By: Alex Wright
“Night falls on the avenue, what’s a sober mind to do to find love in a war town? Another Rocket City Breakdown..”
A number of years back I remember going out and having a couple of drinks with my friend Rita who made a comment about Huntsville, the northern Alabama city that we live in, being a war town. Which is 100% accurate, and I’m sure has been used to refer to Huntsville for decades, but I’d never really put that into words or full perspective to call it that until I heard her say it. I’m sometimes slow to the draw.
Huntsville is part of the military industrial complex thanks to the Redstone Arsenal and several government contractors around town that build bombs and rockets and other death devices. Additionally, we are home to NASA, which combined, makes us the “Rocket City”.
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with this place because my family moved to Huntsville from Sheffield, Alabama when I was a kid in the mid 90s. Little to my parents’ knowledge, I was escaping a situation that no 10 year old should be dealing with. So Huntsville was sort of a safe haven for me to a certain degree.
However, as I got older, there was nothing to do here, so as a teenager it became my goal to get out as quickly as I could. Later, I learned about Operation Paper Clip and the city’s history of welcoming war criminals – which should have perhaps been unsurprising given the state and region’s racist history, that we were led to believe we were so far removed from.
Until you get older and understand linear time a little better. Eventually learning that’s not the case, it’s not been so long ago and the hate has only spread – or more accurately, it’s been all over the country all along and people’s true selves are coming out.
Please note, this is my experience and privilege as a white man – people of color learn that this place has an underlying evil sooner and younger than I had to, for their own survival.
I eventually found a community of people that were like me. Each of us weirdos, nerds, outcasts in our own ways – but loving ones. We found our way to lift each other up and encourage one another.
There was a love that I had for this place because it had brought us all together at the times we needed.
This only continued even more into my twenties as I moved from the county into the city with a group of friends and kickstarted and continued a lifelong dance together. I still had plans to leave eventually as Huntsville was never where I intended to end up, but boy do I love my family and friends and they kept/keep me here for a lot longer than I thought I’d stay.
When it finally came time for me to leave the first time, it was those close relationships that were hard to let go of as I searched for something more, not the place.
Time does what time does.
People come and go.
Friendships grow and wither.
Some come back while others don’t – and that’s okay.
The ones truly connected are always growing together even if they’re not necessarily in the sun at the same time. Then when they get to be, there’s something even more special about their bloom.
I moved to Olympia, Washington for a dream sequence that lasted around 4 years. I had spent years fantasizing about the Pacific Northwest and what it would be like to live there and I was right about a lot of it. I was also wrong about some of it – including the naive thought that there would be less racism there. Instead there were still cops shooting unarmed black teens, neo-Nazis making their way into town, and large trucks with confederate flags for some reason? You can’t even claim the bullshit “heritage not hate” there.
I made a few friends but had a hard time truly connecting with people or finding “my” community the way that I had in Huntsville. Which, I understand, that takes time. Still it did make it difficult to not have that connection.
So, to my detriment, I searched for it in a number of bottles and developed something of a drinking problem. This only worsened as the relationship that I’d followed to the other side of the country ended and I was left feeling alone, broken, and isolated.
After a little time on the road, I found my way back to the “Rocket City”, although it was not the same one I left. There’s a lot to love about this place and the way it’s grown over the years. There’s also a lot to be less fond of.
There was still a darkness here and in my own self that I was not ready to deal with, so I tried to drink it away. Something that’s very easy to do in Huntsville. No surprises, that didn’t work. Turns out you have to face the stuff you’re trying to drown or it will keep dragging you down with it.
Eventually, I hit a wall in my life and decided cold turkey on a Tuesday morning, waking up hungover on a busted mattress in the middle of my shitty apartment’s living room that I was going to quit for a while. I was tired of feeling like trash.
I didn’t tell myself it would be forever at the time. “Just as long as you can do it,” I told myself. That will be 7 years ago in September 2026.
It’s not always easy and this place seems to drive people toward it. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a random micro-brewery. However, I know that going back to the sauce isn’t actually going to fix anything for me.
It might briefly numb the pain but it’s not doing any healing. Sometimes it’s better to feel something painful but real than it is to feel something pleasurable, even if it hurts.
Some things are really difficult to run from and the struggles tend to pop up no matter where you find yourself hiding out. I’ve found it’s better for me to face them head on rather than keep running and waiting for whatever it is to attack out of nowhere.
Until you face it, no matter where you go, it’s bound to follow or already have residency.
Having my family and so many of my friends close by, even if I don’t see them as often as I’d like, is enough to keep me here for now.
I know Alabama gets a bad rap, and often rightfully so, but it’s also a beautiful state full of beautiful people that are being held down by things outside of our control.
I don’t know if this will be where I eventually see my final sunset, but there are worse places to watch one than the empty church parking lot on the side of the mountain I live at the bottom of, or the cemetery a few blocks over, or behind the Saturn 5 pointed at the heavens.
ALEX WRIGHT CONTAINS MULTITUDES 