Growing up in Huntsville, I heard the Alabama state motto was
"Thank God for Mississippi", in every category where we were ranked 49th, Mississippi would invariably be ranked 50th.
All in all, Huntsville was all right by me, what with NASA, Army Missile Command, and all that high tech stuff. It was a great place to be during the Apollo years and the schools weren't too bad, either. It wasn't until later that I learned everyone didn't study orbital mechanics and physics in high school. A lot has changed since I grew up there. I visited there last year and hardly recognized the place.