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What's the Most Foreign Place You Ever Visited?
(Disclaimer:I mean no disrespect to anyone currently living in the south. This happened back in 1977.)
I haven't traveled much, but the most foreign place I ever visited was in my own country when I walked into the Civil War Surplus and Head Shop in Kennesaw, Georgia in 1977. The culture shock I experienced was the result of my own southern California-bred naivete about the Civil War. I'd only read Gone With the Wind and bland history textbooks. To me the Civil War was ancient and long supplanted by other wars. Nor would I have found this place without my peripatetic tour guide brother, an American history major and DFH with a twisted sense of humor.
Richard had been traveling the country in his VW van and fetched up in Kennesaw, Georgia where he worked as a cab driver in nearby Atlanta. He invited me to visit during my college spring break, even paying my airfare, and for the entire week catered to my rather macabre tastes by trotting me around to some of the more startling locales. He had the rarest of traits in his ability to stand back and let me take in the sights without offering lecture, explanation or judgement.
On my first day in Kennesaw we walked downtown to the Wildman's Civil War Surplus and Head Shop. The name was changed in the 80's to Wildman's Civil War Surplus and Herb Shop because it became illegal to use the words "head shop" in advertising.
70's poster, still sold in Wildman Dent Myers' shop, wearing Confederate regalia.
Some things never change.
nothing at all about real U.S. history.
Dent Myers' shop was but the introduction to my week in the old confederacy, the prelude to climbing Kennesaw Mountain to see the Civil War cannons and driving into Atlanta for the Cyclorama (an experience worth its own diary).
But Dent's shop stuck in my mind for decades, as it represented a refusal to let go of a lost way of life. I brought home a reminder in the form of an iconic poster of Dent in Confederate uniform, chomping a cigar and declaiming "HELL NO I ain't forgettin!"
As I gazed around the crowded and filthy shop (Dent is something of a hoarder) I felt increasingly uneasy and embarrassed, but as a visitor to any foreign land was polite. Among the Civil War weaponry and bizarre taxidermy (a mounted boar's head with a plastic human hand sticking out of its mouth; right up my alley) were several startling displays of racism, such as a life-sized Klansman, hood and noose included, and some cringe-worthy caricatures of black people. Dent maintained that the more objectionable articles were of either historical or humorous value, and his shop has prevailed for over 40 years. As The Carpetbagger noted on his fine 2013 blog:
Dent is a true enigma. To some he is a beloved folk hero, to others he is nothing more then a disgusting racist.and
Despite Dent's charm and folksy humor, I didn't buy that this was some sort of museum of absurd and historical artifacts. This was no museum about racism-- this was racism, and though I wasn't willing to label it that to Dent's face (I already viscerally understood my status as outsider) I was still profoundly uncomfortable and embarrassed. I was as embarrassed as if my own over-the-top uncle was acting out in public, embarrassed that this was a perfectly acceptable retail establishment right here in my very own country; in my very own country that had passed civil rights laws and eliminated the doctrine of separate but equal. I was embarrassed at my belief that changing laws had somehow also changed hearts and minds. What Dent was embodying was no re-enactment, no ironic wink at history. Dent was perfectly at home among his memorabilia. I wondered how he talked to other locals when us outsiders weren't around.Free speech is something we all cherish, but that doesn't stop it from scaring us every once in awhile. Dent Meyers is a man from a different time, possibly a different century. He is unrepentant in his love for the confederacy and still claims allegiance to Jefferson Davis. Old Dent is not a one note pony. His affable nature is almost as disarming as the collection of racist memorabilia that he displays. He does not trust the federal government or doctors and believes strongly in holistic medicine, that he sells in his shop. He is also well known for carrying two loaded guns with him at all time. A fascinating and confusing character study of a man.
photo credit:Jacob the Carpetbagger, 2012, posted with permission.
It's not that I concluded all southerners were bigots, though it felt as if we inhabited different countries. I knew there were people like Richard living there. I knew there were people who grew up in Kennesaw feeling as much the outsider in their culture as I felt growing up in mine in San Bernardino. But where I grew up there was no compelling and constantly memorialized past, no relevant history other than vintage black and white Hollywood movies or comical images of Gold Rush days. In Atlanta and Kennesaw I saw a Civil War history more vividly tangible than Vietnam and more intensely frightening than World War II, and it shook me.
It was as if it had all only happened a generation ago instead of a century ago.
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