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We were both were tired, and hungry, but I didn't want to stop, even though it was after midnight. I wanted us to keep on driving until we reached a decent sized town..... "Damit, Jean, I'm tired of fast-food. I want some real food. And I need to get from behind this wheel!" I wanted real food too. But I was born in the North, and I was terrified of the South. My grandmother had told me how a whole family of my cousins were lynched in the '50's when one of them "sassed" a white woman. Father, Mother, 2 sons, and a baby girl forced under guns to watch as they strung up the 12 year old boy. Then they were hearded back in the house, and the house set on fire. I repeated the story to Don, the way my Grandmother had told it to me rape picture links.
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"Look Jean, what happened to your cousins was horrible, but this is the 1990's. The South has changed. People aint running around in bedsheets, and lynchin folks."
"Maybe", I said. "Or maybe we just aint hearin' 'bout it. I mean, what happened to my cousins didn't appear in no "white" papers up North. There's a lot of stuff that happens, that never gets reported nowhere."
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Don didn't answer. He'd been on the Net just like me, and he'd seen the Web Sites for W.A.R., and the Nationalist Socialist White People's Party. He knew hate had just gone "underground", or in some case become "respectable". "Look Babe, you're gonna have to get over this fear. We're gonna be here in the South for a year, and I'm not gonna change how I live my life just because we're in Alabama, not Michigan."
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We argued the full 10 miles it took us to reach the parking lot of Billie Jo's Diner, which was full of pick-up trucks decorated with Confederate Flags. And every truck seemed to have a loaded gun-rack. I turned to speak Don, but he had this stubborn look on his face, and I could tell he was pretending not to see what I saw.
"What a place like that doing this much business this time of night? What if we're walking into the middle of a Klan meetin' or sumthin?", I asked.
"You can come in the Diner with me, or you can sit out here. I don't give a damn. I'm not going to let your fear run my life, " Don said as he opened the door. " And if you do come in, will you kindly drop the "nigga talk"? You know how to talk righ!" He climbed out of the car, and without even waiting to see what I would do, he strode to the Diner.
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I sat there in the car, really feeling angry and betrayed. Hadn't my mother told me not to marry a white man? " Doan care how much they say luv ya, they doan, they caint unnerstan ya. Never unnerstand what makes ya tick, how ya feel, nuthin." I heard her say in my head.
"Well Mama, "I answered her in my head, "seems like you wuz right".
But then the so-called educated part of me kicked in.
"Okay Jean, get real. This IS the 1990's! Things are not what they used to be, things hve come along way. So get your but out this car, and go in the Diner like a person with some sense."
I got out the car, and headed towards the Diner.