Mr. Write's Page

If you need to drive to Savannah from where I live near Athens, the choice of routes is wide open.

No main highway connects the two cities. There is only a network of federal, state, and county roads linking the 30 or 40 intervening small towns like a spider web. Take your pick.

But be advised that no matter which route you choose or how fast you travel, the journey takes five hours.

Earlier this month, on my way back home from the coast, I followed a route that took me through the little town of Wrightsville.

Wrightsville is a typical Southern burg, population about 2,000, located in what folks down here call Middle Georgia — the part of the state that isn’t North Georgia, South Georgia, or Coastal Georgia.

Being the county seat, Wrightsville is a busy place on weekdays. Or so I discovered when I stopped there for lunch.

Completely on a lark, I chose the Cornbread Cafe, a small restaurant in the center of town across the street from the courthouse. From the look of it, the place took over a building that used to be a fast-food restaurant of some kind. Possibly a Hardee’s.

The restaurant was packed — with cops, construction workers, lawyers from the courthouse, moms with kids. The menu was home cookin’, and you waited in line to order at the counter.

Usually, I don’t have high hopes when I stop for lunch on the road. Most eateries I encounter in such circumstances range from truly awful to sort of adequate.

But this time, I was lucky. The meal was excellent. I had fried chicken, squash casserole, collard greens, a biscuit, and iced tea (unsweet, please, thank you, ma’am).

As I sat there savoring the food and my good fortune, gazing out the window at the traffic and the passersby, a gleaming Cadillac Escalade pulled into the parking lot.

The vehicle was huge and imposing. Slowly, like an ocean liner, it nosed into a parking space directly in front of the window I was gazing from. The car was a bright, luxurious white that made its tinted windows look doubly opaque.

Moments later, the driver’s door opened. Out stepped a small African-American woman in her 30s, wearing a white dress, white shoes, and a white apron.

Her face was an expressionless mask. She walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle, opened the rear door, and helped an elderly white man disembark. He was tall and frail, easily in his 80s, possibly his 90s.

While the man stood waiting next to the vehicle, the black woman went to the rear of the vehicle and opened the hatch. She returned with a wheeled aluminum walker, unfolded it, and placed it in front of the man.

With some difficulty, she maneuvered the man and the walker onto the sidewalk, and he slowly rolled off in the direction of the entrance.

Up to that point, as far as I could tell, neither had spoken.

After the man was on his way, the black woman returned to the rear hatch and hauled out a lightweight wheelchair. She unfolded it, rolled it around to the driver’s side of the car, and opened the rear door.

Slowly and laboriously, she helped an elderly white woman get out of the vehicle and into the wheelchair. Neither woman spoke. They were focused on the task, their faces blank and serious.

The white woman was tiny and even more frail than the man. The black woman pushed the wheelchair with little effort, arriving at the front door in time to open it for the old man.

The scene was, of course, self-explanatory. I was watching a black caregiver taking her employers, a prosperous white couple, out to lunch. It was an interesting scenario: the old couple depended entirely on the black woman, but the money and the power were theirs.

While they were navigating the entrance, I glanced around the restaurant. In 2014, even in a remote Southern town like Wrightsville, I expected to see blacks and whites intermingling freely in a public place — as friends, as co-workers, or simply because times have changed.

And indeed, that was the case. Eating at one table were six men wearing blue Washington EMC t-shirts. Four of the men were white, two were black.

In a booth across the room were three white men and a black woman, all in business attire.

The scene was perfectly normal for these modern times. If a mixed-race couple had been present, they would have been ignored.

All of which made me want to find out whether the old white couple and the young black woman would, or would not, eat at the same table.

Would the white couple overlook the old Jim Crow etiquette norm that blacks and whites do not eat together? I had no idea.

Times have changed. Customs and behaviors have evolved since those two were young. The South, and the people of the South, aren’t the same.

On the other hand, racial prejudice has a way of going underground instead of disappearing.

After the Civil War, a “Jim Crow” society evolved in the southern and border states for the express purpose of maintaining white power and privilege. It persisted for the next century because every major institution in white society supported the suppression of blacks.

Ultimately, federal laws forced that to end. But the laws did nothing to change minds.

Prejudiced people don’t simply see the light one day and tell themselves, you know, I was wrong. No race is inherently superior or inferior to another. What was I thinking?

They may hold their tongues and watch their behavior, but few actually change.

What was in the minds of the old white couple in that restaurant? Here were two people in a small Southern town, born in the 1920s, who grew up in a society completely different from ours. Odds are, they were long-time residents of Wrightsville. Old folks don’t move to such a place late in life.

Clearly, they were people of means. They owned a handsome Escalade, and they employed someone to chauffeur them — possibly to care for them at home, as well. What kind of relationship did they have with the black woman?

Most likely, I was watching a lunch ritual for the three of them. This probably wasn’t their first trip to the restaurant.

In that case, the answer to who sat with whom was already settled. In a few minutes, I would see it for myself.

Trying to be discreet, I watched the three of them make their way to a table near the front of the room. The black woman rolled the white woman’s wheelchair up to the table, helped the man get seated next to her, folded and set aside his walker, and stood expectantly next to the table.

The old couple studied the menu board for a moment, then spoke to the black woman. She proceeded to the counter, where another black woman was waiting to take the orders.

Soon, three steaming trays appeared on the counter. First, the black woman carried the white woman’s tray to her. Then she did the same with the man’s tray. Then she returned to the counter for her own. It was the moment of truth.

She carried her tray to the table and sat down opposite the white couple.

I don’t know why it mattered, but my immediate thought was, Thank God.

I had long since finished my lunch, and it was time to get back on the road. I got up and headed for the door.

As I passed them on the way out, they were, for the first time, relaxed and engaged in conversation. The black woman had a happy laugh. The white woman was praising the cook for preparing the excellent creamed corn.

For all I know, Wrightsville, Georgia, is an awful place where race relations have changed only superficially. Then again, maybe it isn’t like that at all.