Footloose in America: Dixie to New England Read online

  FOOTLOOSE

  IN AMERICA

  FOOTLOOSE

  IN AMERICA

  DIXIE TO NEW ENGLAND

  Bud Kenny

  COPYRIGHT 2015 by Bud Kenny

  ISBN: 1511570954

  ISBN 13: 9781511570954

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015905647

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  All of the events and persons in this story are real. However,

  I did change some names.

  It just seemed like the right thing to do.

  -bud-

  For Patricia and Della.

  This would not have been the adventure that it was without them.

  -bud-

  “People in love don’t look at each other,

  they look in the same direction.”

  -dancer Ginger Rodgers-

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Preface

  Chapter 1 New Road Legs

  Chapter 2 Keep The Faith And Let Go

  Chapter 3 Della In The Delta

  Chapter 4 The State Of America In Kentucky

  Chapter 5 Going To Uniontown

  Chapter 6 Mister Paragraph 18

  Chapter 7 Autumn On The North Bank

  Chapter 8 A Home For The Winter

  Chapter 9 Into The Heartland

  Chapter 10 Welcome To Columbus

  Chapter 11 Among The Plain Folk

  Chapter 12 In The Land Of Old King Oil

  Chapter 13 Up Through Buffalo

  Chapter 14 Where Apple Trees Speak Spanish

  Chapter 15 Winter In The Snow Belt

  Chapter 16 The Boys Are Back In Town

  Chapter 17 Where They Called Her Patty

  Chapter 18 A Life Worth Living

  Chapter 19 The Adirondacks

  Chapter 20 Into New England

  Chapter 21 New Hampshire And Knowing Why

  Chapter 22 Maine

  Chapter 23 Is This Really The End?

  Afterward

  Acknowledgments

  PREFACE

  “YOU SURE AIN’T DOING VERY good!”

  His wrinkled face spit the words at me from across the road. With a cigarette in his hand, he leaned out the window of an old blue pickup idling in the west bound lane.

  I asked, “What do you mean?”

  He wore the kind of sunglasses they give cataract patients. His voice was mean and raspy. “You passed my house a couple of days ago, and you only got this far?”

  With Della-the-mule pulling our pack cart, Patricia and I were walking east toward the Mississippi River. In his beat-up Ford, he was going the other way.

  I said, “So?”

  “The paper said you was walking to New England.” He started stubbing out the cigarette on the outside of his door. “Hell, you’ll never get there going this slow.”

  “I’m not in a hurry.”

  “You’re the only one who ain’t.” He tossed the butt into the road. “Everybody’s in a hurry these days. You’ve got to be if you’re goin’ to get anywhere.”

  “I’ve been in a hurry before, but I didn’t like where it was taking me. So I thought I’d slow down and see where that got me.”

  Suddenly, on the road behind him, we both heard the roar of an engine approaching. He glanced in his rear view mirror, grabbed the gearshift and turned his old face toward me. I thought he was going to say something, but he just shook his head and sped away.

  CHAPTER 1

  NEW ROAD LEGS

  BEHIND ME I HEARD A thud. It sounded like a tire on the pack cart had rolled over something. Suddenly, there was screaming–painful screaming. Della bolted, the cart lunged forward and the scream turned into a gut-wrenching howl punctuated by yelps. It was our dog Spot, and he was under the cart. Did it run over him?

  I jerked Della’s lead rope and yanked on the brake cord. “Whoa!”

  It didn’t make any difference. All she wanted to do was run away from that screaming. Only the brake was keeping her from doing so. Behind her, the cart’s tires were skidding through roadside gravel. I jumped directly in front of Della, grabbed both sides of her bridle and growled, “Whoa, dammit! Whoa!”

  She did. But all eighteen hundred pounds of her was shivering as Spot continued to cry out from under the cart. When I let go of the bridle, Della turned her long face around to see the commotion. Her huge ears were rigid toward the screaming. I dropped the rope to see if she would stand ground-tied. She did. I whirled around and ran back to the cart.

  Patricia, who’d been walking several yards behind us, was running toward me yelling, “What happened? Where’s Spot?”

  I said nothing, dropped onto my belly, scooted under the back of the cart and across the gravel to him. A chain attached to Spot’s collar was tangled around the back axle, and his head was pinned to it. His right rear leg was covered with blood. When I tried to get the chain off his collar, the screaming got worse. I couldn’t reach the snap.

  “Let me see if I can do it,” my wife said as she crawled under the cart beside me.

  I rolled out of her way, got up and ran back to Della. She was shuffling her feet and jerking in her harness like she wanted to take off. And if I hadn’t set the brake on the cart, she would have. I grabbed the lead rope and stroked her nose. “It’s okay, Big Sis.”

  Patricia yelled, “Bud, see if you can get him loose from that side!”

  When I slid under the cart, my body was directly in front of the back wheel. If Della were to take off, it would roll over me. But, I didn’t have time to dwell on that. My wife was frantic. “Lift him from that side! He’s going to break his neck if we don’t get him loose!”

  When I put my hands under his back, Spot shrieked. Della jumped and the tires skidded. I dropped him and rolled out of the way as Patricia shouted, “I’ve got him!”

  I jumped to my feet and scurried around to the back of the cart, where I found my wife cradling Spot in her arms. Both were out of harm’s way. So I ran and grabbed Della’s lead rope then tied her to a nearby sign post. When I went back to where all this happened, I found Patricia on the ground holding our white and brown spotted hound. I asked, “Is he hurt bad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Spot was whimpering in her embrace, as she said, “It looks like his back leg got run over. What happened?”

  For the first half of that day, Patricia had walked with Spot on a leash. But all morning he pulled so hard on it that by noon her right shoulder was sore. Fifteen years ago she injured it in an elevator that broke loose and fell seventeen floors. Spot’s pulling had aggravated her torn rotator cuff. So we opted to let him ride the rest of the day in the cart.

  On the floor of the cab, we had a rug for him to lay on. To keep him from jumping out, we fastened two light weight chains to his collar. One attached to each side of the cart. Somehow, a link on the left chain had come undone. When he jumped out the right side of the cab, that one got tangled around the back axle and pulled him under the cart. That’s probably when the wheel rolled over his leg.

  “Do you think it’s broken?” I asked.

  My wife ran her hand over his bloody right rear leg, as she said, “Even if it is, what can we do about it? It’s not like we can jump in the car and run him to the vet.”

  She had a point. We were sitting alongside Arkansas Highway 5 north of the Garland and Saline County Line. The nearest veterinarian was fifteen miles back in Hot Springs. Patricia added, “Even if we could, try to find one open at this hour on a Saturday. Trust me, it ain’t happening.”

  For
the past ten years my wife had owned and operated a dog grooming business in Hot Springs. She knew what she was talking about. I asked, “So what do we do?”

  We pulled the first aid kit out of the cart, cleaned his leg and coated the abrasions with antiseptic. Although he cried as we treated his wounds, Spot didn’t have much of a reaction when I moved the leg around.

  Patricia said, “If it was broken, I don’t think you could do that.”

  She decided to spend the rest of the day riding in the cart with Spot so she could keep an eye on him. I was laying our injured hound in the cab when my wife said, “Can you believe this? It’s only our second day on the road, and already we’ve run over our dog.”

  “Pretty impressive, eh?”

  The next day was June 24, 2001. It was the hottest, most humid one so far that year. Everything we did made us sweat. That morning, as I tied the laces on my hiking boots, perspiration dripped off the end of my nose down onto my fingers. When Patricia handed me the nylon tent bag to pack on top of the cart, my hands were so damp it slipped out of them and landed on the ground. While I harnessed Della and hitched her to the cart, I was constantly wiping my eyes with the back of my hands. Hands that were wet with sweat. Eyes that were already stinging from my salty special juices.

  For more than twenty-five years I had fantasized about doing this–leaving it all behind to travel this country and others on foot. Whenever I visualized this dream, it was always my wife and me walking along a country road with our mule and dog on a beautiful day. I realized some days would be hot and others cold. And there would be times we’d be walking in the rain or snow.

  I knew from experience, it wasn’t always going to be a walk in the park. In the 1970s, with a pack pony and dog, I spent three and a half years traveling 8,000 miles of America’s highways and byways on foot. From eastern Pennsylvania, I walked to Pacific City, Oregon, down the coast across the Golden Gate Bridge then east to my mother’s home in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I was struck by lightning in South Dakota, got my feet frost bit on the Continental Divide in Montana and was literally blown down to the ground by a wicked westerly in the Columbia Gorge.

  But never did I have such a miserable sweat as Patricia and I experienced our third day on the road. By noon we had perspired so much it looked like both of us took a shower with our clothes on.

  We were walking north on Arkansas Highway 9, which traversed the eastern slopes of the Ouachita Mountains. Unlike the Rockies, the Ouachitas weren’t soaring highlands with imposing stone peaks or rugged promontory precipices. They’re older mountains that time has worn down into rounded large humps, green with pine, oak and other deciduous trees. The range runs east and west. So the highway went over the ridges with lots of ups and downs that, in a car, would have felt like a roller coaster. None of the hills were monumental, but to us sweaty, middle aged tenderfoots, each subsequent climb was a greater challenge than the last one. While the day sweltered on, we became acutely aware of how out of shape we really were. Sure, we may have practiced hiking the mountains and steep country lanes around our house, but now we were on the road really doing it. And today the slopes were one after another.

  Late in the afternoon, we came to a hill that I thought we’d never get to the top of. Those hot humid miles had wilted our cadence with Della. The cheerful cajoling of “Come up Della! That’s my girl!” had been sizzled and scalded to, “Dammit, we’re almost to the top of this stinking hill–quit poking along!”

  At the summit, we could see where the highway crossed Alum Fork River on a long bridge. On the left side of the road was a wide gravel area where fishermen would leave their vehicles while down on the river. It looked like a good place to park the cart and pitch our tent. Below it was a large grassy area for mule grazing. Our camp would be up on the public right-of-way, but the grass was on private property. So I hiked to the nearest house and got permission to tie Della out in that field for the night.

  The post we tied her to was about fifty yards from where we pitched the tent. After we gave her some grain and water, Della began to peacefully graze. But as the sun settled onto the horizon she got restless. First, she pawed the ground and tossed her head about like she was angry. Then Della commenced to pace around the post she was tied to. Within minutes, the rope was so tightly wrapped around the post she couldn’t move. I was unwinding it when I said to Patricia, “For a mule who was so tired on that last hill, she’s certainly full of energy now.”

  “I think she wants to be up there with us.”

  “What?”

  My wife said, “Without Jim, we’re all she’s got.”

  Della had been in our lives for less than six months. Originally, we planned to start this journey a year earlier with a mule named “Buck.” For fifteen of the twenty-five years that I had dreamed of this journey, Buck was going to be the traveling mule. But three weeks before our scheduled departure, we discovered he had cancer. Buck is now buried on a hillside behind our home in Hot Springs.

  It was several months before I could bring myself to go looking for another mule. Eventually, in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, we found a pair of big Belgian mules named Jim and Della. They were sorrel colored with flaxen manes and tails, and Della was the prettiest mule I had ever seen. She was also very much the alpha-female and dominated Jim. We nicknamed her “Big Sis.”

  She had been Jim’s teammate for most of her six and half years, and we had to buy them both to get her. We sold Jim to my little sister. I knew she’d give him a good home.

  Patricia said, “We’re Della’s herd now. She’s lonely down here by herself.”

  “But there’s no grass up there by us.”

  “Maybe if we moved her closer she’ll settle down.”

  Halfway between that post and our camp I tied her to a small tree in the middle of a patch of tall grass. Then we stood and watched her graze for about ten minutes. Finally my wife said, “She seems to be happy. Let’s go back to camp. I need to finish making up our bed.”

  Just as I stepped over the guardrail onto the highway shoulder, I heard a ruckus behind me. I turned around in time to see Della come to the end of her rope in the middle of a leap. It pulled her front legs out from under her and sent her crashing down on her side.

  She rolled over and up onto her feet with the rope wrapped around her torso. Then she tossed her head around and started bucking until she came to the end of the rope. Again, it jerked her to the ground. This time when she rolled, the rope got tangled in some small bushes and wrapped around both of her back legs. Della tried to stand but couldn’t. She had hog-tied herself. So she began to thrash around on the ground trying to get free from the rope.

  I jumped over the guardrail and yelled, “She’s going to break a leg!”

  Both of us ran down the hill screaming, “Della, no!”

  When I got to her, she was still flailing about trying to get her legs free. I didn’t want to get kicked, so I stopped a few yards from her and squatted down. Then in as soothing a voice as I could muster, I said, “Settle down, big girl. I’ll get you loose.”

  Patricia’s was shaking when she ran up behind me. “Do something!”

  I reached up, took my wife’s hand and pulled her down beside me. “Looming is only going to make her more scared. First thing we’ve got to do is calm her down.”

  “Gotchya.” Then Patricia softly said, “It’s all right Della. We’ll help you.”

  In a couple of minutes Della was lying still, and I was able to untangle the rope. After she got up on her feet, we checked her for injuries. Other than a few scratches from the bushes, and a small rope burn on her left rear leg, she was fine.

  “It may be further away, but I think it’s safer by the post,” I said. “No bushes there.”

  Patricia nodded. “You’re probably right. I’ll sit with her for awhile.”

  She stayed with Della until it was too dark to see. Several times during the night I got up, and with a flashlight, hiked down to check on her. Every time I
showed up, she would nicker and rub her head against my shoulder.

  Della never got tangled like that again.

  It took us a week to reach a town that had more than one store and was listed on the map as having a population. According to the sign on the highway, 1,458 people lived in Perryville. It had several stores, a court house and a Laundromat.

  During that week Spot completely recuperated from being run over, and Della had gotten used to being tied out at night away from us. The only thing that hadn’t improved was the weather. The heat and humidity was getting worse. Over the past seven days, perspiration had become our constant companion, a and we had lots of dirty, sweat-soaked clothes. So in Perryville, the Laundromat was our first stop. I tied Della to a telephone pole out front, and toted our dirty duds inside. While Patricia did the laundry, I set one of our camp chairs next to Della and went to work on my journal.

  I had only written three sentences, when a woman in her mid-twenties got out of a mini-van and introduced herself as a reporter for the Petit Jean Country Headlight. “The phone has been ringing off the wall about you folks.”

  “Really?”

  She pulled a digital camera out of her purse. “It’s a small town. You know how small towns are. Everybody’s got to know everybody else’s business.”