A Foreign Land

People would ask me where I was going over the winter break. The last few years it's been warm places like Cambodia and Vietnam, or thick snowy places like Poland and Ukraine. They know I'm a sucker for places with intriguing names like Moldova (still on the list), Bolivia (also still on the list), Luang Prabang, and Nuuk. Also, being from California, I naturally have certain prejudices when it comes to the Southern states. We all do.

So I got some confused looks when I told people I would be traveling this winter to... Alabama. That's right - and Mississippi, too. That backward and confused region of the United States we call the South, land of bigotry, economically depressed, a blot on the respectability of the nation, an embarassment really, like the third cousin twice removed who always drinks too much at weddings... you kind of wish you could say, "he's not with me... no really, the relation is quite distant."

To a native born Californian, the South is a foreign land. Strange customs. Funny accents. Everyone y'all-ing and ma'am-ing all the time. Nobody from California goes to the South for vacation.

And yet, the South was the heart of the Civil Rights movement. It was where our race problems were greatest. It was where our solutions were most difficult, and therefore most interesting. That's what my mom and I wanted to see when we proposed to do a road trip through Alabama and Mississippi, and we did. What we didn't expect was to find people so consciously continuing to engage in that same problem solving today. Race seemed to be on people's minds all the time, everywhere, openly talked about, and everyone had an opnion about it they wanted to share.

We knew we were indeed in another world before we even parked our rental car at our hotel in the Montgomery civic center. We arrived at night and the place was like a ghost town... not a person to be seen, not a shop with its lights on, not a restaurant, bar or place of business. With some hesitation, we asked the hotel desk clerk if he knew where we could get a bit to eat. "Y'all won't find anything open round here this time of night," he said. It was 11:00 pm.

"Not even a shop where we can get some crackers?" I asked.

"I might be able to find you a Lean Cuisine back in the fridge." He was a talkative guy, and very helpful. Quite generous with the Southern hospitality we'd heard about. We suspected the Lean Cuisine was probably from his own personal stash and we set out for a walk. We did eventually find some crackers in a hotel gift shop down the street. We slept well that night, stuffed with Cheez-Its and orange juice, and wondering what Montgomery would have in store for us in the morning. First on our list: the Rosa Parks bus stop.