Side Trip: Last Chance Thrift Store of Lithia Springs, GA

Somewhere between Georgia and Alabama, I began to feel like a stranger.

I'm not sure what tripped my foreignness detector. It wasn't the roads I drove--interstates, US routes, and even state routes are labeled with remarkable consistency across this country--but it could have been my utter unfamiliarity with the lay of the land they covered. It wasn't the small towns, either--Virginia's got plenty of those, and they all look more or less the same--but perhaps their names: Dahlonega, Chattahoochee, Eastaboga, Wetumpka, showing off a much stronger Native influence than my home state's sedate, largely Anglicized names. It wasn't the churches, but maybe the churchiness that seeped into billboards and bumper stickers and background music; everywhere I looked, Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior was exhorting me to Choose Life and mind my Eternal Destination. Motorcycles and white cars proliferated. Spanish moss grew on the roadside pines. The accents ranged from adorable to near-unintelligible.

All this, mixed together in the summerlike warmth of deep-Southern May, left me with a prickling sense of culture shock. I was the funny-talking stranger down here: the wide-eyed tourist, the confused out-of-state driver...

...and, yes, the only white girl in the Georgia thrift store.