This I believe. When I go to Montgomery, I will see Grace, if not God. In Selma, the air will smell of ‘good trouble’, as John Lewis used to call it. In Alabama , I will lookup, and there it will be, the ‘moral arc of the universe’, breaking towards justice.
Of course, reality turned out to be a mixed bag. I was neither surprised nor shocked.
My Mom and I went to Montgomery, Alabama, this past July 4th.
We left my aunt’s house in Coral Springs early, before 7 AM. First stop was a rest area on the Florida Turnpike. I think it was south of Orlando. It was teeming with people. Where are they all going on the morning of the 4th? Orlando? Humans of every hue in sight. Multi-cultural Central. I’ve seen this before – Sawgrass Mills Mall. And yet, Florida keeps voting Red. I fancy that I know why. The typical immigrant from the Third World is a natural small ‘c’ conservative. Their lives have little room for romantic notions. Also, there are many other Floridas, which the likes of me rarely encounter.
Next stop was lunch, in Gainesville and thereabouts. I knew what I wanted. Some Cajun fries from Five Guys to go with the Tamarind rice that my aunt had packed for us. I found a Five Guys close to one of the Gainesville exits. Drove up, got the fries, and then parked under a tree, by a Checkers not far from the Five Guys. Under that tree, a very satisfying fried-food-centric meal was had by all. The Cajun fries worked perfectly with the Tamarind rice. I knew they would. Some things, a few things, I do know.
Mid afternoon, in Tifton, Georgia, we got off the interstate. Close to the exit was one of those large gas stations. LOVE, I think it was. We refueled and hit the rest rooms. I picked up a batch of my tried and true driving buddies – Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Pop Tarts. They are so good there ought be a law against them. Someday these morsels of Heaven will no longer be sold, and I will die a little.
The cashier was White. He had one earring, and a cross around his neck. A man who was a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Good. I relaxed. My people. The ones who are a confusing jumble. What am I? Indian, or American? I am both, you sorry ‘must be one or the other’ so and so. What’s more, I’ll tell ya, when I watch the ‘Derry Girls’, I am Irish as all get out. Hindu, or Muslim, or Christian, or Jewish? Surely, I ‘contain all of the above’(to paraphrase Walt Whitman), going all the way back to childhood. White, Black, or Brown? How can I be anything but some holy mixture? My world is built from everything I find in it; my life is informed by everything that is around me.
I got on a state route, which more or less would take us to Montgomery. I did not want to take the highway. I wanted to show my Mom, the America that is ‘fly over’ country. That is what I wanted to see too. What time I have left in this world, I want to minimize ‘fly over’. I’ve reached the age where I can feel time running out. Somewhat paradoxically, I am responding by slowing down, rather than speeding up. Trying to make it last, aren’t I?
As I drove, I googled and learned that we were driving through what they call the ‘black belt’. This is a majority Black swath of the country that stretches across the deep Southern states. Montgomery is in the black belt. Montgomery is majority African American. Birmingham, some way to the North, is the other way around.
Early in that leg, still in Georgia, we came across one of those tourist traps masquerading as a farm stand. It had the usual hits. Boiled peanuts, check. Watermelon, check. Fried okra, check. Jams and jellies, check. There was a redeeming surprise or two. Yellow watermelon, say what? Dried, salted, whole okra, very good. The boiled peanuts were pretty darn perfect too. We got a tall cup full. How could we not?
Every town we drove through had a dollar store and apparently little else. My Mom kept saying where is everything? Where is Walmart? Where are the grocery stores? And eventually, she started to ask, where are the White people? Not hard to see their absence. This is rural poverty, I told her. We have urban poverty, and we have rural poverty. Ten minutes from my nephew’s house in Fishtown, Philly, you’ll see urban poverty. Also along the route through Arlington and Mt Oliver, which we take to the Waterfront. You can see rural poverty on the Great Plains. Get off the highway in the Dakotas. See Native American reservations out West. Go deep into the mountains of West Virginia. Heck, drive through the hills in Somerset county, east of Pittsburgh.
We saw very little traffic for miles. At one point, a small nondescript sign flashed by. Stewart Detention Center, it said. I’d never heard of it. But I knew what it was. Googling later confirmed my guess. I did not see a gate or road or anything near by. Only that little sign, by the side of an empty state route, in the middle of nowhere. Sign of the times.
The Alabama state line runs through a largish lake. One side of the lake is Georgia. The other side is Eufala, Alabama. You’ve heard of towns like Eufala. It had a section by the lake, with very large, very old homes. The family in the big home, in a small town – that is a familiar Southern trope. Every second play, film, novel, short story, set in the South, seemed to be about the big home in a small town.
Wait a minute, all the Southern stories that I am somewhat conversant with, come from one source – Tennessee Williams. ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’. And that other one with Shirley Knight and Geraldine Page and Rip Torn. And Paul Newman. ‘Sweet Bird of Youth’?
Was Paul Newman in every movie of every Tennessee Williams play ever made? No. See, ‘Streetcar Named Desire’, and ‘The Glass Menagerie’. And I remember one with Montgomery Clift, the name of which escapes me.
Paul Newman directed a TV movie of the Glass Menagerie. Joanne Woodward was the mother. Can’t remember who played the daughter (Karen Allen?), nor the Gentleman Caller (James Naughton?).
We reached Montgomery around 7 PM. It was still light out. It was July after all. We found our hotel slap in the middle of a very empty downtown Montgomery. And without much further ado, called it a day.