they get a pass for their groundbreaking, and for being relatively new and thus lacking the funding of the older, bigger clubs. And honestly it meant that we could actually look at the Conde floats; some felt completely new to us (we had totally missed papier-mâché Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” float the first time), since apparently the catching-of-things completely distracted us from looking at the things from which the throws were thrown. Since we were going to a restaurant afterward, we made a conscious effort to catch little to no stuff this time, though we still had moments of weakness where we couldn’t resist the urge.

Day 6

On our drive across The Causeway to Fairhope, we had passed the World War II battleship USS Alabama anchored in the Bay. I had no interest in touring it, but the rest of the family did, so over a couple days they convinced me to come along.

They also have the submarine USS Drum on display, and that’s part of what dragged me along, because as a 10-year-old Cub Scout, I had been lucky enough to spend a night on her sister ship, the USS Silversides, when it had been docked at Navy Pier in Chicago, and I thought it would be interesting to compare my memories of its spaces and sizes to my present perspective.

But obviously we boarded the huge battleship first, and…we were still exploring its decks by the time the park closed. And I didn’t mind at all, because the Alabama far exceeded my expectations, and I’m incredibly thankful to my family for dragging my dumbass along.

Visitors are given free reign (to everything that isn’t locked off), so we started out on the main deck, and then worked our way up the many levels of the tower. That decreasingly-small spaces of that section had similarities to my submarine memories (or even just ferries we’ve been on lately), but were fascinating nonetheless. We spent so much time focusing on the nooks and crannies and curiosities that we were almost surprised to take stairs downward and discover that there was also something under the main deck. And not just “something”, but suddenly cavernous spaces in which to move freely, with decks below that and decks below that, enough to contain all the sailors of this floating city along with all the “businesses” to sustain them. Ice cream machines, a barbershop, and a dentist office were some of the more “Disney World” elements, while targeting instruments, surgeon’s tables, and jail cells reminded that the sailors weren’t just living on this boat for fun. Basically if you’re interested in anything, you will be excited to find the “naval wartime” version of it down here. Sewing? Yep, there is a tailor’s room (in addition to a massive-scale laundry and pressing operation). Baking? Check out that mixer that looks just like a KitchenAid, except 100 times bigger! Movies? Yep, there is a film room stacked with whatever reels they could get their hands on (and a photographic darkroom too).

But beyond the fascinating views into how practicalities were taken care of in this impractical environment, I was strongly affected by the feel of the physical spaces themselves, similar to how I’ve been affected by unique man-made constructions like cathedrals or Meta’s Frank Gehry-designed headquarters building in Menlo Park (in fact, the linear, multi-level Meta offices aren’t far off from the shape of the battleship, and even have an accessible top “deck”!) In places like these, I feel like I’m exploring a virtual environment in a video game, but it’s real! The video-game atmosphere was also aided by the fact that my “crew” of four were the sole people exploring (and yes, sometimes running through!) the acres of steel-walled spaces. No crew I’d rather be down here with!

I have no idea how they sweep the ship at 5pm closing time to make sure no one is still down there, but it must take hours! Like the previous night, we transitioned perfectly from our entertainment/event to dinner, driving a bit further out on the causeway to Felix’s Fish Camp, a convincingly faux-ramshackle building that is actually a fancier restaurant than you would expect it to be. We weren’t fancy enough to be granted a windowside table, but we were smart (er, lucky) enough to time our arrival to see the amazing sunset behind the water and the cranes and the battleship before the fancy people even arrived and sat down.