Summer Back Down South

I wrote this the day I returned:

I woke up before seven this morning. I’m still on East Coast time, but there is so much going on, both in my head and around me. I left Brooklyn on Monday and drove down through the Virginia’s, stopping to visit friends in North Carolina before continuing on through Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, to arrive back home in New Orleans last night around six.

My traveling partner and co-pilot, Shanna, commented that we traveled through all of the seasons, freezing in the mountains of North Carolina, experiencing a pleasant cool in Tennessee, and then heating up for the last jag of a journey without air-conditioning through Mississippi and Louisiana. It wasn’t only the temperature that warmed up as we descended, the people around us became markedly more vocal and friendly the further South we descended.

The trip started with us double-parked in Brooklyn, Shanna loading my disassembled red Schwinn and suitcases, while I checked the tire pressure and oil. My upstairs neighbor and a school crossing guard who dallies on my stoop every day were chatting and enjoying the show.

The crossing guard is a middle-aged lady with a warm Caribbean accent who always wears a deep purple shade of lipstick. She is the only person in my Brooklyn neighborhood, Clinton Hill, with whom I have established a daily nod and hello and sometimes an exchange about the weather. She is therefore a precious acquaintance. My neighbor, on the other hand, isn’t very neighborly.

The two women chatted about Shanna and I as we loaded the car, speculating loudly about where we were from (Ohio?) until Shanna decided on her own to tell them. When they realized that we were heading back to New Orleans, they asked how the city was doing, but looked away uncomfortably when she told them it would never be the same.

Compare those two with a woman we met in an Alabamian flea market, her frazzled grey hair dyed orange, who told us she had 22 relatives staying with her after the storm, then proceeded to tell us the history and future of the entire family. These are random incidents but not isolated events. Some people find strangers’ stories a burden. For me, they make the world a smaller and more enjoyable place.