Blue Highways: A Journey into America

Heat-Moon leaves the monastery, travels through Georgia, and heads into Alabama, where he finds a place to park Ghost Dancing and stay the night near a community college. It is here that subsequent events would “change the direction of the journey” (91). While at the tennis courts near the college, Heat-Moon finds himself in a discussion with a pair of white gentlemen, one of whom seems to hold some racist views. This man mentions to Heat-Moon that he ought to take a trip into Selma.

As Heat-Moon drives toward Selma, he notices people seem friendly, waving at him as he passes on the country roads. Heat-Moon decides to stop in for a drink at a place called Mickey’s, an apparent tavern (“apparent” because of the necessity of subtle advertising for bars in the Bible belt). In the tavern, Heat-Moon has a discussion during which explicit and grotesque racism is on display.

Heat-Moon travels into the Black neighborhoods of Selma and befriends two reluctant Black men, James Walker and Charles Davis. He meets them at a basketball court and asks them about race relations in Selma—whether things have improved since the famous Civil Rights marches of 1965. Eventually, Walker and Davis notice a sheriff keeping tabs on the meeting and tell Heat-Moon that the sheriff is not watching them as Heat-Moon assumes; instead, the sheriff is keeping tabs on him.