South of the Wall

DO NOT PANIC!

I made it back. I went all the way down and through the Deepest of the Deep South and managed never to be raped by toothless banjo aficionados. Seriously, not so much as a side-eye sizing up. Like what, the South is too good for me now? Ned Beatty, he's fucking catnip and me? Not a sniff. This is bullshit. I work out.

From the tone so far, I figure you can probably guess that my mission to make One America from where there have long been two met with only middling success at best. The most difficult and heartfelt interaction I had was with a group of boisterous, obnoxious and eventually drunk people sharing a tour bus with us on the way to our Louisiana swamp tour. We spent a lot of time cagily interacting with one another--them shouting to communicate with people in adjacent or sometimes even the same seat at a level that would have been appropriate inside an actively erupting volcano, me shooting unfiltered disdain from my eyeballs--until we finally reached what I decided to call at the time the Grand Bargain. In it, they agreed to get the fuck off the bus at their stop and I agreed (still silently) not to follow them into the street and beat them all to death with a fistful of Mardi Gras beads.

But then as they left, I discovered they were all from--wait for it--Southern fucking California. Just like me. The In-N-Out Burger shirt one of them was wearing probably should have given it away. All that restraint and non-murder, alas, for naught.

But on the swamp tour, I did see a raccoon eat a marshmallow. Which was appalling and invasive. But also awesome. They have hands like little people! And probably Type II diabetes. Just like little people!

From the bayou in New Orleans, we road-tripped across Mississippi, Alabama and northwestern Georgia to get to Atlanta. Atlanta I was disappointed by, mostly because of its awesomeness. If it weren't for the Waffle House and the insistence on misunderstanding the phrase "unsweetened tea," it would be among the least rednecky "Southern" places I've ever been. The area we stayed in was around Centennial Olympic Park, so it was all slick and modern and safe. The population was cosmopolitan and professional-looking. All that diction and acceptable dental hygiene just made me think of LA, but with less charmingly terrifying homeless people.

I went South to find the weird alien Planet Red State and I kept running into things to draw at my intellectual and cultural curiosity. It kept finding ways to please and surprise me. No one dared me once to get an abortion sign up for Obamacare as a test of my American-ness, like I'd expected/hoped. I wasn't challenged by a roadblock of burning crosses at every county line demanding to know what church I planned to attend while in the area, not once.

It could have been that I was worn out from being on vacation by myself with three kids. Or that the shattering of my illusions left me demoralized and disengaged.

Or it could be that barbecue is the great social glue that smoothes out all impulses to conflict. You'd be fucking amazed what the right brisket will do.

Or more likely I was distracted because I had to get home to watch the new season of Game of Thrones. That level of preoccupation is not a healthy mindset to take into any manner of socio-cultural inquiry. It's not easy stare down all of the injustices of the land of your birth at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change when all you can think about is how maybe that approach might work when the bastard of the Night's Watch Jon Snow faces Mance Rayder's approaching army of Wildlings.