Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino’s progress.

The Deep South has become the boogeyman of my walk. Everywhere I go, people try to scare me with it. “You’re fine here,” people say, “but just wait till you get to the Deep South. You better be careful there!”

Whatever. I’m beginning to think that I’ll never find this mythical Deep South.

The fact that no one seems to know where it is doesn’t lend any credence to its existence. Up in Jersey, people seemed to think it was literally below the Mason-Dixon line. But guess what? Tea is served unsweetened by default as far south as Arlington, Virginia. It wasn’t until Ashland that I had to specify how I wanted it. And it wasn’t until well south of Richmond that it dawned on me that what I drink is “unsweet,” and not “unsweetened.”

My last day in Virginia, just a few miles from the North Carolina border, I met a friendly shop owner. She had the most pronounced Southern accent I had heard up to that point, and was full of advice. She told about the existence of this thing called “the wheel,” and the many different vehicles humans have devised with it. She heartily encouraged me to get my hands one of them as quickly as possible, and speed my way through Kakalaki. I thanked her, got a hug, and kept on walking.

The people in the Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham triangle were friendly. “But don’t get the wrong idea,” I heard. The triangle, of course, is full of educated people with fancy degrees. And it’s very international. “Just you wait till you go a little further!”

Well, all I can say is that I had so much fun in Charlotte that it is now on my list of cities to visit on a regular basis. Richmond is also on that list. DC, where I spent my early-to-mid 20s is most certainly not. But I won’t digress into a rant about Swamp City.

So there I was, having a good time in what happens to be the second largest banking center in the U.S. after New York, when the boogeyman came up again. “The Carolinas are very different from each other,” said a bartender who heard about my trek. “There’s a reason we’re ‘North’ Carolina. You’ll see what I mean when you’re in South Carolina.”

Even a native South Carolinian friend in NYC whom I texted when I got to his state replied with a “Turn around!” when he got my message. Yet there I was, sitting at an awesome coffee shop in Greenville, having an egg white omelet for dinner. My host there seemed to think I’d hit the Deep South just past Atlanta, where I’m headed now. And forget about Alabama and Mississippi. “Those are the states that even South Carolina gets to make fun of!”

We’ll see. I have a dear friend waiting for me in Tuscaloosa, so I think I’ll be alright.

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*Photo by Constantino Diaz-Duran.