Wow. There’s “country hospitality” for you. Why were they such hostile jerkoffs?
Were you all flying ‘Biden 24’ flags or was it merely the fact you were in an RV? ( thus telegraphing the “not from around here” signal )
Possibly out-of-state plates. Plus the RV. And asking directions for the interstate.
But angry drunks don’t need reasons to he hostile really.
We had Oregon plates. I think it’s just that it was obvious from our clothing that we weren’t from around there, and of course the RV screams “VISITOR”. Some eastern Oregon towns are well known for their hostility towards anyone from Portland, Salem or other lefty cities.
Maybe the mere act of having to ask directions. Displaying a lack of local navigation awareness is a pretty good marker of non-localness.
Probably something Jane Goodall would be the best authority on.
I’m stealing this line! 
Sing along with Merle Haggard:
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don’t take no trips on LSD
We don’t burn no draft cards down on Main Street
We like livin’ right, bein’ free
Same as it ever was.
Even as their small towns empty out and blow away like tumbleweeds, as their kids move to the city where they can find both work and fun.
But the biggest political divide in America besides race is the urban/rural divide.
Notably, Haggard smoked grass regularly before, during, and after writing that song. It’s easy to espouse “liv(ing) right” when you’re “free” to live wrong.
Back in the mid 70’s my sister and BIL (who are Catholic) were moving to a small town in southern Iowa where BIL was going to be president of the local bank. The head of the local Chamber of Commerce was showing them around town and said something along the lines of “You’ll like it here, there are no Blacks and damn few Catholics”.
Also from Wisconsin and this is much what I heard as well. I don’t think debt was an issue, the land had come cheap and people built their own houses. No one would have a 30 year mortgage at that point anyway, the homesteads had been there for a few decades.
Lack of money could be an issue and they did have to barter for things they did need to buy by doing other work.
I think it’s not so much that the state/regional/urban/rural divide is what defines the political divide, but it’s certainly a huge enabler of that divide. I tend to think of it as a crack that unscrupulous political types can drive an ideological wedge into and push the sides apart.
“We don’t like those city (gasp!) values! We like down-home values here in BFE, Mississsippi, and I’m the candidate who will stand up for them!”
And then the candidate further goes on to describe HIS party’s political views as if they’re the ones the whole area holds, and they eat it up, because the politician has already framed it as “our values vs. theirs”, and they don’t want to be on the side of the city values.
Had the politician not done that, people might be more skeptical about what he’s saying, but by framing it as us vs. them / urban vs. rural / blue vs. red type thing, they’ve basically forced people to pick sides rather than consider the issues.
It’s the white, middle/upper middle class suburbanites who I don’t really understand.
Not only smoking grass, which is legal in places now, but Merle was also into burglary at least once. He and a buddy were trying to break into a diner’s locked back door when the owner opened it up and asked, “Why didn’t you boys use the front door like everybody else?”
Turned out the diner was still open.
Because he livin’ wrong, Merle went to jail for awhile and wasn’t free.
If only he’d fled to China and joined that matriarchal criminal organization
Mamma Triad
Speaking of divides, that so-called joke just put you on the fightin’ side of me.
Just proves there is at least one city country folk like
Being a white, middle class suburbanite perhaps I can give a partial explanation. It’s about the house, specifically the detatched, single-family house.
The house is the primary asset in our middle-class existence. It’s the thing that will finance our retirement, and maybe even have enough left over to leave something for our kids. We’ve spent years there, remodeling it bit by bit until it actually feels like ours, not just a place where we happen to live.
It’s also a major drain on our income and an annual reminder of the taxes we pay. So it’s a natural target for politicians to fight their battles over. “They” want you to pay even more taxes. “They” will move in, and not keep up their houses, and that will run down our property values.
Once you start chipping away, the entire structure of suburbia collapses. Fertile ground for a demagogue.
It was because an enormous influx of people was changing the character of everything. Oregonians were experiencing the same thing – but mostly people getting out of California because it was too crowded and expensive. Kind of like the Normans pushing the Angles pushing the Celts pushing the Picts.
Also, the Californios were Spanish. They got creamed by the Gold Rush. John C.Fremont.
Merle Haggard was a great artist, but he was a clueless, lip-service, hypocrite to slam kids facing the draft for criticizing the Vietnam war.
Which he apparently came to understand later…
Haggard called the song a “character study,” his 1969 self being the character: “It was the photograph that I took of the way things looked through the eyes of a fool… and most of America was under the same assumptions I was. As it’s stayed around now for 40 years, I sing the song now with a different attitude onstage… I’ve become educated… I play it now with a different projection. It’s a different song now. I’m different now.”