Roy Moore’s Amore: Reading The News and Lolita on Election Day

Alabama’s Coosa River Valley is the home of Judge Roy Moore, leading Republican candidate in the special election for the U.S. Senate. Looking at the valley on Google maps, the back waterways branch away from the winding Coosa River running from Weiss Lake to the Gulf of Mexico. Tucked among two Willis Creeks and a Black Creek is Gadsden, the county seat of Etowah County, an all American burgh of short brown and gray buildings, streets of Chestnut and Broad. Gliding through them in Google street view, green hills pimple the distance

If you click your way down a side street you see the neglected sidewalks have sunk into the concrete. The whole town seems vaguely neglected and sunken. The population has dropped in the last 30 years. After 19th-century trading glory, the place declined like most American river towns have. Industries left in the 1970’s and by the late 80’s Gadsden was listed as one of the worst places in the country to live. The pictures you see now show cold leftovers from the set it and forget it American days. Other than a graphic design and photography shop in what must have been an old mechanics garage, nothing looks to have changed much from the Carter years. Nestled beside the photo shops new white paint job is a barn colored wall with an old sign printed on it. It reads Mater’s Pizza and Pasta Emporium, in big carnival script.