Texas cops refused to send escort to Biden bus

[Jedi Guy]

31. With Mississippi it depends largely on where you are, though.

I grew up on the Gulf Coast near Biloxi, and it's more cosmopolitan than the rest of the state. With the advent of the casinos, lots of people from out of state started frequenting the area and it's pretty much dependent on those tourists now, so the "southern hospitality" gets rolled out. Hattiesburg (University of Southern Mississippi), Oxford (Ole Miss), and Jackson are also okay.

The interior of the state is another matter entirely, though. I went to Ole Miss for my first semester of university, and the drive north to Oxford was very uncomfortable except for Hattiesburg and Jackson. I was a skater kid in the late 90s, so I was wearing the bigass JNCO jeans, Airwalks, band shirts, etc., and I vividly remember feeling very ill at ease stopping for gas in some of those little towns.

On one occasion I pulled into a gas station and had a Marilyn Manson album playing on my stereo in the car. While I was filling up, these three good ol' boys were standing out by their trucks, and from the way they were eyeballing me I was pretty sure I was about to get jumped. They didn't end up doing anything, but from the way they were looking at me, it was pretty clear that they wanted to kick my ass. If it had been darker out or they'd been drunker, things might have gone badly.

After that I always made damn sure to stop in Jackson, fill up the tank, and take a leak so I wouldn't have to stop between there and Oxford. There are a lot of things about the south that I really miss, but good ol' boys aren't one of those things.