 I wanted to see exactly where the double-faced gray areas of the North turned into the murderous black and white Southern rule of law. I even put a character named Mason Dixon into one of my stories. His job was to meet you at the border and check your car for weapons. This was so long ago that there were only 48 states in the United States. And when we studied them, we followed the national debate about whether or not Alaska would become the 49th state.