The North of The South

March 23, 2005
N. Carolina en route to Blacksburg VA.

There is an oil to this hitchhiker. Greensboro 6mi, Winston-Salem 33. Why on earth, among the seats set out to watch the interstate and the lonely yards of red earth digging machine, the million and two waiting trees, waiting for leaves on this drizzly March day in young, almost stillborn Spring, why would a body, knowing they might just as soon be left off by some beaver dam bog with its moss green white skinned trees and never make it to the crop of pretty white blossom lovelies that grow all around the Comfort Inn and exit of outskirts of Wendover or Guilford Tech Community College and their attendant go-karts and bumper boats - though what would a an oily, crank filled son of a biker hitchhiker want with small golfing? – when and why would the man, who might and might not have any sense of all the battles that were fought among these balling strips of same-same earth, this ever land that is not New England nor the Deep South, this land where as everywhere there is patentedly nothing to the world as seen from the interstate, as they’d have you think there was nothing, and absolutely nothing worth fighting for on a gray drizzling day on the flats of North Carolinian highway with broad shoulders where a man walks backward in a t-shirt and old jeans and some small satchel snatched across his crotch looking for a friendly ride. Friendly, for we are in the South. There is gentility here.

Then like someone striking a Bic lighter the magnolia trees burst into view. We’re off the highway now, meandering through Salem-Winston past all the tangled gray dead floss of some kind of ivy or long gone Spanish moss type garlanded pasta plant that is not but so much stricken fiber now on whole lumpy covered acres. It’s gray, but it’s pretty. Now off the through way we can see things, the things that have been here a long time and have taken on some character. Even the Waffle House yellow squares sign has a flirtatiousness about it, something that says, “Dorothy, this is the South, follow this road, it used to be dirt and used to have carriages that carted about proper gentlemen and ladies while their slaves kept good house for them on silent padding feet and sweat in the fields to bring in the cotton. This is where it all really happened. This is where, over and above, and abetted by but despite of its barbarity this country once really had Culture, finesse, refinement and the slow moving nature of people enjoying their days and times. This is and once was the vaunted South. People are friendly. The ARE friendly.”

As we approach the border a tremendous storm opens up on us. The day recedes quickly. Directly ahead is our first mountain. It looms, bulb capped like some shrouded sentinel. Lightning cracks across the sky in every direction, four and five bolts at a time. It must be Mt. Airy. The rain pisses and the thunder rolls over the sound of the HWY. Ilse tightens her grip on the wheel and eases off the gas. After a while she steels up to it and I can feel us accelerate a bit. A sign rears up out of the gloam, Pilot Mtn. It looks like a wee version of the one in Close Encounters. You might imagine that it was definitely a Civil War Stronghold, or an Indian good killing perch. We cover the hump next to it and the day lightens a bit, a white steeple comes out of the trees ahead, it all feels like salvation after our bit with Witch Mountain.

Virginia now! By Shot Mtn. and Fort Chiswell the land has turned beautiful. It’s all rolling hills up and down and after every rise another hamlet of farms and small red churches. The grass is different greens depending on how chewed down they’ve been and the cows are fat and happy. A field of deer. Porches falling off on one side of beautiful relic homes next to old sun crisped barns next to brand now mobile homes. Fish Hatchery Rd. has a sky full of broken and wet to dry clouds above it. The trees all along the spines of the hills are still nude and make for spiny limbs fanning each swell and nipple of Appalachia. I’d have to recommend the 77 N. toward Wythville to anyone on a half rainy day in early Spring. It will instill hope in them, sustain them toward April, and the sun lays down like a lion’s back.