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I breakfasted as a guest of Poor Henry's Cafe & Bar, Clinton, Montana. I had a chance to talk to the owner. As best I recall his name was not Henry. He was about my age only strong and good-looking. He used to be a middle linebacker for the University of Montana. He was too puny for the NFL. He's only like six three.
Grizzly football is big around here. I have met some ardent supporters. And every business has got a Grizzly decal, stuck somewhere in the window. I asked if being a U of M football star was kind of like being a movie star.
"Yup, pretty much."
"And girls giggle when you walk by and restaurants give you free food?"
"Yup."
There you have it. He seemed pretty well adjusted. He has stayed in shape and seems consistently cheerful. He owns a thriving business and coaches at the local high school. He has a daughter in college. Everyone thinks he's swell.
Had I been blessed with movie-star good looks and an Olympic physique, I am not sure I would have turned out as well. Better than I have, certainly, but not as well as he did. It would have turned me mean, I tell you. I would have gone egomaniacal. It would be too much for me. I couldn't deal with it. I am better off without the burden of physical attractiveness.
Which is not to say I have no burdens at all. I gots dozens of them. I am lazy. I am weak. I am rage and jealosy. I am unfocused. I am forgetful. I am painfully shy at parties. I resent the success of other people. I'll lie to stay out of trouble. I have no substance, only potential. Flattery works on me.
But I am not good looking, thank Heaven for that. I am what I am cause I'm homely.
I wound up getting an awfully late start because I needed to recharge this little computer. Our correspondence means ever so much to me and I would just shrivel up and die if I were cut off from you. But it does mean a great many hours spent loitering in taverns and typing with my thumbs. It is more work than one man should be asked to do. What I need, my friends, is a Boswell.
From sumny Clinton it was up to Rock Creek. I managed to stay off the interstate by hiking on a sort of service path next to the railroad. I stopped frequently and too long rests.
Rock Creek is home to the annual Testical Festival. Testy Festy, as it is known, began as a bar promotion but it has grown up into a sort of x-rated county fair, popular with bikers and men with their hands in their pockets. People eat batter-fried testicals and take off all their clothes. All manner of ugly things go on there. Rock Creek. First week of August.
The bartender at the Testical Salloon was spectacularly beautiful. I could barely look at her without blushing. I have finally figured it out. In Montana they hire pretty girls to tend bar, whereas in the other states it is always some toothless old guy or the biggest, meanest, most humorless old cow you can imagine. Viva Montana!
From Rock Creek I was obligated to walk on Interstate 90. It is something I have been dreading. You are so exposed out there. Frontage roads come and go, remnants of the old highway, but you can't get to them. You are hemmed in by a barbed wire fence.
I stopped whenever I could and took long rests. Then it started to rain. They have been promising me thunderstorms for a week but they never pan out. Today we got a doozy. I dove into a ditch and set up my tent, a full ninety minutes early. I am wedged between westbound traffic and a fence.
I am, however, artfully hidden. There is a corner and a very steep bank. I did have to cross the freeway to get here, though, and I don't look forward to doing that again. And if it keeps raining, my ditch will inevitably fill up with water and wash me out to sea. Forensic scientists will be confounded as to how I got there.
And the really tricky bit is that I have to walk twenty miles to Drummond tomorrow, or I shall starve and surely die. I have been making every effort not to study my map of Montana. I find it discouraging. But somewhere along the line I seem to have misjudged the distance between town. I gots plenty of water but I have not got much to eat. I do have a big bag of mixed nuts and dried fruit, but I am afraid it will make me poopy.
An interstate highway is no place to get poopy.
But it will be a nice little jog. Uphill. With a headwind. Exposed to the elements. Any hope I had for an early start was lost in the two hours it has taken me to type up these notes. So I will continue my practice of walking when the sun is hottest.
I LIKE TO think of myself as living proof that anyone can Walk Across America. You just got to be kind of dumb.
I SEE A LOT of deer along the freeway, in all stages of decomposition. It does give me something to look at.
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