Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 6
JUST SOUTH OF Grand Junction, Tennessee, I passed over the state line into Mississippi.
A sign beside the highway said, WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WE SHOOT TO KILL. It
didn't really. I just made that up. This was only the second time I had ever been to the Deep
South and I entered it with a sense of foreboding. It is surely no coincidence that all those
films you have ever seen about the South-Easy Rider, In the Heat of the Night, Cool Hand
Luke,Brubaker,Deliverance-depictSouthernersasmurderous,incestuous,shitty-shoedred-
necks.Itreallyisanothercountry.Yearsago,inthedaysofVietnam,twofriendsandIdrove
to Florida during college spring break. We all had long hair. En route we took a shortcut
across the back roads of Georgia and stopped late one afternoon for a burger at a dinette in
some dreary little crudville, and when we took our seats at the counter the place fell silent.
Fourteen people just stopped eating, their food resting in their mouths, and stared at us. It
wassoquietinthereyoucouldhaveheardaflyfart.Awholeroomfulofgoodoleboyswith
cherry-colored cheeks and bib overalls watched us in silence and wondered whether their
shotguns were loaded. It was disconcerting. To them, out here in the middle of nowhere, we
were a curiosity-some of them had clearly never seen no long-haired, nigger-loving, North-
ern, college- edjicated, commie hippies in the flesh before-and yet unspeakably loathsome.
It was an odd sensation to feel so deeply hated by people who hadn't really had a proper
chance to acquaint themselves with one's shortcomings. I remember thinking that our par-
ents didn't have the first idea where we were, other than that we were somewhere in the
continental vastness between Des Moines and the Florida Keys, and that if we disappeared
we would never be found. I had visions of my family sitting around the living room in years
tocomeandmymothersaying,“Well,Iwonderwhatever happenedtoBilly andhisfriends.
You'd think we'd have had a postcard by now. Can I get anybody a sandwich?”
That sort of thing did really happen down there, you know. This was only five years after
three freedom riders were murdered in Mississippi. They were a twenty-one-year-old black
from Mississippi named James Chaney and two white guys from New York, Andrew Good-
man, twenty, and Michael Schwerner, twenty. I give their names because they deserve to
be remembered. They were arrested for speeding, taken to the Neshoba County Jail in Phil-
adelphia, Mississippi, and never seen again-at least not until weeks later when their bodies
were hauled out of a swamp. These were kids, remember. The police had released them to a
waiting mob, which had taken them away and done things to them that a child wouldn't do
to an insect. The sheriff in the case, a smirking, tobacco-chewing fat boy named Lawrence
Rainey, was acquitted of negligent behavior. No one was ever charged with murder. To me
this was and always would be the South.
