Harper put her hand under the old water pump at Ivy Green, and I watched her do the math in her head. This is the spot. This is where Annie Sullivan held Helen Keller's hand under the water and spelled the word into her other palm until it finally meant something. Harper didn't say anything for a while. Then she said, "It's smaller than I thought," which is what everybody says, including me in 1996.
I grew up in Florence, about an hour west of our house in Decatur, and the Shoals are still the place I think of as home. Just about every fourth grader there takes a field trip to Ivy Green. Mine was in the spring of 1996, and I remember three things: the pump, a pencil from the gift shop and a boy who got carsick on the bus.
Harper has spent a lot of time in the Shoals. It's where her grandparents live. But she had never seen it as a visitor, so on the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend, with Ben and me both off, we drove over to do the things people drive over for. My parents met us for dinner.
Ivy Green and the studio
Ivy Green is in Tuscumbia. It's the home where Helen Keller was born in 1880: a white main house built by her grandparents in 1820, the small cottage beside it where she was born, and the grounds with big old trees, boxwoods and that pump. Admission came to a little over $20 for the three of us. A guide walked us through the house, and Harper asked more questions than I have heard her ask in a month of school. In summer there's an outdoor production of The Miracle Worker on the grounds. We didn't stay for it this time, but it's on my list for next July.
Then we crossed into Sheffield to Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, a plain little building on Jackson Highway that, according to our guide, used to be a coffin showroom. Starting in 1969, a house band of local session musicians recorded there with a long list of famous people. The guide told the stories, played a few recordings in the room where they were made and let us stand where the band stood. The tour for three of us was about $50.
Ben knew every name on the wall. Harper knew none of them, until the guide played a song she recognized from Ben's car, and she was outraged to discover she had heard of something old. That was my favorite moment of the day.
When to go: Ivy Green is outdoors as much as indoors, so in summer, go in the morning. Save the studio for the afternoon, when you will be glad of the air-conditioning. My one tip: the night before, read your kid the short chapter in Helen Keller's own autobiography about the day at the pump. It takes ten minutes, and it changes what you're looking at when you get there.
Dinner by the river
My parents met us at a catfish place on the Tennessee River in Florence that they have been going to since I was in middle school. We got a table by the window and watched the light go gold on the water while Harper sat between her grandparents and told them, in great detail, about the coffin showroom.
My dad ordered the same thing he has ordered for thirty years. My mom asked Harper what she learned, and Harper said, "That Mom went on the same field trip when she was my age and only remembers a pencil." That was fair.
We split the check, which took longer than dinner, because my dad does not believe in splitting checks. I won this round. Then we drove home east with the sun behind us, and Harper said the Shoals were "better as a tourist." I'll take it.
What it cost
- Gas: about $12 (around 110 miles round trip)
- Ivy Green admission for three: about $22
- Muscle Shoals Sound Studio tour for three: about $50
- Our half of dinner by the river, with tip: $74
- A studio T-shirt for Ben, who earned it by knowing every song: $25
Total: about $183. One day in my hometown, seen through an 11-year-old who now has opinions about recording studios.
