ATblog Expedition Travel Log

Drove into Lebanon to find a coffee shop called Vibes that had Internet connection. Put their address in the GPS and followed the directions. Took me back through the strip malls into the old town, and to an old industrial section that looks like they are trying to revive.

It didn’t look open, but there was a guy on the covered patio with a computer open one of the tables. I parked the Jeep and Trailer, grabbed my computer bag and headed over to join him.

He confirmed the place was closed but the Internet was up and running, so I started to update the blog, download E mail, and do my daily visit to Expedition Portal.

I struck up a conversation with my Internet poaching friend Reggie. He was born and raised in Lebanon and his family still lived there. He moved away and gone to school, and lived in Nashville working as a graphic artist.

Reggie had returned to Lebanon after the economy slowed down, and he looked after his Grandmother who had Alzheimer’s, and picking up some work locally.

Reggie was an easy person to talk to. He was intelligent, articulate, funny, self confident, and he had a good grasp of world politics. All positives in my book.

I asked him what life was like in Lebanon, and he said he couldn’t wait to move back to Nashville, and was even considering Portland. Exciting changes I told him, I hope it works out.

Reggie hoped so too. He’d been fired from his job for being too “cocky”, we both knew what he meant. After all he’s living in a town out in the sticks, he’s educated, he’s articulate, he’s intelligent, and he’s African American.

As a white guy who lives in Northern California, I guess I’m naive, but I thought that racial tolerance had moved further ahead than this. My point of reference was a long way from Reggie’s.

Segregation still exists, it seems, the black people live in one part of town and the white people live in an other. Reggie twisted the perspective a little when he said that he ran into a person he’d been to high school with and they had said he talked like a white person.

He didn’t expand on this, but I thought does that mean if you’re self confident and articulate you can’t be black? Or flipping that, if you’re self confident and articulate you must be white? I’m uncomfortable with both those statements. Reggie’s point was in addition to the oppressive attitudes of the whites, some of the black population had type cast themselves (or made to believe) that they fit into certain constraints, and he couldn’t get along with either.

Wow. I’d dropped into this place for a cup of coffee and an Internet connection. What I ended up getting was a slice of Reggie’s life.

Best of luck to you Reggie