Somewhere on Peachtree Road

A woman I just met told me she had recently met a much older woman in the elevator of her "senior living" building, somewhere in a leafy and hilly section of Atlanta. As it turns out, the older woman was from Jackson, Mississippi.

"What the heck would a Jew be doing in Jackson, Mississippi?" My new friend has a refreshingly endearing way of saying (or asking) whatever comes to mind, but she admitted that, this time, her hasty blurt had been a surprise, even to her. I silently chastised myself for my own ignorance, having assumed that the older woman from Jackson, Mississippi in the elevator must have been an employee; I hadn't noticed any residents who weren't white. 

As it turns out, the 97 year old woman from Jackson, Mississippi had perfectly good reasons to be from there, not the least of which was her years of civil rights activism -- with commendations and citations on her apartment wall to prove it. My new friend -- a much younger Jew (at about 85) from Philadelphia -- was fascinated by her new friend's story, even wrote about it in a a piece titled something like "Everything I ever knew about the South I learned from Gone With the Wind." 

Everything I ever knew about Jackson, Mississippi I learned from my drive through there with my daughter last January, at night, in a snowstorm. The roads were slick and desolate; everyone, except us, apparently, had heeded the warnings and stayed inside. It was dark and cold in Jackson, Mississippi, and we felt conspicuously White when we ran into a fast food joint to get dinner to eat in the car as we continued to speed toward civilization. Well, New Orleans. My daughter's veggie burger and my chicken sandwich both turned out to be leathery hamburgers. We pitched those, just ate the fries. If there's one thing you can depend on in the South, it's the fries. Speaking of stereotypes. 

My new friend was thrilled about all she had learned from the lady from Jackson, not just the stuff about being Jewish in the deep South and civil rights movements from long ago and sacrifices made by folks who would turn over in their graves if they saw the giant and hopefully temporary steps backward we have taken lately, although, at the very least, that stuff gives us hope. My friend was even more thrilled, though, about what she had done for this one, grand lady, a quiet survivor of a life well lived. Elderly, infirm, tucked away in a "senior living" building somewhere on one of the zillions of roads called "Peachtree" in Atlanta, she had become invisible. Many of us might have looked right through her, never knowing this Jew from Jackson, Mississippi had a lifetime of stories to tell and lessons to teach. 

I cannot wait to read my friend's article, inspired by a fortuitous lack of tact and endless curiosity, and a rare willingness to see the world from outside the comfort of the bubble that beckons us all. Different bubbles, same concept. Theoretically, they help us to make sense of things. Well, that hasn't worked out very well, now, has it? 

Fiddle-dee-dee, Scarlet. Frankly, it's high time time we all give a damn.