She has a Confederate Flag (license plate) on the front of her Toyota, and traffic was moving slowly. When HK saw the license plate, he stopped, snapped to attention, and smartly saluted. We waved back. (He must have been in the military to know how to salute like he did.)
Needless to say, I was very intrigued at that point - verging on cognitive dissonance. I told my wife, "If a white man tried that, there would be a riot. The police would drag him off to jail for being a racist."
After I dropped off my wife at one place, and went back through town to where I was going, and tje man and his flag were now standing by the entrance to Brevard College, at a main intersection in town.
When we were done with all our errands, I vowed to pull into the College and stop and talk to the man. But as we headed that way, here he came walking East along Hwy 64 back toward Asheville, so I pulled (careened) across two lanes of traffic into a gas station and waited for him.
I said "Hey", introduced myself, and told him that I just wanted to meet him. He introduced himself and we shook hands. I asked him if he was walking all the way to Asheville, and he said, "No, I walked from Asheville to Texas once, but this time I have a car down the road."
I asked him what he was doing, and he said something about "showing the liberals in this town" that we are all proud of our heritage. I really can't remember his exact words - I was too shocked at hearing a black man talk about liberals that way. But he was intelligent and articulate.
At this point I was starting to get a clue that this was not just an old crazy man.
I asked him how he was received as he walked across the South, and his eyes lit up and he said, "It was glorious. Whites and blacks both responded to what I was trying to do, and agreed with me that we all have a common heritage that we need to protect"...or words to that effect. "I only had trouble in one place, where the police tried to run me out of town. The mayor fired that man the next day."
I said that the Civil War was a dark time in America's history, and HK agreed, but added it was a dark time in the history of the world. He mentioned that the blacks here in the US should thank God that they weren't still suffering in Africa.
Well that was about it. Had I known who he was, I would have walked with him a while and talked some more. I thanked him, and he thanked me for stopping to talk to him, and we shook hands again. He doffed his hat to my wife.
When I got back in the car, I had my wife write down his name (I suffer from CRS), and my thought was, "I'll bet this guy is somewhere on Free Republic.", which he was.
His hat looked like it might have been fine leather at one time. Now it looked like the bleached skin of a dead cow which had died somewhere out in the desert. It was heavily stained from sweat around the middle and down the brim, and sported a couple of those silver acorns that cavalry officers had on their hats. The hatband was missing.
You can't buy a hat like that, you have to make one with dust and your own sweat.
I would have given anything to be there, especially at that particular moment.
His hat looked like it might have been fine leather at one time. Now it looked like the bleached skin of a dead cow which had died somewhere out in the desert. It was heavily stained from sweat around the middle and down the brim, and sported a couple of those silver acorns that cavalry officers had on their hats. The hatband was missing .... You can't buy a hat like that, you have to make one with dust and your own sweat.
That says it all, John.
Thank you (more than you know) for starting my day off on an incredibly bright note. Your description of the way in which you came across him, and the interaction between the two of you, is incredible. You shook hands with a genuine American hero yesterday, and, even though you didn’t necessarily know it at the time, you gradually recognized it on your own.
Please consider posting this account as a thread of its own, maybe with a little background information on H.K., and maybe even include a little more about your hindsight reflections since meeting him. More FReepers need to read what you wrote here. The personal, one-on-one accounts, and impressions, of this kind of meeting mean so much more than the cold, second-hand facts that (of necessity) generally comprise the posts here.
Many thanks for sharing this wonderful story.
~ joanie