From airplane to starship...

[Bekah]

And I saw Easy Rider with my husband when I was 21 (when it came  
out).    A couple years  or so later my hubby and I with two kids in  
tow drove cross country in a VW van with California plates.     We  
had to go through way-south Louisiana (like beyond  Jeanerette and  
Morgan City and Thibodaux) into New Orleans.   Tim had fairly long  
hair and I looked like some stray hippie mom.  We had believed Easy  
Rider so we were a bit nervous but not overly so.   There was one  
kinda interesting experience in Thibodaux.   While we were looking at  
the Evangeline Tree a guy came up to Tim and started talking like  
where were we from and where were we going, etc.  Tim got nervous and  
we didn't stick around long enough for lunch.

We had to stop to ask directions somewhere south of there (Raceland?)  
and I have no earthly idea what that guy actually said - I only know  
he pointed east and so that's where we went.  (Cajun accents were  
really thick there then.)

I didn't quite dare stop and take a photo of the black kid on the  
back of a big truck piled with watermelon but I see him and the scene  
in my mind.  OR the black girls walking barefoot on the seashell road  
shoulders.

VW buses, even new ones like ours,  were not common there - neither  
was long hair.  After a couple days in New Orleans we headed north.

Oh memories...
Bekah

On Oct 23, 2008, at 7:44 AM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> I remember seeing Easy Rider when It came out. I must have been 14 at
> the time. My dad figured that an 'R' rated movie wasn't going to  
> destroy
> my morals any more than the pile of Playboy magazine he tossed in my
> general direction [doubtless in the hope that some of my more limp- 
> wristed
> habits might go away.] My father was a veteran of the Civil Rights
> movement, involved in many acts of civil disobedience including the
> march in Selma that was a turning point in voter rights in the deep  
> south.
> So when we left the theater, quite shaken, my dad had a paranoid
> response. We were followed by a truck with a rifle rack, and dad  
> told us to
> get down in the back seats so our heads were not exposed to any  
> potential
> gunfire.  Looking at the film 30 years later, I saw a Greek  
> tragedy, idealists
> turned into pimps. But that film set off a fire 40 years ago  
> because it fed
> into the fears of 'white negros' who came to see themselves as martyrs
> to 'the cause.'
>
>
> On Oct 23, 2008, at 7:02 AM, rich wrote:
>
>> huh?
>>
>> guess i was on the wrong kinda drugs.  put obama on that hog and dang
>> if some redneck in a white pickup wouldn't blow'em away today thx to
>> all those right-wing scumbags in this country.
>> things haven't changed in middle america after all.
>>
>> rich