I see in the Spring Issue of Oxford American a series of articles about the Best of the South. If you don’t get this wonderful magazine, you are missing some tasty Southern writing. In this issue are a series of Odes to the Best Of The South of which one in particular stood out: An Ode To The Moon Winx Lodge Sign by Michael Martone. The old familiar visage from my rusty memory caught my eye long before I read the story and I stared at its allure for a long time. It looks as good as it did 30 years ago, which is more than I can say for myself.
The Moon Winx Lodge sign, erected in 1957 (on then – U.S. 11), gets more press than the motel gets patrons. Although the road is now called Alabama 215 and the busy travelers have long gone to interstate accommodations, the old place still stands in Alberta City against the industrial leftovers around it. The lodge itself has fallen into a state several levels below disrepair but the neon noir sign out front gleams fresh and inspires more than its share of verbiage by Southern writers.
You don’t just look at it, like a normal sign. It looks at you too. The moon has an eye out for anyone passing by. And like George Bush looking at Putin in Russia, it sees your soul. I shutter to think of what the old Moonface has witnessed. Generations of mental patients from Bryce Hospital stop to ponder its glare. Homeless people stop to inspect the classic neon. College students know it well and writers particularly are attracted to its Eisenhowerish old-schoolishness.
My wife and I, like so many people – including, obviously, the author of the Oxford American story – were college transients at the Capstone, which gave us our historical connection to the Moon Winx Lodge and its famous sign that shines a few miles west of Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama. We passed that sign many times in my grunt-brown Vega or her fire-red VW Bug, traveling over to Arby’s or IHOP in the late 1970s. From the picture I am looking at accompanying the wonderfully written article , the old Moon Winx sign is still as uniquely beautiful as ever.
Like the first time I drove past it in 1976 and turned around and parked and ogled it up close, my eye kept drifting from the words in the story back to the picture of the hypnotic sign, which. Darned nice piece of well-tended neon. Even though the joint has gone to seed and kudzu has apparently checked into a few rooms, the sign has held its own. Maybe there are vacancies inside, but there are none for the sign. Hotel California may have had its own song, but the Moon Winx Lodge has its own religion – and the magnificent neon is its symbolic, glowing talisman.
An Ode To The Moon Winx Lodge Sign weaves a tale about how that sign is one of the Best Things About the South. While I have my own list of Southern favorites like cathead biscuits wrapping south Alabama link sausage, Autumn football, late afternoon thunderstorm mist and dammed up rivers that give you an urge to fish and ski, I agree with Mr. Martone. The Moon Winx is up there on the list. Southerners have no shortage of Odes (like my Ode To The Smell Of Lighter Fluid Burning On Charcoal in the last blog).
If you’re ever down in Tuscaloosa (worth an Ode in itself), go by Dreamland and eat some ribs; walk the columned campus of the University and climb the balconies of Woods Hall; check out the geyser at Lake Tuscaloosa; then, around nightfall, take University Drive east toward Alberta City and look to your left. The Moon will be looking out for you.
