“Are you for Alabama or Auburn?”
That’s the first question you’re asked when you move to Alabama. Not your name. Not where you’re from. Not what you do.
Only one thing matters. Do you root for the Crimson Tide or the Tigers. Does your blood run crimson or orange and blue.
I know because I moved there at the dawn of the 1970s when my father was transferred to Birmingham. When we went to the church the Sunday after Thanksgiving that year, Auburn having beaten Bama the day before, the Tide fans sat on one side of the church and the Tiger fans on the other. There wasn’t much conversation afterward.
And it’s probably that way this week as Thanksgiving will once more take a backseat to the Iron Bowl in the Heart of Dixie, even though the game is no longer played at Birmingham’s Legion Field in the shadow of the steel mills, which is how it got to be named the Iron Bowl in the first place.