***
The intruder on my focused study looked as if he'd walked out of a Matthew Brady wet-plate photograph of 1860. He was a vision in black broadcloth-a long frock coat, with matching waistcoat and trousers. He wore a white, high, soft-collar shirt with a black nineteenth century style cravat. A gold watch chain hung low across his waistcoat. In his left hand he held an extra long, silver-capped, black cane. In his right hand he held a well-worn, battered, Abe Lincoln-style stovepipe hat. I surely was out of place-a prodigal proving Wolfe's dictum about the futility of trying to go home after the seductions of the fickle world-but the intruder was out of time, a specter bearing witness to my homesick soul of the varied dimensions of reality and place.
He appeared to be in his seventies and was of short height, maybe five foot six. He was stocky but not fat, and he stood erect. There was an ease in his bearing. There was little hair on the top of his head but it was full on the sides. Worn over the ears, it was the color of his full gray beard. I guessed his hair in youth had been dark, but now, washed by time, it looked the color of faded, weathered, Tennessee-limestone field fences.
His cheek and forehead were pale pink and gave color to his lined, wizened face. Though he wore no glasses, his light blue, bright and responsive eyes seemed shadowed to me. Yet his countenance overall was open, impish, and mellow. His smile was easy. The timbre of his voice was crisp and distinct, not the slow drawl of syrupy, Southern aristocracy.
"I'm Jones, sir, Jones of Old Lincoln County." With that he motioned towards the empty booth seat facing me. I offered an astonished, drop-jaw nod. If his dated clothes and unique countenance, his true out of placeness, had not astonished me, his simple introduction most certainly did.
I blinked, stared, swallowed, and self-consciously rose up a bit from my seat and took his extended hand. The grip was not that of a ghost, and that concerned me as much as his presence.
"Please, Mr. Jones, yes please, sir, by all means," I croaked. My emotions included fear, bewilderment, joy, and utter fascination. I offered what probably was a goofy smile as he took his seat.
He looked around the room, placed his hat on the booth seat, and said, "Sir, they don't have hat racks anymore. Perchance you have taken note of that development?" With that simple observation our 'travels' began.
***
No one along the bar or the hard living woman fry cook, now joined by a second woman working the grill, had taken note of what was going on twenty feet away. The TV still blared, now changed to ESPN, the different sounds continued, smells persisted, and the mundane twenty-first century dimension remained unchanged, even as I entered an utterly different reality.