Fairhope, Alabama's Southern Comfort

Memorist Rick Bragg finds forgiving soil along the brown sand stretch of Mobile Bay

  • By Rick Bragg
  • Photographs by Matt Eich
  • Smithsonian magazine, June 2009, Subscribe
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Fairhope French Quarter
"It would be a lie to say I feel at home here," says Bragg (the Fairhope French Quarter known for its shops and galleries). "It is too quaint, too precious for that." (William Starling)

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Rick Bragg

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I grew up in the Alabama foothills, landlocked by red dirt. My ancestors cussed their lives away in that soil, following a one-crop mule. My mother dragged a cotton sack across it, and my kin slaved in mills made of bricks dug and fired from the same clay. My people fought across it with roofing knives and tire irons, and cut roads through it, chain gang shackles rattling around their feet. My grandfather made liquor 30 years in its caves and hollows to feed his babies, and lawmen swore he could fly, since he never left a clear trail in that dirt. It has always reminded me of struggle, somehow, and I will sleep in it, with the rest of my kin. But between now and then, I would like to walk in some sand.

I went to the Alabama coast, to the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, to find a more forgiving soil, a shiftless kind that tides and waves just push around.

I found it in a town called Fairhope.

I never thought much about it, the name, till I saw the brown sand swirling around my feet under the amber-colored water ten years ago. A swarm of black minnows raced away, and when I was younger I might have scooped one up. This is an easy place, I remember thinking, a place where you can rearrange the earth with a single toe and the water will make it smooth again.

I did not want sugar white sand, because the developers and tourists have covered up a good part of the Alabama coast, pounded the dunes flat and blocked out the Gulf of Mexico and a large number of stars with high-rise condominiums. You see them all along the coast, jammed into once perfect sand, a thumb in the eye of God. What I wanted was bay sand, river sand, colored by meandering miles of dark water, a place tourists are leery to wade. I wanted a place I could rent, steal or stow away on a boat.

A town of about 17,000, Fairhope sits on bluffs that overlook the bay. It's not some pounded-out tortilla of a coastal town—all tacky T-shirt shops, spring break nitwits and $25 fried seafood platters—but a town with buildings that do not need a red light to warn low-flying aircraft and where a nice woman sells ripe cantaloupe from the tailgate of a pickup. This is a place where you can turn left without three light changes, prayer or smoking tires, where pelicans are as plentiful as pigeons and where you can buy, in one square mile, a gravy and biscuit, a barbecue sandwich, fresh-picked crab­meat, melt-in-your-mouth beignets, a Zebco fishing reel, a sheet of hurricane-proof plywood and a good shower head.

"Now, you have to look pretty carefully for a place on the coast to get the sand under your toes without somebody running over you with a Range Rover," said Skip Jones, who lives on the same bayfront lot, just south of Fairhope, his grandparents built on in 1939. "We may be gettin' to that point here, but not yet."

It would be a lie to say I feel at home here. It is too quaint, too precious for that, but it is a place to breathe. I have a rambling cypress house five minutes from the bay and a half-hour from the blue-green Gulf—even a big cow pasture near my house is closer to the waterfront than I am—but every day I walk by the water, and breathe.


I grew up in the Alabama foothills, landlocked by red dirt. My ancestors cussed their lives away in that soil, following a one-crop mule. My mother dragged a cotton sack across it, and my kin slaved in mills made of bricks dug and fired from the same clay. My people fought across it with roofing knives and tire irons, and cut roads through it, chain gang shackles rattling around their feet. My grandfather made liquor 30 years in its caves and hollows to feed his babies, and lawmen swore he could fly, since he never left a clear trail in that dirt. It has always reminded me of struggle, somehow, and I will sleep in it, with the rest of my kin. But between now and then, I would like to walk in some sand.

I went to the Alabama coast, to the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, to find a more forgiving soil, a shiftless kind that tides and waves just push around.

I found it in a town called Fairhope.

I never thought much about it, the name, till I saw the brown sand swirling around my feet under the amber-colored water ten years ago. A swarm of black minnows raced away, and when I was younger I might have scooped one up. This is an easy place, I remember thinking, a place where you can rearrange the earth with a single toe and the water will make it smooth again.

I did not want sugar white sand, because the developers and tourists have covered up a good part of the Alabama coast, pounded the dunes flat and blocked out the Gulf of Mexico and a large number of stars with high-rise condominiums. You see them all along the coast, jammed into once perfect sand, a thumb in the eye of God. What I wanted was bay sand, river sand, colored by meandering miles of dark water, a place tourists are leery to wade. I wanted a place I could rent, steal or stow away on a boat.

A town of about 17,000, Fairhope sits on bluffs that overlook the bay. It's not some pounded-out tortilla of a coastal town—all tacky T-shirt shops, spring break nitwits and $25 fried seafood platters—but a town with buildings that do not need a red light to warn low-flying aircraft and where a nice woman sells ripe cantaloupe from the tailgate of a pickup. This is a place where you can turn left without three light changes, prayer or smoking tires, where pelicans are as plentiful as pigeons and where you can buy, in one square mile, a gravy and biscuit, a barbecue sandwich, fresh-picked crab­meat, melt-in-your-mouth beignets, a Zebco fishing reel, a sheet of hurricane-proof plywood and a good shower head.

"Now, you have to look pretty carefully for a place on the coast to get the sand under your toes without somebody running over you with a Range Rover," said Skip Jones, who lives on the same bayfront lot, just south of Fairhope, his grandparents built on in 1939. "We may be gettin' to that point here, but not yet."

It would be a lie to say I feel at home here. It is too quaint, too precious for that, but it is a place to breathe. I have a rambling cypress house five minutes from the bay and a half-hour from the blue-green Gulf—even a big cow pasture near my house is closer to the waterfront than I am—but every day I walk by the water, and breathe.

It is, as most towns are, a little full of itself. Some people call it an artist's colony, and that is true, since you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a serious-faced novelist. And there is money here, dusty money and Gucci money. There are shops where ladies in stiletto heels pay Bal Harbour prices for outfits that will be out of style before low tide, but these establishments can be fun, too. I like to stand outside the windows with paint on my sweat pants, tartar sauce on my T-shirt and see the shopgirls fret.

It had to change, of course, from the sleepy town it used to be, where every man, it seemed, knew the tides, when the air smelled from big, wet burlap bags of oysters and the only rich folks were those who came over on a ferry from Mobile to watch the sun set. But everybody is an interloper here, in a way. Sonny Brewer, a writer, came here in 1979 from Lamar County, in west central Alabama, and never really left. It was the late-afternoon sunlight, setting fire to the bay. "I was 30 years old," said Brewer. "I remember thinking, ‘God, this is beautiful. How did I not know this was here?' And here I stay."

It is the water, too. The sand is just a path to it.

Here are the black currents of Fish River, highways of fresh and salt water, big bass gliding above in the fresher water, long trout lurking below in the heavier, saltier depths. The Fish River empties into Weeks Bay, which, through a cut called Big Mouth, empties into Mobile Bay. Here, I caught a trout as long as my arm, and we cooked it in a skillet smoking with black pepper and ate it with roasted potatoes and coleslaw made with purple cabbage, carrots and a heaping double tablespoon of mayonnaise.

Here is the Magnolia River, one of the last places in America where the mail is delivered by a man in a boat, where in one bend in the river there is a deep, cold place once believed to have no bottom at all. You can see blue crabs the size of salad plates when the tides are right, and shrimp as big as a harmonica. Along the banks are houses on stilts or set far back, because the rivers flood higher than a man is tall, but the trees still crowd the banks, and it looks like something from The African Queen—or the Amazon.

Then, of course, there is the bay. You can see the skyscrapers of Mobile on a clear day, and at night you see a glow. I pointed to a yellow luminescence one night and proclaimed it to be Mobile, but a friend told me it was just the glow of a chemical plant. So now I tell people Mobile is "over yonder" somewhere.

You can see it best from the city pier, a quarter-mile long, its rails scarred from bait-cutting knives and stained with fish blood, its concrete floor speckled with scales. This is where Fairhope comes together, to walk, hold hands. It is here I realized I could never be a real man of the sea, as I watched a fat man expertly throw a cast net off the pier, at bait fish. The net fanned out in a perfect oval, carried by lead weights around its mouth, and when he pulled it in it was shining silver with minnows. I tried it once and it was like throwing a wadded-up hamburger sack at the sea.

So I buy my bait and feel fine. But mostly what I do here is look. I kick off my flip-flops and feel the sand, or just watch the sun sink like a ball of fire into the bay itself. I root for the pelicans, marvel at how they locate a fish on a low pass, make an easy half-circle climb into the air, then plummet into the bay.

I wonder sometimes if I love this so because I was born so far from the sea, in that red dirt, but people who have been here a lifetime say no, it is not something you get tired of. They tell you why, in stories that always seem to begin with "I remember..."

"I remember when I was about 10 years old, maybe 8, my mother and sisters and I went through Bon Secour and some guy in a little boat had caught a sawfish," said Skip Jones. "And I thought this thing can't be real—like I felt when they walked on the moon."

A lifetime later he is still looking in the water. "Last year I went out on the walk one morning at about 6 o'clock, and I looked down and there were a dozen rays, and I looked harder and they were all over the place, hundreds of them. Well, we have a lot of small rays, but these had a different, broader head. And I went inside and looked 'em up and saw that they were cownose rays that congregate around estuaries. I called my friend Jimbo Meador and told him what I saw, and he said, ‘Yeah, I saw them this morning.' They came in a cloud and then they were just gone. I don't know where. I guess to Jimbo's house."

I would like to tell people stories of the bay, the rivers, the sea, tell them what I remember. But the best I can do is a story about cows. I was driving with my family to the bay, where a bookseller and friend named Martin Lanaux had invited us to watch the Fourth of July fireworks from his neighborhood pier. As we passed the cow pasture, the dark sky exploded with color, and every cow, every one, it seemed, stood looking up at it. It was one of the nicer moments in my life, and I didn't even get my feet wet.

Rick Bragg is the author of The Prince of Frogtown, now in paperback, All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man.


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I grew up in the lovely town of Darien CT. which is on the Long Island Sound. Now consider myself a Maryland girl, but I long for Fairhope. Two kids at Auburn University, perhaps another on his way....War Eagle! Hope to visit Fairhope again soon....who knows, maybe stay.

Posted by barb brown on March 12,2012 | 03:34 PM

I've been planning a move for a few years. Fairhope is at the top of my list. I've had enough of the northeast u.s. This article says it all...thank you!

Posted by pia louise on February 29,2012 | 03:31 PM

Fairhope is ok. It's pretty, yes, but way too many old people. I am not fond of old people.

Posted by Jacob M. on February 21,2012 | 05:30 PM

My hometown, Fairhope, AL. One of a kind!

Posted by Carla bullington on February 15,2012 | 05:14 PM

Thank you Rick Bragg! I moved to Fairhope from Cleveland, Ohio in 1977 and became a realtor here in 1993. I always wanted to live in a small town but never dreamed that I would move 1000 miles to do it! I now get to help other people with vacation rentals and home purchases and get to show them the magic of Fairhope!

Posted by Marilyn Taylor on February 15,2012 | 04:17 PM

Homesick for Fairhope

Posted by L Hollis on February 14,2012 | 11:15 PM

My parents have retired there and soon some family members followed suit. My brilliant mother researched and researched and came upon lovely Fairhope. One visit and I return a few times a year to visit them with my children. We've been researching real estate bc I would really like to retire there. Or at least move there with my family just in time to send the kids to the University of Alabama! Roll Tide!

Posted by Larissa on February 7,2012 | 07:31 PM

I am very interested in moving to Fairhope after a visit about a year and 1/2 ago.

There are 2 homes I am looking into right now. (and, unfortunately I am not there to see them firsthand) The time to buy is now and I do not want to pass it up, but not being able to actually "see" the properties or the surrounding areas, I just don't know which one to choose as they both look good on the advertisements from the realty companies. One is in ?Southland Place and the other is in River Mill.
Would anyone have an opinion to share regarding either of these subdivisions?

Thanks for any and all advice,
Carolyn

Posted by Carolyn Bazzell on January 23,2012 | 05:02 PM

During the past 25 years, my husband and I have lived on the East Coast (Maryland), the Midwest (Iowa) and the West Coast(we are currently living in Southern California). We're moving to Fairhope after the first of the year and are very excited about living there. My husband's job is bringing us to the area, but the small town lifestyle, slower pace and all of the amenities Fairhope offers are just as important to us as the fact that his work will also be there. The home town celebrations, small businesses, shops and restaurants, appreciation for the arts and civic pride evident there are all things we've been missing. We think Fairhope is unique and a very special place.

Posted by Donna Hankinson on December 13,2011 | 03:12 PM

The thoughts of Fairhope make my heart smile. My wife and I first visited this lovely place 5 years ago when she spent the summer there working for the State Department of Education. I came down for a weekend and we both thought we would like to visit. Over the course of these last few years we came down 3-4 times a year and decided this was the place we wanted to retire and live. We were blessed this past December to buy "our happy place", a cottage 7 blocks from the center of town. We have been moving a little each visit in preparation for our complete move this summer. We can not wait. I can not talk to folks about a dream come true without getting emotional. It is truly a happy place filled with people who are happy being there. Wonderful stories of people stopping by enroute somewhere and never leaving, or coming for a visit and returning to stay. A truly wonderful place.

Posted by Bob Grogan on October 25,2011 | 05:10 PM

As former full time RVers, we discovered Fairhope during our winter stays at the nearby Escapees RV Club Rainbow Plantation. Since we have literally traveled the entire country in our motor home, we had a good perspective on the kind of place we would like to live when the time came to "hang up the keys." Fairhope filled the bill -- the people we met, the location on Mobile Bay, the art and writers and history -- all met with our approval. We realized that many of the "old people" don't really care for all the "new people" moving into their town. But unlike so many new residents of a town, we don't want to change Fairhope in any way. We love it the way it is -- the concerts on the bluff, the art fairs and festivals, the challenge of finding a parking place. We hung up the keys a couple of years ago, and we haven't regretted our choice of Fairhope for a minute. If I could only write like Rick Bragg!

Posted by Carolyn W. Williams on September 11,2011 | 10:52 AM

What a wonderful picture of Fairhope!! Makes me want to be there again, today, right now!! Just love the atmosphere and all the wonderful memories Fairhope brings.It is a unique place where you might run into a wonderful writer eating breakfast with his wife at a little cafe that has been in business since 1945.I love the yacht I have seen on my last two trips, the one named "Never Enough", Fairhope, AL. and the note pad I bought that reads "If I can't stay in Fairhope, I'll just be there in my dreams."

Posted by Ginger Clifton on July 6,2011 | 04:11 PM

Best choice in places to live that I ever made. After a lifetime in the Northeast it is a refreshing change. I guess you could say that I'm now southern by choice, but not by birth.

Great and accurate write up. Thanks!

Posted by Dave Jamieson on May 13,2011 | 04:00 PM

Thank you Rick Bragg for painting a beautiful image of the place where I live.

It's true that we wished we could close a gate behind us, ever since I first moved here in 1978. Back then we purchased a home one block from Mobile Bay, in the "fruit and nut" neighborhood, for $30,000. And anyone with the money could have bought a dozen at that price. There were too many vacant stores downtown and no place to eat, get gas or buy groceries on Sunday. But living in Fairhope back then was still something to hold on to. My kids loved growing up with their feet in Mobile Bay and roaming town and beach at will.

It has certainly grown, too much many say, in the last 30 years, and not all of the development has been in keeping with the character of the old town, but a surprising number of new buildings have added real architectural character to some streets that were spartan at best.

I don't agree that planting lots of beautiful flowers downtown makes it "Disney World". Our costumed "characters" are real people who paint their own houses, make their own art, and cut their own grass, or they hire a local to do it for them. I can still walk on the PUBLIC beach and pick up driftwood by the sack full, fish and crab on public piers and walk knee-deep in Mobile Bay anytime I like. And even though the parking is not as plentiful as it once was, it is still free, that's right, no parking meters anywhere downtown.

Over the years I have met some wonderfully talented and creative people who call Fairhope home, and made many good friends here. Some are native Fairhopers, and some are expatriates from points all over the world. They all love Fairhope and strive to make it a better place to live. Thank you Rick for giving us the gift of saying it the way you do.

Posted by Dan Therrell on April 25,2011 | 07:16 PM




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