(If I did it right, there’s a photo of Baby and me/I just before leaving Wednesday morning.)
While planning the trip, I had envisioned sitting down each evening, glass in hand, the bottle I brought of 12-year old Macallan single-malt on a nearby surface, and spending an hour or so capturing the essence of the day/drive just completed. Tonight, my second on the road – I am in a motel off I-24 near Chattanooga, TN – it’s a reality. (The Scotch tastes great after driving almost five-hundred miles through a patch-work of sun-showers and thunder-storms.)
The route from Philadelphia to Raleigh was a familiar one in years past. When Julia was little we would visit friends with a vacation home outside Charleston, SC, and Raleigh was our overnight stop at the home of one of my oldest friends – since 7th grade, my first year in the US – and her partner. (They were also my destination this time, and we had a nice, low-key visit.)
Given that the route was I-95 most of the way, I had no expectation of meeting anyone interesting since the big rest-stops, with their Roy Rogers and Cinnabons, are places where way-farers eat, “do” (and mind) their own business without socializing with strangers. However, starting south of Washington, DC, the rest areas are just that: picnic tables, bathrooms, and, occasionally, vending machines. Yesterday, at one south of Richmond, I had an encounter that reminded me again about being a minority in this country. Thankfully, unlike some at other times, this one was benign, though depressing.
I had just parked to have lunch and was rummaging behind my seat for a magazine, when the driver of the car facing mine across a narrow grassy strip approached mine. He was in his mid-forties, about my size and build, with dark, wavy hair, and wearing khaki pants and a polo shirt with the name of a college I didn’t recognized embroidered on it. By facial features and skin tone, it was clear that he was from the Indian sub-continent, most likely Indian or Pakistani in origin, though I wouldn’t venture to guess which. (While I claim to be able to tell apart Chinese from other Asians, don’t believe me.)
He had a big, friendly smile on his round face and, with an accent we would all recognize, launched – without any preamble, like an introduction – into a lengthy warning about being careful on the road because of the David (?) Berg decapitation by Muslim extremists making it dangerous for our non-Caucasian faces. I was surprised at his earnestness and real concern/belief about revenge-seeking Americans possibly attacking “foreigners” and touched by his out-reach. It also took me aback enough that I had no adequate response except to agree to be careful -- I didn’t tell him that I had Mace cannisters and a heavy police flash-light (“Spray and club”, as I have told friends who asked what I would do, “Spray and club!”). He then went to his car and came back with a yogurt container and a spoon. “Please, take this for your lunch, I have another”, he said. I declined, politely. And then, feeling that Chinese reciprocity-cum-one-upsmanship gene act up, I reached into my insulated bag and offered him one of my Fuji apples, which he accepted. We smiled some more, he returned to his car, which had Michigan license plates, and I ate my lunch with diminished appetite.
I waved good-bye when I drove away – he was still there, shifting things between the back-seat and the trunk – and thought about his experience of looking “different” vs. my own. Listening to the basis of his fear and concern, which I did not want to share, I felt sad because it meant that my mother was the winner of a running argument from my teens into college years in the late 60s and early 70s. She constantly harped on how it didn’t matter who I was inside, that there was no “Harrison” but a “Chinese guy” in the eyes of this society. (You can imagine how well that went over with me, a budding hippie with long hair and patched blue-jeans….) We have come so far and yet, like yesterday, it seems not at all.
Tomorrow, another 500+ mile day to Natchez, Mississipi.
