Phenix City also boasts Idle Hour Amusement Park – you can take a miniature train from downtown into the hills and roller-skate, bowl, and swim. There is even a little zoo there with bears and lions and monkeys. All of this mixed with dozens of churches, Christian and civic clubs, and one of the best hospitals in east Alabama make Phenix City an ideal place for the family.

Not to mention the world-famous nightclubs, clip joints, and brothels. Phenix City is probably known best for its whores.

We have only the bawdiest of burlesque down on Fourteenth Street. Many of the acts come in straight from Nevada or Tijuana, showing off women who can smoke cigarettes and cigars from their privates and dish out cut-rate favors in back rooms. Perhaps that’s the reason we are the chosen nightspot for GIs in from Fort Benning and the overworked businessman visiting Atlanta or Columbus.

Folks come from all the United States for our games of chance, too. But don’t expect a winner; here in Phenix City every pair of dice is loaded and every stack of cards marked. And complaints? Yes, sir, we deal with complaints with speed in this Southern town. Usually, unfriendly words from outsiders are met with the point of a pistol or the blade of a knife slicing across your throat before being dumped through a trapdoor directly into the swirling waters of the Chattahoochee.

But don’t let that worry you. Most of the joints – the Hillbilly Club, the Atomic Bomb Café, the Bamboo – are more than gambling halls. Almost all are equipped with back rooms with skinny metal beds, a pillow or two, and stained mattresses. You could take your pick from the B-girls and the whores and dancers out on Fourteenth Street and out on Opelika Road, where the motor courts and trailer parks all work on an hourly rental.