it’s jess in the head of Mason and Dixie, jess like all other lines, border lines, state lines, parallel thirty-eight lines and iron Europe curtain lines is all jess ’maginary lines in people’s heads
“I ain’t no Jim Crow anyhow,” I told him, “’case you know my name is Pictorial Jackson.”
“Oh,” says Slim, “is that so? Well, I never knowed that, uh-huh. Looky-here Jim,” he said, “don’t you know about the law that says you can’t sit in the front of the bus when the bus runs below the Mason Dixie line?”
“What for you call me Jim?”
“Now Jim!” he says, and cluck-cluck at me solemn. “You mean to tell me you don’t know about that line?”
“What line?” I say. “I ain’t seed no such a line.”
“What?” he say. “Why, we just crossed it back there in Maryland. Didn’t you see Mason and Dixie holdin that line across the road?”
“Well,” I says, “did we run over it or underneath it?” and I’se tryin to recollect such a thing but jess cain’t. “Well,” I say, “I guess I musta been sleepin then.”
And Slim laugh, and push my hair, and slap his knee. “Jim, you kill me!”
“What did that line look like?” I axed him, ’case I wasn’t old enough to know it was a joke yet, you see. Well, Slim said he didn’t know what such a line looked like neither on account he never seed it any more than I did.
“But there is such a line, only thing is, it ain’t on the ground, and it ain’t in the air neither, it’s jess in the head of Mason and Dixie, jess like all other lines, border lines, state lines, parallel thirty-eight lines and iron Europe curtain lines is all jess ’maginary lines in people’s heads and don’t have nothin to do with the ground.”
Grandpa, Slim said that jess as quiet, and didn’t call me Jim no more, and said to hisself “Yes sir, that’s all it is.”
