While I waited for her to arrive, I purchased a Coke and ate a third of a pecan pie. As I was sitting at a picnic table eating, a guy named Tim Parker started up a conversation. About my age, slightly thicker, and with brunette hair parted on the side, he had an easy smile and an engaging personality. He asked about my trip, then we started talking about the area.  

He told me about how backward people in this area are, and I learned about the Scottsboro trial in which nine African Americans were falsely accused of rape. 

1982 was an election year and he told me about some of the things George Wallace, who was running for governor, had done (he won his fourth term that year). I learned that there’s an active Klu Klux Klan group on Giant Mountain, and that we were a bit more than twenty miles from the home of the original KKK. He noted there are still no Blacks in Arab or and Collinsville.

Having finished another third of the pie, I was licking my fingers as he said, 

“What’s weird is, if they know you they’ll do anything for you.”

From the context of our conversation , I assumed he meant that “you” referred only to white folks.