ABSTRACT
As I arrived in Netherville, the languages of my subconscious were still fighting with each other. In the deep summer, the landscape was a rich green deep enough to bring the whole concept of bluegrass to life. Mansions with white-columned porches spread their long, oaklined entrance drives on the rolling hills of the south pike. It looked like the set of Gone with the Wind, women in long, pleated skirts and large straw hats flocking on sunny, green fairgrounds. A lock would brush against a sensuous nape or jaw, its fair gentility protected by a parasol. I had believed this America to be extinct since the Civil War, and wondered what magic brought me into this Hollywood replica. The university was as well groomed and stylish as a plantation home. The flower beds on the quad designed deep greens, pinks, reds, yellows, and purples into lavish ovals. Shapely brick buildings of a dark purple lined the campus’s meandering paths, contrasting with the white trim of the windows and tower tops. Rounded shapes promised some baroque indulgence, but the hallways were lined with stern portraits of defunct founders and board members. A moustache turned down, a collar pressing against a jaw, the thick paint of a frock that covered a seemingly wooden flesh announced the austere local elite, and the self-flagellating fundamentalism mixed with agrarian nostalgia which still plagued the university. In the fast-food hangouts around it, whites would not be seen at the table with blacks. No Hispanics or Latinos mediated their face-off. I realized how much I missed the wider diversity of Southern California, how much Latinos had been part of the landscape that made that state feel like home.
