POWERGRAMS

32 32 Hank's Sweet Home MUSEUM SACRED GROUND CIRCA 75 YEARS AGO By Chuck Chandler A smiling man from Michigan bursts through the door at 127 Rose St., his eyes moving quickly from side to side before settling on curator Leona Simmons. He hands her a $5 bill and almost runs into the next room. "You're walking on the same floors Hank walked on," curator Margaret Gaston says. "I know," he says. "I'm awed." More than 5,000 people every year veer 2 miles off Interstate 65 to reach "Butler County's largest tourist attraction." One in 10 visitors annually is from outside America; the sign-in book in the past few days has names from 18 states, Canada and Holland. "People ask don't I get tired of listening to Hank all day," Simmons says as his songs play nonstop at the Hank Williams Sr. Boyhood Home & Museum in downtown Georgiana. "No, I haven't gotten tired of it in 22 years here. I like it. Nobody could write a song like Hank." Fans of the music legend flock to Butler County, driving the bumpy back roads around his birthplace of Mount Olive and other significant sites mentioned in the books and movies that chronicle Williams' short life. They can walk the same streets he walked in many Alabama cities, but gone are his birthplace house, his first house in Georgiana and most of the honky-tonks where he sang. What is enticing about the white raised cottage built by Thaddeus Rose is that Williams seemingly first "Saw the Light" there from age 7 to Simmons holds concert poster.

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