I grew up in a town like the one you leave behind. A person selling decayed eggs operates at a rural gas station where the floor hasn't been swept in five years, and no one is inclined to use a mop. A place that didn't guarantee paper maps or the spots of stoplights. A place where invasive bamboo hid people's marijuana crops and teenagers at night. When we played drunken tag in the cemetery, the empty, unblemished time went nowhere. We had high hopes for the future in one of the city's parks that shared a block with the police station.
This policy hung over us as an implicit burden, but there was nothing like gender equality. That is, unless you really got into it or crossed the wrong path with a man, a man who was a stranger to you. It was passed down as a true way from women. I remember being frustrated with math problems in third grade. Unable to find a way to solve them, the female teacher at the CIS school told me not to worry about trying to finish it because "anyway, I'm not good at math." Her husband taught calculus at the local high school.
Segregation was still something that was actively denied. In high school, I received repeated warnings and was eventually banned...