In 1919, Zelda wrote a letter to her fiancé, Scott, describing a tomb in Oakwood Cemetery which she tried to enter on a dare. She writes,
“I’ve spent today in the graveyard … trying to unlock a rusty iron vault built into the side of the hill. It’s all washed and covered with weepy, watery blue flowers that might have grown from dead eyes – sticky to the touch with a sickening odor – The boys wanted to get in to test my nerve – tonight – I wanted to feel ‘William Wreford, 1864.’”
Scott found the imagery so powerful that he worked it into his novel, This Side of Paradise. He writes of the protagonist,
“On an impulse he considered trying to open the door of a rusty iron vault built into the side of a hill; a vault washed clean and covered with late-blooming, weepy watery-blue flowers that might have grown from dead eyes, sticky to the touch with a sickening odor. Amory wanted to feel ‘William Dayfield, 1864.’”
The rusty tomb described by Zelda is that of Samuel Wreford, a one-armed merchant who was born in England in 1817 and died in Montgomery in October, 1866. Wreford famously stood strong as Union forces closed in on Montgomery, keeping his “One-Armed Man’s Dry Goods Store” open for business during that time. (Becoming bourgeois: merchant culture in the South, 1820-1865 By Frank J. Byrne).
Wreford is said to be buried in a steel coffin shaped like a canoe. The tomb is built into the hillside near the old railroad tracks. It is large enough to accommodate eight people, but Wreford is the only one in it.
You are looking for a small geocache that rests nearby in its own little coffin. You won’t have to pick a rusty lock to get to the log, but it may “test [your] nerve.”
Enter the cemetery from the last entry road for the old section of Oakwood on your left (driving away from the City) before you cross the old railroad bed. You can park at about 32° 22.996'N 86°17.796'W, so a short hike of about 200 feet is necessary to get to the cache.