Today we crossed the Mason-Dixon line. It was no big deal; in fact, it was somewhat underwhelming. There were several tell-tale signs on businesses for the five miles before the line. “Mason-Dixon Used Cars, Mason-Dixon Deli, Mason-Dixon Real Estate, and Mason-Dixon Tattoo Emporium.” And then, there it was: a simple sign on metal legs, reading: “The Mason Dixon Line.” We crossed the state line and we were in Dixie.
It was similar in drama from going from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Or San Francisco into Oakland. Or Providence into North Providence. There was no bump in the road, no toll gate, no checker of passports, no difference in the language on the billboards. But we were in Dixie, that proverbial land of hush puppies, grits, and chicken fried steaks.
I remember that as a child/youth I fantasized a huge cultural change when you crossed the Mason-Dixon line. Suddenly I would be in a place with growling guard dogs, vigilantes in bedsheets, and black people in tatters and chains. In those days it was much more possible than what I found today. It has something to do with President Lyndon B. Johnson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.
The first black person I saw after crossing the Mason-Dixon line was an attractive, middle-aged woman who was stuffing her copy of the Sunday New York Times into a trash can at the rest stop. “I never get to read it at home,” she said. “So I read it from cover to cover in the car on the way down here every week.” She and her husband climbed into their 2010 extended cab and drove off to make their weekly pilgrimage to someplace. Before they left, however, her husband pulled out a chamois and spray can of cleanser and wiped down the front of his vehicle, just in case any bugs had been smashed there on the highway.
This Dixie I witnessed today didn’t have a single cotton field. I think I did spot a tobacco field, but it was surrounded by two more profitable corn fields. The migrant workers I saw were well drillers in a three-truck convoy from Pennsylvania headed someplace down Route 81-S to bring much-needed fresh water to some lucky person’s farm.
We had dinner at an Olive Garden restaurant tonight. The only difference I saw was that the eggplant in the parmigiana was sliced correctly cross-wise instead of the veal-mimicking lengthwise cuts I am used to in Red Sox Nation. The food was great. However, when I ordered a Gibson it came with slices of red onion on a side dish instead of cocktail onions swimming in the gin. I let the surly waiter take them back to put on somebody’s burger or in their salad. There was a hint in this that I was in a different place.
But, overall, crossing the Mason-Dixon line into Dixie was uneventful.
Photo Credit: Ms. Dixie
