TIFTON — Next time I’m in Mobile, Ala., I’m changing careers. Going back to try my hand as a crane operator on a giant container ship as soon as Gulf Quest opens.

This is going to be a National Maritime Museum all about the Gulf of Mexico, with underwater dive trails and offshore drilling technology exhibits.

Controls to pilot towboats and satellite images of storms and clouds sound interesting too but those controls to operate a crane and actually – or will it be virtually? – unload gigantic containers entice me.

I like watching that happen for real in busy ports, but never imagined I’d get a chance.

Gulf Quest opens in the autumn of 2013 and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a partner. Shaped like a vessel headed to sea, the museum will have 90,000 square feet in three stories.

The city skyline is visible from one side of the vessel and the active port from the other.

San Francisco has a Maritime National Park which is quite lovely, and I’ve yet to reach the national maritime museums in Sydney, Australia, Antwerp, Belgium or Greenwich, England.

Mobile I can do.

Gulf Quest isn’t my only discovery there striking me as innovative and alluring.

The Centre for the Living Arts is too and I knew nothing at all before strolling through the front door.

Downtown Mobile with Cathedral Square, cast iron facades, architecture reflecting three centuries is a walk-about kind of city so discovering the unknown is quite likely.

Conti is the name of the street for finding this arts organization and the Space 301 galleries, and The Memory Project is the current creative happening that continues to December.

Nine months of investigating memory. Ever feel yours needs a little boost?

The work of seven artists is reason enough to go here, but special performance events add to their wonder; October is all about music and fashion, November is food and December is childhood.

New recipe every day on their web page in November. Wonder if I can remember to look?

Now remember: memory is the project’s title and that means innovative ways to expand yours and mine simply by being there. Individual memory and collective memories—both matter here.

Hurry to the back of this big building even though it’ll be hard to pass by the William Christenberry photos, sculpture and paintings or Elayne Goodman’s bold bright collages of fabric, beads and colors.

Just keep going and here’s why.

 Only place in the world to see this just-created massive, three wall video presentation. Try to imagine painting with light.

The walls are 30-feet high and the gallery is 8,600 square feet. I stood in awe as six projectors networked with a computer to control the sequence of animated video about centuries of Japanese history and collective memory.    

Music, abstract forms, familiar art and architecture and historical images: poetry in motion as I’ve never experienced.

Hokushima is the title; Xavier de Richemont the French artist who usually paints with light outdoors, on enormous cathedral and monument walls.

The show in the Memory Project is a first in America. When you get there, don’t hurry. Linger.

De Richemont hopes you’ll trigger some memories of your own.

Remembering Mardi Gras deserves some time every Mobile trip for me via the exceptionally interesting Carnival Museum and Toomey’s, the massive warehouse and shop with masks, costumes, Moon Pies and beads.

The need to shop for beads, both hand-strung and intended for throwing from a float, is so immense in Mobile, that Toomey’s needs 70,000 square feet to stock them all.

I’ve yet to participate in Mobile Mardi Gras parades and parties, but an afternoon in the Carnival Museum helps fill that gap with 300 years of history.

Lavish hand appliquéd trains weighing up to 80 pounds because of the preponderance of beads in intricate designs are on display, sometimes folded up at an edge to show the ball bearings that help the “royalty” wearing them to glide.

Or maybe just to move at all.

For me, moving around the Carnival Museum provides “Aha” and Oh my” moments repeatedly.

It’s a series of modest-width hallways and rooms, so views of yet more parade and party finery almost takes you by surprise each turn.

That’s ever so much more fun than a big broad view had they been in a massive gallery.

Sixty Mystic societies plan all year for the next year, creating 12,000 jobs and a $247 million industry, Carnival Museum Director Judi Gulledge told me.

Dynasty Collections is but one of many businesses, and they specialize in crowns for Mardi Gras royalty, using gold, silver and Swarovski crystal.

“These are celebrations by the people for the people,” Gulledge said, honoring generations of family history, her own and city’s.

I got that family message while looking at the photos of three generations of women wearing the same crown; their years were 1903, 1936 and 1959.

And it seems there’s a Mobile cop who worked the same corner during Mardi Gras for his 32 years for the Police Department.

Here’s what mattered in his retirement contract: permission to still work that corner.

Cooper is a family name I saw in exhibits of trains and crowns and dinner party table settings so exquisite they stay behind glass in the Carnival Museum.

Fun connection to make when you go to Felix’s Fish Camp just off the Mobile Causeway. Ultra casual, glorious views of the Bay and its birds, abundant seafood with plates artistically arranged and served with precision no matter how many at a table.

Felix’s is part of a group of Cooper restaurants, owned by the family of Mardi Gras heritage, and culinary operations director George Panayiotou rejoices in fresh.

“Hush puppies have a shelf life never more than 10 minutes,” he says, “with one man dedicated to shucking corn and chopping jalapenos all day for the hush puppies.”

Elegance dominates the Battle House Renaissance Hotel and Spa on North Royal Street as much as casual and fresh explains Felix’s Fish Camp.

Do allow time to simply breathe in the Battle House grand foyer, absorbing the history since it was built in 1852.  Or muse to 1812 when Andrew Jackson set up a headquarters on this site.  

The elegance of the renovations deserves quiet time to take in the multitude of lovely architectural and design details.

Rooftop time I heartily recommend too, for broad views of the city and focused views of the busy port. Trellises cover seating areas, a swimming pool and lounging areas invite sunshine time and the rooftop connects to the spa.

This hotel, after all, is one of eight along the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, and five have large and elegant spas.

Wished I could have chilled longer in my room, one of 238 rooms and suites, but dinner with Chef Wesley True beckoned.    

Last year True was a James Beard semi-finalist for Best Chef in the South and I felt very happy with my blackened redfish with root vegetables.

Fresh and local he prefers, in a Southern slow-food sort of style. Mobile is True’s childhood home and he returned after years of partnering with chefs in Manhattan.

If creative cocktails please you, consider his Hernandez: Patron, watermelon puree, agave syrup and diced jalapeno or his Deep Woods Rain: Cruzan aged rum, fresh ginger root, simple syrup and soda.

After all, Alabama has declared 2012 to be the Year of Alabama Food. When you see a spoon holding a green tomato, that’s the symbol.