Scott Stubbins — United States

Interviewer: Jimmy Norris, United States of America

Interviewee: Scott Stubbins, auto mechanic, Opelika, Alabama, United States

Jimmy: I want to thank you, Scott, for agreeing to be part of this project. I think your contribution is especially important because you were among those who most vehemently feared and opposed transition. I think your story should be included.

Scott: Y’all got that right!

I respect and appreciate y’all including me in this project of yours.

Want a cold one and some chicken wings?

Jimmy: Sure! Sounds great!

Scott: Here you go. Hope you like Schlitz. Hope the wings aren’t too hot for y’all.

Jimmy: Mmm! Delicious! Thank you, but you didn’t have to.

Scott: Best way to get to know one another is over beer and wings. ‘Sides, you’ve heard of Southern hospitality?

Jimmy: Yeah, I’ve heard of it.

Scott: Well, it’s a real thing, always was. It’d be downright uncivilized for me not to offer and for you not to accept. So we got ourselves off to a good start.

Jimmy: Good. And I’ll admit I was a bit hungry and thirsty, but I’d thought I’d catch a meal at the diner I saw on my way in, after the I interview.

So, tell me about yourself before transition.

Scott: I’m usually a man of few words and I lay it right out. I don’t pull punches or waste time pussyfooting around. Y’all OK with that?

Jimmy: More than OK. That’s what I want.

Scott: OK, you asked for it. Here goes:

I was born and raised right here in Opelika. Been around a bit but always come back to here.

I’m white. I’m male. I’m a Christian, a washed in the blood, born again Southern Baptist. I believe what the Bible tells me, and I believe in the U.S. of A, the best dang place on earth and I don’t care who says different. I believe a man is the head of the household and his wife should treat him as such, and he should protect and look after her. It’s in the Bible. I’m an auto mechanic, I work on cars. Best mechanic in town. I don’t particularly like dark people, faggots, or foreigners. I’m all of that and I’m not ashamed of it!

Y’all still wanna hear more, or y’all fixing’ to either throw down or skedaddle?

Jimmy: I don’t judge. I want to hear your story so please go on.

Scott: Maybe there’s hope for y’all yet.

Things growing up were pretty much like everybody around here. I’m the first of three boys. My folks was good, hardworking people. Owned and ran the Ope-Like-It Bakery downtown until they sold it and retired.

They was strict but fair. I messed up, yeah, I got whupped, but it kept me on the straight and narrow. I did good, I got good back. Do good, get good back; do bad, get bad back. Nothing wrong with that, but in a liberal state they could have gotten jail time or a fine and me in foster. Now, how is that a good thing?

Me and Zeke and Ron fought a bit, like all the time. Little stuff. Nothin’ serious. Just words and a little fisticuffs. But we also got on, had each other’s back. Anyone try to mess with us, they had to deal with all of us. Not many did it twice.

School was OK I guess, got mostly C’s with a few B’s and an A or two now and then. Had me a lot of girlfriends in high school but nothing lasted.

When I was about twelve, my Pappy started showing me how to work on cars, thought it might help keep me out of trouble.

He was right. I took to it big-time. I wanted to know more. It was mostly all I thought about. All day at school all I could think of was girls, football, and getting home to work on this old Chevy we was fixing up. I think the high point in my life at fourteen was when I rebuilt the engine, with my Pappy teaching me, and when I put it back in, it fired right up! I was so proud I could have busted wide open!

The folks wanted all three of us boys to work and help them run the bakery, and learn baking and maybe one of us learn business, so they could make it a legacy. They said when they was up in Heaven looking in on us, they wanted to see our family still running it a hundred years in the future, maybe even open another one or two in other towns.

Well, they got their wish with Zeke and Ron, but they saw right off that the Lord made me an auto mechanic and there was no use arguing with Him… or me. They only asked me to be willing to help out during the busy season and said if I ever get tired of working on cars, there’s always a spot for me the at the bakery. That was downright good of them. Some parents would have tried to make me do what they wanted and then disowned me if I didn’t. And it is still in the family. I guess everyone got what they wanted.

I graduated in the middle of my class, better than I thought I’d do, then I went to trade school and worked my way up to my Master Automotive Technician ASE Certification. Worked my ass off to get there but it was worth it. My folks had set a little aside to help me out and I needed it, but I paid them back as soon as I could, not that they asked me to.

Along the way I had a few girlfriends but finally I met Linda Sue Scruggs. Couldn’t look at another. Didn’t want to. We had us few rough spots but by the time my ASE Certificate got me in at Tom & Eddie’s shop, we was ready to get hitched and rent us our own place.

Things was pretty good at first, but it felt like every year I had to work more and more for us to have less and less. Linda Sue managed the produce section of the Kroger’s but we both kept having to take more and more overtime. It crept up on us but we couldn’t miss it. My folks and my in-laws all said it’s been like that for a while, but there was a time when everyone had it better than their folks did.

We knew why. Thank the Lord we had Fox News and OANN. They laid it all out for us. There was several reasons. One was all the illegals pouring in for Mexico. Some of them was criminals of every kind, some was looking for a free ride ‘cause the liberals had made it so easy, some of them was terrorists, and some of them was taking our jobs and driving wages down. Nothing good about that. The Republicans kept fighting it, trying to protect us from this… well they called it an invasion, something like that, but the Democrats and other liberals kept finding ways to jam the door wide open at the border with a big sign over it saying, “come on in!”

Why was we the only country they thought owed them something. What, we supposed to take in the whole world when we was barely able to take care of our own?

And these illegals brought their ways and their culture with them. It was crowding us real American white folks out like weeds in your garden. If you don’t weed them out, they take over. Hell, you couldn’t walk into a store or restaurant without having to listen to a bunch of Spanish and I don’t know what all. At least they should bother to learn English!

Then there was the moral decay. Fags were getting married and all of a sudden there was a dozen different genders, and the liberals made it all legal and even fed into it. How civilization going to hold together like that? The liberals was indoctrinating kids with their woke jabber even after we made them take their blasphemous books off the shelves and out of the classrooms. When I went to school I didn’t see much of that shit, but it was still there like some kind of nasty fungus that just won’t go away even after you bleach it.

I saw it all so clearly and I got madder and madder. Linda Sue and I volunteered to get Republican, and later, New Republican voters registered and voting, and to patrol the polls to catch people who was trying to cheat like everyone knew they would.

Jimmy: How did you first hear of transition, and how did you feel about it?

Scott: Oh, Fox was all over it when it happened in Costa Rica. Then countries started falling like dominoes in South America. Then it jumped to Africa, then Asia.

As the disaster spread, the liberal media put out fake news saying things was OK in those countries, that no one was hurt, and people was happy there. But Fox showed us the truth, shocking photos and videos smuggled in by anonymous whistleblowers who couldn’t give their name or appear on television for fear of being killed or worse. Shocking images! Ruined cities with crowds of scared, starving, wretched people huddled in the ruins. People being rounded up and shot. We were told the liberal media were showing professional grade deepfakes.

Both Fox and Pastor Billings at our church both used the term “fallen nations” for transitioned countries. It stuck. That’s what we called them then.

Next, cheap, top-tier goods started showing up in our stores from fallen countries. We knew it had to be something nefarious, and Fox confirmed it for us. Lance Robbins explained on the “Straight Truth” show that it was a ploy to subvert and destabilize free countries by undermining our economy. Very clever. They would undercut domestic businesses with goods produced in slave labor camps (we saw the pictures and videos!). American producers couldn’t compete. The economy and jobs would tank. People would lose faith in America and want the fairy tale world they were pushing. That made it easier for them to get a wedge in.

Fox, OANN, and Pastor Billings all told us it was a real threat and probably those cheap goods were booby trapped to be remotely triggered, as well as surveillance devices. It was our patriotic duty to buy American and stay the hell away from those traps. We had to try to keep other people, the traitors and cowards, out of them too.

They explained to us that it was a new kind of especially insidious communism that was bent on taking over the world and turning it into your worst Godless nightmare.

Pastor Billings told us it was a sure sign that the End Times were upon us. This Svoboda person behind it was the Antichrist. We just had to resist with everything we had until the Lord came to set things right. He said it’s better to starve or be beaten to death as a righteous Christian standing with Jesus then be welcomed into Heaven than to stock up on cheap stuff and be seduced into Hell by Satan.

There were a lot of fights around those fallen stores. Deputies and citizen volunteers went to blockade them and hopefully destroy them, but they already had armed security. We were only able to burn down maybe one in ten. We busted some heads though. Put the fear of God into the cowardly traitors that we could catch. The problem was, what they were doing wasn’t illegal, so we had to take things into our own hands. Eventually it was a standstill.

But the New Republicans had the White House, a majority in the Senate and a supermajority in the House, and they were on top of it, warning the nation and vowing to make sure it couldn’t happen here. We would be the example for the world of how to resist this pernicious plot.

Knowing that, we weren’t worried.

Then came the day when all the media except Fox, OANN, and a couple of others actually aired that hellish message. I watched it on the TV at the shop and my blood just boiled and boiled, and underneath it I my heart felt like a cold lump of fear and helplessness. But the government would put a sock in it, right?

Wrong! The President caved like a house of cards. Talked about patience and calm and give them time to work this out. I said to hell with that!

When the call came to revive the Confederacy and secede to isolate ourselves from this contagion, it was all I needed.

I ran out of the shop along with a couple of other patriots, drove home, got into my camo gear, grabbed my body armor, my rifle, and my .45, and drove to City Hall. There was already a line of people signing up at a folding table set up outside. The mayor was speaking, calling on all able bodied Oplelika men to join the cause.

We couldn’t let this happen to us! That hellish message! There’ll be no money! Yup, communism alright. We’ll all be poor. We’ll have no money, so we’ll be dependent on the government, what they want to give us, which will be next to nothing, and we’ll have to swear loyalty oaths and probably get a mark on us like in Revelations, and do what they tell us if we want to eat or even breathe!

No more hierarchies! That means there’ll be anarchy like the Wild West with Satan laughing and drinking up all the blood!

Government won’t be overthrown! Of course not! The government is in on it!

Both Fox News and Pastor Billings said as much during our swearing-in ceremony. Then it was off to war.

We fought hard. We took no prisoners. We tolerated no treason. We won a few early battles, but it only took a few months for the enemy to put an end to it. They had us outgunned, outmanned, and to tell you the truth, they had better military strategy and discipline.

They didn’t even have to invade. The U.S. military already had bases in every Confederate state. We had thought for sure the military would be with us, but in the end, too few of them were.

I was captured at the Battle of Montgomery. We were fighting hand-to-hand, street by street. It was a shit show. I was about to put one in an enemy soldier who was trying to put one in me, when one of them grabbed me from behind, ripped off my gas mask, and gassed me. I went down sure it was mustard gas or VX or something, but I woke up later in my camo but with no shoes, guns, ammo, knife or anything. The son of a bitch hit me with that damn sleeping gas! I was on a cot in a tent with other Confederate fighters in a POW camp.

I knew what was next. They would torture us a few of us as a time while they starved us to death. They would probably harvest our organs and our adrenochrome to keep their liberal masters immortal. We had to fight. We all agreed that we had to fight like madmen when they came for us, one by one. We couldn’t try to rush the gate or overpower them, so we’d have to keep it one on one.

When they came for me, I stood up, gave name, rank, and serial number then walked with them for maybe thirty feet then bit deep into one of their necks, kicking for the kneecaps and punching for the throat like we’d talked about. The next thing I knew they had me on the ground. I knew this was it so I made it as hard for them as I could.

I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. They held me in some kind of martial arts hold and carried me like a piece of furniture to an office, where they bound me to a chair with some kind of soft but really strong rope. Two men soldiers and a woman soldier sat there in a sofa across from my chair, waiting silently until I ran out of breath after I’d spit all the fire I had in me. When I was too tired, hoarse and scared to say more, one of the men spoke in an unexpectedly gentle tone:

“Hi Scott, we understand you’re terrified, outraged, and despairing because you honestly believe we’re going to brutalize you and your comrades and turn Alabama into the kind of place you’ve seen in videos on Fox News. Am I close?”

“Y’all know what you’re gonna do to me, and I do too, so why don’t you just get on with it!”

“We are. Right now.”

“Huh? What?”

“First of all, is there anybody you want us to call to let them know you’re alright?”

“What? Oh, I get it. You want to grab my family so you can do Lord knows what to them while I watch! What do you think I am, stupid?”

“I understand why you think that. It’s the kind of thing you’ve been told day after day for a long time. I promise you we won’t hurt you or your family. But it’ll take time for us to trust each other.

How about yourself. Are you hurt in any way? Are you hungry or thirsty? Do you need anything? I mean besides to get out of here?”

“Alright, I can give you that much. Yeah, my head is pounding, I’m thirsty as hell. I’m hungry. And I have to pee.”

“The bathroom is right in there. If we untie you, will you give us your word as a gentleman that you won’t try anything? I should warn you that every spot in this room and the bathroom has nozzles that can hit you with sleep gas before you have time to react. We also have restraints that we can activate.”

“OK, fine, I’ll be a good boy. For now. You’re going to do what you’re going to do to me anyway.”

So I let the two male soldiers untie me and did my business. They didn’t object to me closing the door, for which I was grateful. I looked around for something to use as a weapon, but there was nothing. When I came out, they let me take my seat without tying me up again.

Someone brought in a disposable tray with some food on a paper plate and a large paper cup full of ice water. I knew right away that the tray would be useless as a weapon. The food was three slices from a jumbo combo pizza.

“OK, now I want each of you to take a bite and a sip. Then we’ll wait a few minutes before I decide to eat or not.”

They complied, exchanging looks like something was funny.

“What’s funny?” I asked.

“You’re then sixth prisoner we’ve interviewed today, and every one of you has said the same thing! At this rate we’ll get fat before we finish processing you all!”

In spite of myself, I chuckled and relaxed just a little bit. After about ten minutes or so of them looking disgustingly healthy, I couldn’t wait anymore. Hell, if they’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me. If they’re going to make it painful, they’ll make it painful. But at least I’ll have a belly full of what I recognized as some delicious pizza and some cool water.

After that, it was a long process. I still kept expecting at any moment to be jammed up or shot or sucker punched, but it never happened. Instead, they treated me well, with respect and compassion. But they were firm. I knew that I couldn’t fight or overpower them, the same as I felt when I blew up at my tenth-grade gym teacher but knew I couldn’t take him.

When all the fighting was over and the Confederacy was no more, we were released to go home. When I got there, I was so happy to see Linda Sue looking like a happy angel! I had worried that Lord knows what had happened to her, but she told me she’d stayed inside and laid low mostly.

And she told me that U.S. soldiers had daily brought food and supplies to every door in the neighborhood once they had quelled violent resistance. At first, she wouldn’t open the door for them, so they left things on the front porch. It turned out everything was good. Good food, soap, toilet paper, batteries and all kinds of useful things. She didn’t have to go out for anything.

At one point some shrapnel from a crashed helicopter damaged the front of the house, and it was the U.S. soldiers who came to put out the fire and offered to make repairs. At that point she trusted them just enough to to take them up on the offer but with her shotgun in her hands just in case. When they were done, she asked them how much she owed them, and they smiled and said “No charge Ma’am. No charge for anything ever again.”

At that point I didn’t know what to believe or what was real. I was more confused than ever.

Jimmy: How did things go during the reconstruction as the new social setup settled in?

Scott: Y’all can guess what a shit show I was expecting. Just like all the video I saw on Fox. I thought our life was about to be over. But that never happened.

Instead, things actually got better than they was before transition. I kept working in the garage, and Linda Sue kept working at the food distribution center that used to be Kroger’s. We still lived in the same apartment but sure enough, we got us a legal paper from City Hall and the County Registry saying we owned the place. No rent to pay ever again.

It took a while to get used to not having to pay or be paid. I still feel a mite guilty when I walk into a place then walk out with something without paying. But that’s the way it is now.

It all took getting used to. Now at the shop, we was all like partners. Both Tom and Eddie weren’t keen on it at first. It was rough for a spell. We had to keep reminding them that they wasn’t our bosses. But we worked it out. Hell, even in the old days we used to go shoot pool and fishing and other stuff together. We was friends. We just had to be friends at work too.

We got a lot more relaxed. We didn’t have to take overtime. We didn’t have to worry if we could afford this or that. We didn’t go crazy or nothing, but we was finally able to get a little boat for fishing and replace that old piece of junk of a refrigerator and get an air conditioner that worked. We got the wedding bands that we’d wanted but couldn’t afford before. We could get what we wanted to eat instead of just what we could afford.

For the first little while no one really knew how to do things. They was changing up the laws and I don’t know what all. I wouldn’t’ve wanted to be in the government for all the bass in the sea!

The Kendalls broke up, divorced. Turns out underneath that happy wholesome couple they seemed to be, there was some bad shit going on. Cindy had wanted to take the kids and get out before someone really got hurt for a few years but she knew with him being a lawyer and her a homemaker, she’d never make it on her own and he could paint her up so bad in court that she’d get nothing.

But this was like no divorce I ever seen. One day while Butch was in court, Cindy grabbed the kids and what she could fit in the Ford and moved to her own house a couple of counties over. Turns out she’d gone on that NewWorldWeb thingy and claimed a house no one was using, got the deed and that was that. She had him served the next day. He had no idea where she was, and a good thing for her and the kids!

The divorce took one day. One day! There was no fight over money or house or nothing like that. The court made sure they both had a place and a car and ordered him to bring her clothes and a few things of hers to the courthouse to hand over to her and gave full custody to her after ER docs testified to all of Cindy’s and the kids’ times in there all banged up. And she took out a restraining order. Before transition, that divorce would’ve drug out for months, but then it didn’t happen ’cause she was stuck.

Jimmy: How would you say your life, and Opelika, have changed since transition? And what stayed the same?

Scott: Well, as a mechanic I’ve seen a big difference. It took a few years to really see it.

You see, it took a while for enough cars to be built to the new advance standards and get to the automotive supply depots. Also, most folks liked their cars. Didn’t want to change them ‘til they was more trouble than they was worth.

But when more and more of the new cars replaced the old ones from before, our workload slid down and down to maybe less than half of what it had been. Them new cars is built tough and designed better then anything I ever seen before. They just don’t break down hardly at all, unless you really abuse them a long time or wreck them.

They’s a lot easier to work on too. Parts is easier to find, and you don’t need no special tool just for the risers on a 2025 Camry or a 2017 Fiesta. Whoever’s designing them finally know what they was doing. No more mashed knuckles because they put the spark plugs where you couldn’t get at them. I used to cuss out them folks out loud every day for their bonehead way of making things, but no more!

We got more body work and customizations than anything else. Some folks can’t drive for shit, no matter what kind of car they got!

I remember one guy I knew had a really old 1950 Studebaker in his garage that he’d wanted to fix up for years but parts was too expensive and hard to find so he could never afford it. Well, he brought me over and asked if it was worth fixing. I took a look at it, spent half an hour on NewWorldWeb, and brought it in on the truck. A week later it was purring like a kitten! He was so proud! So was I. She’s a thing of beauty!

And it’s not just cars either. Now everything’s like that. Things don’t break easy like before, and most times you just take whatever it is to the repair shop and they can fix it up for you right there, ‘less you run over it with your truck or drop it in the lake. Don’t have to throw it away and get a new one. And if, say, they got a new thingamabob like a faster computer, I can just take mine in. They pop the old part out, pop the new one in, and I’m ready to go.

Some of the changes creep up on ya. Y’all don’t even realize it at first.

F’rinstance, one night a couple years after transition, Linda Sue and I went out for dinner and a movie. When we was walking from the restaurant to the theater, she up and said to me, “Scott honey, is it just me, or is the city prettier than it used to be? I mean, they haven’t changed much since the Second Reconstruction. But somehow it seems more homey, less jagged. I feel relaxed here. That’s new. Never thought about it before.”

We talked about it for a spell. We had time before the movie started, and it was such a fine night.

Finally, it hit us. The ads. There used to be ads everywhere. Up high, down low, popping up in front of you wherever you looked. And in newspapers, on our phones, everywhere. Sometimes even the ads had other ads in ‘em. Now all that was gone! Never thought of it before, but yeah, I’m glad they’re gone. It was like getting used to a bad smell, then one day it’s gone, and it takes a minute for you to figure out what changed.

Nowadays the city air is better too. They got rid of gasoline and all of that pretty quick. Now you don’t smell car exhaust. You smell the food from restaurants, you smell flowers, maybe someone’s BO but it’s better’n it was before. And quieter too. Easier. Folks not in a rush like before, but everything still get done. You even see horses now and then, and bicycles, and contraptions I got no idea what they is. They got a whole set of roads and stuff just for them.

Not just in Opelika. We been to Mobile, New York City, New Orleans, and Nashville. Now they all like that, more or less.

Now that we’re talking about it, one thing really hit me upside the head one night. When transition come, I was all sure it was gonna be hell on earth, like the Tribulation before the Rapture. But what actually happened was just the opposite!

One thing was, for the first time since the Civil War, Alabama and the whole South got out from under that shadow we was under ever since then. Y’all maybe don’t know it, but the South never really recovered from the Civil War. We was always depressed. Life was cheaper than up North, but it was always shabby and run-down. We was like the neglected stepchild of the Union. Folks used to make fun of us like we was a bunch of dumb-shits always saying we gonna rise again. Maybe it was partly deserved, but it wasn’t fair.

All we knew was that once the South was prosperous and respected. Then after the War, we was like trash. And ever since.

Now I think I understand a bit better why. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing that we built our whole economy on slavery, free labor. Then when they took that away from us, it was like knocking down the beams that’s holding up the house. It going to fall down. Nothing could replace free labor. We was thrown off the saddle and we couldn’t get back up again.

In school, they always taught us that slavery wasn’t so bad, that if they hadn’t been brought here, they’d still be living in some shithole country in Africa eating bugs and worshipping all kinds of ungodly things and always in one kind of war or other. We brought them here, taught them English, brought them to Jesus, taught them useful skills and all. And I still believe that, but I think maybe I can see the other side a little bit.

I guess if some ET’s was to come here and drag me off to their planet and make me a slave on their plantations, maybe I wouldn’t take to it too well, even if they had gadgets we never dreamed of and all. So maybe it was wrong. But they didn’t know that then.

Where was the Christian charity and forgiveness for our people? Hell, after the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and the Krauts was no better and wrecked half the world, we didn’t beat them down and leave them on the ground! We gave them a hand up and let bygones be bygones and look at them now! But when it was all Americans fighting, they let General Sherman wreck the place, then marched out and treated us all like we was dirt. It was like the rest of the country thought we deserved to suffer.

But those are old wounds, healed a lot now. I gotta do what I preach, so I can forgive the North for how they treated us, just like they should forgive us for what we done. We all not perfect. We all mess up. We all sinners. We all need forgiveness.

But back to what I was talking about. The South now isn’t run-down and stuck. We don’t feel like we should hang our heads or else hate the North. Since transition, I think I can say we back to our glory but in a whole new way. We hold our heads high. Atlanta or Mobile or Biloxi or Opelika is just as fine a place to be as New York or San Francisco or Paris. So I guess I could say the South has risen again, bigger and better than it ever was. Not the way I ever imagined it, but better.

Maybe it’s what I said before. We built our economy on free labor. Then when that was gone, we was always trying to catch up from behind. But when transition did away with the whole money thing, we got the best of both worlds. Now all labor is free, and all people too, so nothing stops us from doing what needs doing.

Also the illegal immigration thing sort of solved itself. After we transitioned, Mexico did soon after. Pretty much all the countries them illegals was running from had transitioned. At the same time, their governments got better, more democratic, less corrupt. Things got enough better there that folks didn’t feel like they had to leave.

That was a huge relief! Oh, we still get a few, but it’s a trickle, not a flood! Not too much for us to handle.

Now don’t get me wrong! I’m no liberal and I never will be. I’m still white, male, Christian, and Southern. I still believe in the Bible and the best dang country on earth. I’d still lay down my life to defend her.

I’m the head of our household so I take good care of Linda Sue and treat her good keep her safe. She believes same as me, so she knows her role and my role and she got no problem with it. She been a perfect mother for our two girls and a perfect wife to me. I been blessed. The Lord made us for each other, I believe that. I couldn’t ask for better. I know a lot of liberals got a problem with that, but it’s our life. Our choice. No one twisted Linda Sue’s arm and she seems to be happy. We happy together.

I still believe what I believe, and I live it as best I can and pray for forgiveness when I mess up. But I do think the liberals have eased off a lot since transition. They not always out there trying to tell us how to live. Well, I guess me too. I don’t get so riled up like I used to over how other folks live and what they do, so long as they don’t bother me.

Maybe the Lord brought us transition to teach us all, make us more like Jesus, ‘cause that’s what’s happened. I guess we all got a little crazy and we needed humbling a mite, take it down a few notches. Live and let live.

I still don’t feel comfortable around dark people and faggots and foreigners. We got a mosque now in Opelika, and a synagogue and a Catholic Church too. I still tighten up when I drive by them, like fingernails on an old chalk board. It still grates on me when I hear folks talking some foreign language right here in town, unless they’s tourists. But that’s just me, just the way I am, the way I was brought up. But now it’s not as big a deal as it used to be. It’s more like how I like country music and if someone’s listening to hard rock it grates on me, but I’m not going to throw down over it. Probably just put on my earbuds and my music and ignore it.

I used to believe those people was taking away jobs and trashing the neighborhood and driving wages down. Now I see they don’t take nothing away from no one. So, it don’t get me riled like it used to. They don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them so we all OK. Live and let live. This is a big country. We got room for different kinds of people, long as everyone respect each other.

I enjoy my life a lot more than I did before. I don’t have this churning rage always burning inside me.

Linda and I have both taken some classes at the Community College. I’ve learned to work on airplanes and boats too, and I found out I’m pretty good at painting, so I try my hand at a little of that. Linda Sue and I both teach Sunday School and act as chaperones at church youth events and counselors at church summer camps.

When one of the other mechanics, Gershon, he’s a Jew but one top flight mechanic and I respect him, invited me and Linda Sue and everyone at the shop and their families to his son’s bar mitzva, we went. Never would have done that before, but what could it hurt? It was a mite strange, and someone had to explain everything to us, but it wasn’t bad. Them folks is hardworking, God-fearing just like us. I got to respect that.

But I worry about them. They not saved. Not washed in the blood. But still, they God’s chosen people. I don’t know. I guess I’ll just keep praying for them and trust the Lord will work out the details. I think they’ll be alright. If they ever have to choose between the Lord and the Devil, I know they’ll make the right choice.

Jimmy: That’s quite a transformation, Scott! And good for you being true to your beliefs and growing at the same time! That’s just my two cents’ worth for what it’s worth.

Before we wrap this up, do you have anything you’d like to say to readers today and in the future?

Scott: I’m no philosopher, just a damn good auto mechanic, husband, father, American, sinner, and Christian man. But here goes:

Do good and you’ll get good back. Do bad and you’ll get bad back. Don’t be too full of yourself. If you feel like you want to punch someone, go take a walk instead.

If you believe in any God, be serious about it but don’t try to be His enforcer. Trust Him (or Her if that’s what you believe) to work things out. He don’t need your help and you’d probably screw it up anyways.

Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are, but don’t look down on folks that’s different from you. But don’t take no shit.

If something needs to be done, if it’s worth doing, then do it right! Don’t do it half-assed!

And go easy on that hot sauce they got at Jambalaya’s downtown! That stuff will strip the paint off a battleship! Trust me!

I guess that’s about it.

Jimmy: Thank you again, Scott! it’s been a pleasure and enlightening.

I’ll admit that in spite of myself, I think I did have some negative preconceptions when I came here. I’m ashamed to say it but I must be truthful as you’ve been. I’ve grown right here. Those preconceptions are gone. Thank you for relieving me of them!

Would you be OK with doing this again in a few years?

Scott: Count on it!

Jimmy: It’s a plan. Meanwhile, take care.

Scott: You too. Come back anytime. Door’s always open.