Can you be a stranger in your own country?

That's what the four of us--John, Joanna, Kim and Dante-- went to find out. We stuffed the black Oldsmobile full of clothes, food, curiosity, a radar detector and a substantial dose of East Coast snobbery. We revved the engine, pumped up the tape deck and took off for points Southward.

"Where are you going?" people asked. Memphis, we said. Graceland. But also Alabama and Mississippi. Arkansas and West Virginia. "America" was our answer, half facetious but half serious. We wanted to see real life, real people, not just the tourist traps and standard attractions. We wanted to eat down-home cooking in tiny diners.

We'd imagined the trip as a grand search for details. Everthing we encountered along the way--every individual, every attraction, even every pitstop--would become a single element within a broad picture of the South.

Did we find America? Absolutely--but not at all. We saw it, glimpsed it in the people and the places. But we also realized how far we had come to see it. We saw how our casual visit was, in many ways, and intrusion.