I know I mentioned Atmore, Alabama, on here just last week, and it probably comes as much as a surprise to me as it does to you, but I have to give it another mention here today. Atmore is a tiny town, population of 8,000 soaking wet and shrinking everyday. My parents still live there; Dad still runs his business as best he can, mostly by taking on jobs from neighboring towns like Canoe, Flomaton, and Brewton. Atmore does have one advantage in that it’s located within sixty miles from two fairly sizeable cities: Mobile and Pensacola. But being this close has its disadvantage also. People tend to drive to those cities to shop, leaving the local merchants with slim-pickings for customers. This very fact caused the closure of a Kmart last summer. The city does have a Super Freds and is probably one of the last places on earth with a Piggly Wiggly.
Usually, there is little or no real news that comes out of Atmore. Most of the crime there is of the petty variety, with an occasional murder, a kidnapping, or a drug bust to keep the natives chatting in the hardware stores. During Christmas, my mom claimed that Atmore “has a growing gang problem.” I’m not quite sure what the gangs of Atmore do exactly and I couldn’t get much of an explanation from Mom. Even she saw the humor in what she said. From time to time, I still like to give the local paper an online viewing to see what is going on. They don’t seem to update the site that often, so I usually resort to a google news search. Again, I usually find more news about a person with the last name of Atmore than I do about the town, but today I was left staring at this:
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Mary Kate Gach wants to stop the man who killed her daughter from posting graphic details about the murder on the Internet.
Gach filed a $40 million lawsuit in Montgomery Wednesday alleging that from his prison cell on death row at Holman Prison in Atmore, convicted murderer Jack Trawick published on the Internet "graphic descriptions" of his crimes and given advice on ways to commit rape and murder. The Web site has offered for sale "souvenirs" including pictures of Trawick and copies of letters he has written, the lawsuit says.
Ok, so this really doesn’t have much to do with Atmore, per say. But you see, Atmore is home to two prisons (three if you count the work release farm). Holman is Alabama’s primary maximum security prison and the location of death row. When I was a teenager and still lived there, the execution of a prisoner was an event. Alabama’s first electrocution after it reinstated the death penalty happened right after my family moved to town. I remember staying up late that night in hopes of seeing the lights dim. They never did.
