The afternoon before the show, he showed us around town. He pointed out the fifty-six-foot cast-iron statue of the Roman god Vulcan standing at his forge. He looms above the skyline holding a spear he has just made to the sky, reminding Birmingham of its history as a steel and iron town. When Jason was growing up, the spear used to be a torch with an electric light in it. If the torch glowed green, it meant there had been no traffic fatalities in Birmingham that day. If it glowed red, there had been at least one. We mused as to what a Birminghamian was supposed to do with that information.
