Down South

So there I was...startled awake at three in the morning as someone was pounding at my door with apparent intentions of knocking it down.  I had arrived here in Montgomery, Alabama late in the evening and found the $7 a night motel so I could get a shower and a good nights sleep.  After traveling and sleeping in my car for over a week I was beginning to reek despite my many attempts to freshen up in the rest stops along the interstate.  At 18 years old it wasn't uncommon for me to jump in my car and just take off with no particular destination and very little money in my pocket.  This was my first time heading south from Connecticut and I had almost no exposure to southerners to this point except for the old southern preacher I met in Georgia a couple days earlier.  After being warned about sleeping in a car with Connecticut plates in rural areas due to a bit of left over Civil War animosity, I pulled into this little country church and asked the pastor if I could stay in his parking lot for the night.  At 7 in the morning a knock comes on my car window with the old pastor bellowing in a heavy southern drawl, "C'mon, vittles is on."  His wife fed me grits, collard greens, biscuits and gravy and other foods I had never tasted in my life.  There is nothing like southern hospitality.  Back in Montgomery, I stumbled out of bed as the banging continued at my door with shouts of, "Let me in there...you let me in there." As I opened the door I saw an extremely large woman with her fist raised in the air and fire in her eyes.  She stared at me for a moment and then flatly said, "I got the wrong room."  I closed the door and headed back to bed.  A moment later, two doors down, I heard banging and a familiar voice yelling "Let me in there...you let me in there."  
Many years later I would live in the south and even marry a southern woman but that night in Montgomery I had mixed feelings about what felt like a whole different country.