irration bias-rational fear?

yikes! you home now?

I canna comment on the rationality or otherwise of your fears...

What were you worried about Dys?

home now, actually only one "incident" in a hotel I think in Alabama (not sure of the state) Diane was still asleep and I went down to the coffee shop where I was refused service (yes I do have unusually long hair) and one time at a gas station in Mississippi where Diane was afraid to go back to the car (after getting coffee) because of a truck parked nexted to us plastered with "rebel flags' and our car surrounded by young men watching both of us intently. But nothing happened.

wow, someone turned down your $$$ because of your hair?

Jer, actually I was afraid of physical harm, mostly for Diane but also for myself. The last time I was in the area was 1967 when I was arrested for "riding in a car in the city limits, with a negro on the car."

Sounds like the area hasn't changed much since your last visit in 1967. You had a right to be paranoid...glad you both made it home safely.

I figure folks in tiny, slow towns will stare pretty intently at anybody who looks strange to them. Probably doesn't mean anything -- usually. But I weren't there, so I doesn't know...

Do know that my paw got run off the road by a redneck type in his long hair days, and Corvairs don't take to roadside ditches too well. That was in Colorado, though, not Dixie.

Rational, in the smaller towns, I would say. If they can't find something to take offense at, their necks just aren't red enough.

We moved from Washington State to south Florida in the mid 50s. Mother was stared at like a lewd woman - she was wearing shorts in the summer. Gas stations had two water fountains. The enlightened ones had three restrooms.

ON the car?! I'd stare, too!!!

I drove through the same places some years back and experienced the same treatment. There is a photo of me as I appeared in the gallery of a2k.

wow!

you can buy Roncos little shotgun rack for the back window, and to make the picture complete, thhrow alot of empties in the back. You can take em out when you get home.

oR, , in big letters on the side (use poster paint)

We TAKin THIS HERE CAR TO THE DESTRUCTION DARBY

Thas why Im always ina tricked out truck.
ANyway all them bubbas are wearin mullets

Is Diane a black woman?

heh heh! They wouldn't take dys's money 'cause it was confederate; had nothing to do with his hair.

eoe, Diane is blond and light skinned. It would have been worse had she worn her habit, cause the good old boys don't like Roman Catholics, either.

it's true -- they like their catholics to stay put.

(damn, bubba-bashing. is that kosher?)

patio, It's kosher if you're a Jewish bubba. West Virginia is suing some t-shirt/sweat shirt manufacturer for having the following:

In West Virginia, everything is relative.

Strange, I do believe that everything involves synchronicity. I lay awake watching some movie with Faye Dunaway about small town bias. Think the name was Silhouette.

Dys and Di, If this was a serious thread (one never knows) That's scary, and I am sorry you both had to experience it.

Especially when the stranger is driving a Porsche 911.

I suppose we've all seen Deliverance?

I dunno, but I trust your instincts in a given situation.

I'm a city girl now living in a small town in a sparsely populated county that has quite a cultural mix, though the mix is mostly caucasian re skin color. I am from Los Angeles, and still am startled by all the whiteness after almost four years here. I am white, my niece is black, and when she visits me I experience the reactions she gets with both pride for her and pain. She happens to be beautiful, but has been approached by guys in trucks as if she were a hooker, more than once, even when she was twelve or thirteen. Talk about creepy. This hasn't happened when I've been with her, but she'll come back from walking my dog, for example, and tell me about it. When she has walked my design partner's doberman, she'll come back laughing, as trucks nearly crash.

Lot of long hairs around, though; we have quite an enthusiastic support of musicians here.

I remember one of the drivers back in the last lab I worked in in LA wouldn't drive through Topanga Canyon if he could help it; too much country for a young black man to feel comfortable, he said.

When I used to live near UCLA, years ago, I rolled up my windows when I drove through Venice to visit friends in the Marina after dark. Venice has had a long history of gang warfare. Sometime later I lived there... for decades... and got a steadier sense of when to be really cautious and when things were fine. My original fears years ago were misplaced, or at least shouldn't have been across the board re the area, including even the toughest streets.