Goose Neck, Alabama

Goose Neck, Alabama. The very name of my hometown brought chuckles to outsiders. I can't tell you how many times I have hesitated to respond when asked where I was from. To utter the words Goose Neck to the sophisticated ones that I ran across once in a while was an embarrassment. I just knew that as soon as I mentioned this town's name to people, they would automatically envision trailer parks and townsfolk in overalls chasing chickens with hammers on the court house lawn.. Surely, they would assume that there were only 3 teeth among the entire town's population. "Goose Neck Red Necks". Ah, what a horrible reputation.

But, for most of the 707 of us that called this hole in the ground home, Goose Neck, Alabama was the best place in the world to live. We may not have had a Wal-Mart Super center that stayed open 24 hours, but we had our regular old Wal-Mart, alright. Who needed to shop at Wal-Mart at 3 AM any damn way? So, what we didn't have a big grocery store, or a mall, or even a McDonalds? All we needed was Sully's Shop-N-Save, Mrs. Dolan's (a clothing store that I think was really called The Closet, but we all called it by the owner's name), Jameson's BBQ, and of course, our regular old Wal-Mart. We were simple people. Who needed a Speedy Car Wash when we had a hose in the front yard?

Goose Neck wasn't full of buck toothed cousins that married one another. We had our well-to-do. We had a few filthy rich ones that lived on Lincoln Lane. The rich were mostly cotton or cattle farmers. Most of us middle-class owned our own businesses. The rest of the town either worked at Wal-Mart or Wellington Plastic Factory. If you live in northwest Alabama and take some sort of prescription drug, chances are that pill bottle you hold in your hand before swallowing your problems away was made in Goose Neck.