Day One-Hundred-Eight, Weight

As I suspected I did get a very late start. I did not wake til eight-thirty. I'd had the damnedest time falling asleep. I was in a peculiar mood. Happiness, most people would call it. It's rather foreign to me. You hate to waste that sort of thing by sleeping it all away.

God knows what had made me so jolly. I had met some very nice folks. And a warmish wind was shaking my tent in a not unpleasing way. Autumn just gets better each year. It is best at two or three in the morning. I guess I know that better than anyone. I have never kept regular hours.

I was pleased to discover in the morning light that Newport has a town motto. It is, faithfully reproduced here, Hay Capitol of the World. It did get me thinking, but I'm not so sure. It could lead to anarchy. You don't want your seat of government vulnerable to any half-dozen malcontents with pitchforks and torches. Better our capitol be made from stone. Worry more about the strawmen within.

[I am at once pleased with and ashamed of the above paragraph. If I had more time I'd tinker with it some. In the end I'd dispense with it altogether, or I'd save it for some other day. I leave it here as a small gift of thanks to the people of Newport, Nebraska.]

Breakfast was served at the gas station a good quarter mile away. Out of my way, to tell the truth, but I think it was worth the hike. For just last week this particular gas station had distinguished itself by exploding. I swear to golly. It was in the newspaper and everything.

It seems a very tenacious little bolt of lightning worked its way down a series of pipes and past several valves to set their underground diesel tank on fire. It blew a big chunk out of their parking lot and sent a fireball into the sky. It's a small town; people keep to themselves. Nobody really noticed. The owner did not discover the mess until she came into work the next day.

No one got hurt. The building was fine. There is too a small cafe. And it's for sale if you're interested. Act quick and you might get it cheap. There are awfully nice people working there. Try to keep them on if you can.

I bellied up at the cafe. I was wanting to test a theory. I have found that I do some of my very best walking after a hearty breakfast. So I naturally wondered if I couldn't walk better still after two hearty breakfasts. I ordered everything on the menu and topped it off with a gallon of Coke. I believe I fairly impressed my waitress. She had never seen such gluttony.

It was only when I went to pay my check that I discovered that my new friend Farmer Rick had conspired to treat me to breakfast. I feel kind of bad about that. I am delighted at his generosity, and by his support, but had I known I would have taken it a bit easier on him.

And my theory, such as it was, wound up being disproven. I walked only about as far as I would have on just one hearty breakfast. And I suffered from a sort of stomachache that lasted most of the day. Live and learn, live and learn. I'm just sorry to have involved anyone else.

Ten miles or so took me to Stuart, Nebraska. Stuart is doing well. It is a town of maybe 600 people. It does not seem to be in decline. It has a big junkyard and some pretty churches. Most of the houses look lived in. And they have a nice park with its own race track, maybe an eighth mile round. Dirt. For racing small cars, or whatever occurs to them. It is overlooked by a grandstand, about half the size of the bleachers in my high school gym.

They have too showers. They run on coins. I could not have been better pleased. That is until I discovered that the shower had been, shall we say, soiled, in the most ungentlemanly way imaginable. I washed as best I could at a spiggot, thinking ill of Stuart, Nebraska.

That's the trouble though with these big town. A smaller town wouldn't stand for that. Everyone would know at once just who it was and rub his nose in it. Or beat him with a rolled up newspaper. Or call him out in church. But it is the nature of the metropolis to draw these disgusting vandals.

It was by now four o'clock, and soon enough five. I was in danger of a very poor day. I had maybe three more hours of daylight to walk another ten miles. No naps under trees, no staring at the sky. No otherwise messing around. I just put my head down and walked, ten miles to Atkinson.

It is my usual practice to ask what sort of town I'll find the road. But I didn't feel so chatty in Stuart. I knew one of them must be the one. Who robbed me of my well-earned shower and made weep at the Nature of Man. So I took off for Atkinson uninformed. I figured it must be small.

But some five miles out I began to see life, welding shops and the like. Atkinson is a town with outskirts. It's a town of some 1300 people. Which is not good news late in the day. I had to camp in their park. Which is charmingly eccentric in a town of fifty. In a city it makes me a bum.

But here I am, anyway, expecting to be rousted by the law. I did have the good fortune of making friends with the president of the Chamber of Commerce. I intend to drop her name liberally if it becomes a matter of law. We all know who pulls the strings in America, and in this case they're on my side.

I did take the precaution of eating a cheeseburger at tbe local bowling alley. I was not very very hungry. Breakfast was still weighing me down. But it was still too bright to put up my tent. No sense in drawing attention.

I guess it was ladies' league night. Six of eight lanes were full. And my burger was slow in coming and my fries were underdone. Many if not most of the women there reminded me of Roseanne Barr.

I quite like Roseanne Barr. I think America owes her an apology. She came on the scene and spoke some truths so we made fun of her for being fat. Maybe she could have handled it all better but she was sorely mistreated. She made people laugh, they made her rich, she made them think and they destroyed her. Shame.

I liked watching the ladies bowl. I like to see fat people having fun. There are more of us now than there are of you. You'd better not piss us off.


I SPENT YEARS in a city of three million people. Years more in a city of twenty. Now I feel nervous and vulnerable in Atkinson, Nebraska.

IT WOULD be best if the cops wake me at about 6:30. Not before six certainly, and please, no later than seven.

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