A few 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 style restaurant a few minutes from the interstate. We had heard about its convivial, friendly atmosphere – three or four large round tables, each with a lazy susan groaning with platters of southern delicacies, its simple all-you-can eat price structure, and its classic fried eggplant, okra, hush puppies, sweet potato casserole, buttery biscuits, and of course, flawless fried chicken. But on that night three years ago, it was unexpectedly closed. Disappointed and cranky from hunger, we ended up at a sad and sagging Taco Bell. And so I had a mission: eat at The Dinner Bell before I was old enough to make it medically unwise.

Two weeks ago, I did just that. It was, as predicted, perfection: delicious, carefully prepared southern classics in a place suffused with the kind of quiet happiness that comes from feeding people well, and being well-fed yourself.

And a strange thing happened: right there in the deepest part of the Deep South, in walked a young black man and a young white woman. They sat down at two empty seats and tucked into their lunch. Eavesdropping shamelessly, I gathered that this was a business lunch – he was her boss, and this was some kind of informal employee review taking place over the platters of eggplant and macaroni and cheese. I readied myself, as a northern snob was taught to do, for Racial Tension. I was in, after all, Trent Lott Country. And here was a young black man and a young white woman out eating together just as free as you please. I waited for something – nasty comments, bitter words, bigotry overt or otherwise.

Of course, nothing of the kind occurred. The neighborly, gracious atmosphere of The Dinner Bell – and in fact, everywhere else I went in the south – was totally unlike the spooky northern stereotype of Mississippi and Alabama. Totally unlike what sophisticated northerners, in their bigoted snobbery, imagine when they hear the words “McComb, Mississippi.” And I wondered how many interracial co-ed lunches were being eaten on that day at, say, the Four Seasons in enlightened Manhattan, or the Ivy in progressive Hollywood?

Not many, I’d guess. And that’s another reason for getting out of the airport and onto the open road. It’s a good way to break down a few prejudices, and a tasty way to do it.