irration bias-rational fear?

Can't imagine why the longhairs tend to congregate near Humboldt County. Must ponder that one for a while...

The music and the grass, perhaps.

In the 60's, things were much worse--Dys got beat up for helping to register black voters. His paranoia is based on experience.

The guy in Alabama (or was it Georgia?) was in camoflauge with the highway patrol sunglasses. I am very nonthreatening, a sixty year old woman who really doesn't look like a nun gone bad. He still gave me a stare that was chilling. I accidentally set off the car alarm and, instead of trying to help, he just kept staring.

We know most people aren't like that, but the few who are still fighting the Civil War, or who hate the results of the Civil Rights movement, are creepy. Somebody who looks like Dys would be in serious trouble if he hapened to be at a remote station in the dark.

In some ways, I was helpful in providing a "normal" (little do they know) appearance to offset Dys' look of long-haired rebel.

Yes, the shrubbery may be a contributing factor.




Diane, your Mr. Sunglasses sounds like the Man with No Eyes in "Cool Hand Luke." (Now there's a movie to creep you out about the good old boys...)

In the seventies I drove through these places in a '64 Ford Falcon. My first wife and my two year old son were with me. In a restaurant we were at a counter having coffee and soda when a local pointed his finger at my face and said "That should be against the law." I looked through him as if unconcerned and finished my cup. Further down the road, about 11 PM, some young men in a pickup that had a revolving orange light began to tail us. Then they got right up to my bumper with the light flashing, mimicing a police car's action. I drove on as if unconcerned until they tired of the "game" and pulled away. One stuck his head out the window and said, "Peace, brother." At a service station I went around the building to the restroom. The attendant raced to follow me to the door. I heard him telling his partner a few minutes later that "these types can't be trusted." These are the parts I remember well enough to recount. When we returned home it was by airplane (My younger brother had met us on the coast and crashed the Falcon for me).

Yeow!

Yeow!

Easy Rider. Peter Fonda--Dennis Hopper--Jack Nicholson

For those who think the past is buried and forgotten: It's not.

Frightening, Dys & Diane!

Reminds me of travelling in Queensland, Oz, in the '70s. (Queensland was then considered the "deep north"). My friend & I often got stared at & received dirty looks. Then, on a street corner in Brisbane, in the company of a couple of black African men friends, someone actually came up to us & suggested that we "go back to Melbourne or Sydney where we belong". (Melbourne & Sydney were considered a bit bolshie by the northerners, then.) Thank god things have changed since then. I had no idea, nor had I ever experienced hatred & derision from people I didn't know.

I was in Brisbane 2 yrs ago-enough said.

Gosh, I thought things had improved!

Pdog--the man with no eyes!! Perfect! Makes you creep out even though you have no idea who or what he might be. I just realized that, because we had a Georgia license plate, the creep might have been confused as to whether or not to get tough.

Edgar, those experiences in the 60's made all of us a little more aware of what it must be like to be black, except that we always knew that we could go home to relative safety. I'm sure the FBI still has Dys' name on a list of suspicious characters.

Too bad the War Between the States, which is what southerners call it, is still being fought by dangerously ignorant, inbred rednecks.

The experience I recounted occured in 1976, but, I suspect it could have taken place yesterday or one hundred years ago.

Thing is, nobody's really got this market cornered. A friend of mine, about 10 years back, was standing outside a California courthouse at about 4:30 in the afternoon when a Confederate-flag emblazoned muscle car screeched to a stop in front of him and two mullet heads jumped out. They (quite inexplicably) called him a "New York fag jew" as they threw him to the ground and kicked him in the head for a bit -- less than a minute, according to (goddamn useless) witnesses. Long hair and earrings, you know.

The surgeons wired the front of his head back together and he regained consciousness a couple of days later. Last time I saw him -- about six years ago -- he still had no feeling in most of his forehead.

Cops never did catch the guys, despite the distinctive car. And last I heard, California wasn't a major player in the Civil War...

God PD, I would never have expected that to happen in CA--although it is the home of Manson, et al.

Does it appear that there is a shift to the right, even in CA? Schwarzenegger, duh. I answered my own question.

We'll be in San Francisco from April 9-11. Hope we don't come across those mutants while we're there. Dys will have a cane and I'll carry an extra heavy purse. Ain't nobody gonna mess with this old pair!!

Hey, Diane. Put several rolls of coins in that purse.

Dys should do his best to look like Willie Nelson. After all, The IRS is kinder and gentler now.

That certainly explains his paranoia.
I moved South about ten years ago and have traveled by car all over the place and altho' there have been a few uncomfortable moments, for the most part, if you ignore 'them', they'll ignore you. I'm Black and will go as far as to say that I've been treated more serenely here in the South than my close-to-forty years up Nawth. Chicago. Where Dr. King marched in 1967 and, after being hit in the head with a rock, proclaimed it one of the most racist cities he'd ever been to.

Well, upon my word, eoe. I had no idea that you were black. Ever read Ralph Ellison's book The Invisible Man? That pretty well tells another story.

Never read "The Invisible Man." What's another story?