Dinner was at the Best Western at 1900. I wore civvies rather than a uniform, and was pleased to note that Harlan had changed also. My first question was to Anna Lee. "So how'd you ever meet this reprobate?"
Anna Lee and Harlan laughed. "We met at school.", she said. "I was walking across the quad and he ran into me!"
"She was wearing these shorts - oh my God!- and...", interrupted Harlan.
"Watch your mouth!", squawked Anna Lee, at which both Marilyn and I laughed. "No need to tell anybody that!"
I glanced at Anna Lee's legs, which were pretty good, and nodded to Harlan and gave him a thumbs up. "No need to explain." That earned me punches from both Marilyn and Anna Lee. I just turned to Marilyn. "You'd better behave or I'll tell them the truth about how we met."
As expected, Marilyn turned red and said, "Don't you dare!", which made the others all the more curious.
I simply smiled at her and said, "You can tell them the romantic version, or my more truthful version."
"You are an evil person.", Marilyn answered. She gave a somewhat limited romantic version, and the other two had me expand on it. The romantic version was the duel. Then Harlan asked for the true version, and I told how she had picked up the bartender at a party, which earned a few squawks from my fiancée. I just shrugged and said I was an officer and a gentleman.
"You may be an officer, but you are no gentleman!", argued Marilyn.
"Well, it was fifty-fifty odds." I looked at my friend. "When's the big day?"
"March 11.", announced Anna Lee. "I finish school in December and we're getting married after that."
"Good for you."
Harlan continued, "It's at the chapel at Ole Miss, in Oxford. You should come. I'm inviting you. Both of you. Come on down." Anna Lee nodded in agreement.
I glanced at Marilyn, who gave me a shrug. "Fine by us. It all depends on where we end up, I suppose. If we can make it, we'll be there. You're invited to our wedding, too, but that's next summer and we don't have a date yet. Want to be one of my ushers?" I asked. "My college roommate is my best man, and you've been my army roommate for a couple of years. Why not?"
He laughed. "Love to. Are there going to be any other brothers at the wedding?", he asked.
I just grinned. "Oh, man, it's going to be whiter than a Klan meeting!"
Harlan just laughed loudly at that, and Anna Lee giggled. Predictably, Marilyn was horrified at my statement. "I can't believe you said that! You're such a ... a..."
I just shook my head at her. "I am many things, babe, but that ain't one of them." Harlan and his lady were looking at me in confusion. I turned to them and said, "Marilyn is convinced that since I am a Caucasian male born south of the Mason-Dixon Line, I am by birth and definition a racist, and that only Yankees have no prejudices."
"Oh, Lord!", groaned Harlan humorously. "What kind of a Yankee?"
"A New York Yankee!"
"They're the worst!", he laughed. He looked over at Marilyn and smiled. "You are aware that slavery was legal in New York until the 1820s, right?"
Marilyn looked like she had been slapped in the face with a dead fish. "No, that's not true!"
The rest of us just smiled and nodded. "1827, I believe. They weren't the last of the Yankee states, either. That was Connecticut, I think, and not for another twenty years or so, either.", I said. Marilyn looked at me and I said, "They teach this stuff in schools."
Harlan looked at me and grinned. "So, how many slaves did your family own, Carl?"
"None, as far as I know. Wrong type of land for that anyway.", I answered.
It was his turn to look surprised. "Shit, man, I was just joking. You mean your family might have been slave-owners?"
I shrugged. "Well, we got here in the 1750s, and Maryland was a slave state, so I suppose it's possible, but the land we owned wasn't suitable for that sort of farming. I have never heard of any branch of the family that ever owned any slaves, but I suppose it is theoretically possible. Hampton House is near where I grew up and it was a plantation with slaves, but the farming we did wasn't conducive to slavery."
"I'm not following you." Anna Lee looked at me curiously, too. Marilyn just couldn't believe the entire conversation.
"There's really only two crops that do well with slaves, cotton and tobacco, both of them high value and labor intensive. Most of the slaves at Hampton House worked in the barns and the main house. Nobody ever grew cotton or tobacco there, that's for sure." Harlan still looked confused, so he must not have that farmer gene in him. "Nobody's ever grown cotton in Maryland that I ever heard of. I suppose you could do it, but the big crops were always sweet corn and tobacco. Lots of tobacco was grown, still is, in fact, but it's all down in the southern part of the state, the flat and wet coastal piece. My family settled in the northern and western part of the state. It's all rolling hills there. Prime for corn and cows, lousy for tobacco.", I told him.
"You learn something every day, I suppose.", commented Harlan. "It's not just cotton and tobacco, though. In Mississippi they also raised rice and sugar, and both used slaves."
I gave my friend a funny look. "Okay, rice I can understand, but sugar? They grew sugar down there?"
He nodded. "Not any longer, but yeah. Now it's all grown overseas or Hawaii or some damn place. We raise sugar beets, though."
"Huh! I'd have never figured on that. I guess I learned something new, too. Makes sense, though, both crops are labor intensive, and sugar is certainly high value. Anyway, like I said, I don't think my family ever owned any slaves, but I can't honestly say it's because we're so morally superior. More like it just didn't make any sense." I just gave a wry shrug.
"There are times I can't believe you.", exclaimed Marilyn. "How can you be so, so, normal about this?"
I just shrugged. "I never said I approved of it. These are just historical facts, honey. Just like the fact that I had a relative on the southern side of the Civil War, as well as one on the northern side. It wasn't like all the southerners in the war owned slaves. I'd be willing to bet that the majority didn't." I held my hands up in a helpless gesture. "It is what it is. It's our generation that has to make it right."
Anna Lee nodded. "It's getting better already. Ten years ago, we probably couldn't have been in the same restaurant with you. Certainly not back home in Mississippi!"
"Wait and see.", I told my fiancée. "In my father's time that was normal. In our generation we know better. Our children and our grandchildren simply won't understand what the fuss was all about." I grinned at them. "They'll have found some other reason to hate people by then!"
That earned me a few rolled eyes and groans, but nobody disagreed with me either.
"Your family happy to see you in the army?", I asked.
Harlan shrugged. "They're okay with it. What they're happy with is that I went to college, even if I do have to go into the army because of it. I'm the first Buckminster to ever go to college, let alone graduate. The idea of becoming an officer is almost like a fairy tale to them."