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In the 1930s, Carl Carmer, a professor from New York, arrived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to teach at the University. He was there six years, and spent a lot of time traveling the state and collecting tales that he compiled into a book titled Stars Fell on Alabama. The Foreward ends with this:

Many an Alabamian to this day reckons dates from “the years the stars fell” — though he and his neighbor frequently disagree as to what year of our Lord may be so designated. All are sure, however, that once upon a time stars fell on Alabama, changing the land’s destiny. What had been written in eternal symbols was thus erased — and the region has existed ever since, unreal and fated, bound by a horoscope such as controls no other country.

Let those who scorn such irrationalities explain this state that is another land in ways they prefer. They may find causes economic and sociological quite as incredible as these fables and much less interesting. But few of those who know this ground and those who live on it will deny that the curious traveler will find his journeying amply repaid here. The Congo is not more different from Massachusetts or Kansas or California. So I have chosen to write of Alabama not as a state which is part of a nation, but a strange country in which I once lived and from which I have now returned.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015RN199K/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1