Not So Black and White.(Observations on a cross country trip.)

It was my brother's birthday. The Big 40. So I stirred myself from relaxing in L.A. sunshine and headed east. "How was your flight?" people asked. "Actually," I said, "I didn't fly. I drove." To which they'd reply: "Why?"

I asked myself that question, somewhere between Van's Pig Stand in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. It was late. Interstate 40 was torn up by construction, and it was raining in that distinctive Southern way where the raindrops simply appear in the envelope of humidity, condensing on the inside of the windshield and curling the pages of the road map. Mentally, I checked off the things I was giving up by going to New York the long way.

I gave up the shuffling, slow-moving herd at airport security. I gave up the slack-jawed glassy-eyed indifference of the people tasked with finding your nail scissors, as well as the "snack with beverage" that somehow constitutes the bright spot of the whole cross-country airplane ordeal. Still, two weeks from Los Angeles to Manhattan. Why, indeed?

It's easy to rationalize. I wanted to see our beautiful country. Or: see, I make my living in Hollywood, producing (or trying to produce) television and movies that entertain ordinary people. The chief peculiarity of this peculiar business is that the more successful you are, the less likely it becomes that you'll ever encounter those proverbial "ordinary people." In Hollywood, having your finger on the pulse of the nation is best done poolside in Bel Air. I congratulated myself on being different.

So I tell myself. Actually, the real reason I hit the road was fried chicken.

Years ago, driving from Memphis to New Orleans with friends, we made a quick detour through McComb, Mississippi, to have a meal at the Dinner Bell, an old boarding house a few minutes ...