Lake James, North Carolina to Florence, South Carolina
(with stops in Hickory and Winston-Salem)
If you find yourself in North Carolina and in need of a snazzy European haircut, go and see Ronnie Major at Le Grande Salon in Hickory, NC.
I would never have thought that, from this small town of 40,000 people nestled in the Carolinas, Marina could emerge with the most stylish haircut she's had in years. That's due to Ronnie's skill and talent as a hair designer but it also made me question my pre-conceived notions about this whole region.
Like a lot of Americans, I thought of the South as a conservative, backward place without much respect for people of color, gays, atheists or progressive thought of any kind. Highway 10, which runs along the southern part of America, is the shortest route to Miami, but it would have taken us close to the heart of the Deep South -- southern Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, the Florida panhandle. The Ku Klux Klan flourished in these places and vigilante mob lynchings of black men was a way of life. Remnants of that thinking still color these towns and their people, and the Confederate flag, representing the union of Southern states who sought to break away from the USA, is still flown from the dome of the capitol building in South Carolina.
The South's claimed "constitutional right" to treat people as property (and preserve their economic base of cotton) was the reason for the long and bloody American Civil War, which lasted four years and took 600,000 American lives. The real issue was states' rights, i.e., the right of the federal government to create laws that trump any individual state's laws. This fundamental philosophical debate continues today and it's this battle over who has the right to legislate over cultural matters that creates the notion of two Americas, in my opinion. Every time the federal government seeks to legislate on cultural matters such as gun control, abortion and gay marriage, a handful of die-hard backward Congressmen (and women), usually from the South, cry foul and claim for their individual states the right to pass laws on those issues.
But as I learned today, there's an Old South and a New South. Whatever that term may have meant in the past, today the New South stands for a more modern economy and way of thinking. Health food stores and vegetarian menu options are part of the New South. So are European haircuts and gay pride parades (Hickory's 4th annual is coming up this year). The university towns are full of bookstores and cafes and wine bars and (somewhat) progressive thinking. All this is what we've encountered on our trip along Interstate 40, a belt of highway running (approximately) through the lower third of the country.
I've been pleasantly surprised at the non-hostility of gas station cashiers and hotels and the helpfulness of staff at restaurants and shops. I chalked it up to being in big cities, but Fort Smith is a small town and virtually everyone we met (hotel staff, shopkeepers, museum volunteers, meter maid, restaurant staff) were all very helpful and friendly. This must be the New South.
And a good example of it is the historic arts district in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where we made an impromptu stop for lunch yesterday with friends we just found out/remembered were living there. We ate at a restaurant called Sweet Potatoes (well shut my mouth!!) owned by two black lesbians. How's that for the New South! And yes, the parenthetical and exclamation marks are all part of the name --see the sign below.
And that was our last stop on I-40. Florence, South Carolina is only a 3-hour drive from Winston-Salem, and the most direct route takes you on the 38, a real back-country road through what is most certainly the old South. We lost cell phone service and I felt the same anxiety going through Texas. Will we get stopped because we have a rainbow sticker on the truck and California license plates? Will the police or the locals drag us out of the car and beat us up because they don't like Marina's British accent? We stopped at a gas station, and I walked into the shop with trepidation to see if they had SmartWater (even though the stupid water costs less). Then I saw the man behind the counter and instantly relaxed. Of course! He's Indian (dot, not a feather). My peeps! They own the gas stations and the hotels and where there's an Indian hotelier, there's sure to be an Indian restaurateur (the hotelier's brother-in-law or second cousin once removed), so even in the South, I know I can always fill up with gas and food and find a bed for the night. Ha! Take that, Klansmen! You may make people run but we make the economy run. Indians are the new black. Wait, that didn't come out right. What I meant to say was Indians are the New South.
On our way to Florence, we passed through Bennettsville, a tired town that looked inhabited only by cars. The downtown is full of lovely but empty brick buildings. Land is probably dirt cheap. For a brief second, I thought about buying up some of the buildings and neighboring land, creating a development for progressive people from the north who want a better quality of life, opening up art galleries and restaurants downtown, et voila!, creating a little Santa Fe or Asheville. But by the time we got to the on-ramp for the freeway, that dream had collapsed in a shudder of construction nightmares, zoning codes, neighbor disputes, nasty battles with governmental authorities, and a general sense of weariness. It's good to have ideas, and some ideas are best left unexecuted. But in case anyone reading this blog has a bunch of money and about 5 to 10 years lying around, there's an opportunity for you to shape and mold your own little town in Bennettsville, South Carolina.
