Day One-Hundred-Seventy, Guntown

Find me in a Subway outside of Baldwyn at ten-thirty in the morning. It is a bit earlier than I usually like to type my daily reports. But there's an electric outlet here. I have to type when I can. My battery is unreliable. Because Samsung sucks.

I'm not sure what time it was when I woke up. The sun had not been up long. I had had some trouble falling asleep. Stress, don't you know. Over the state of my little computer. It's bound to affect my health. And will be fully explored when this goes to court. Keep one eye on the legal journals. For James v. The Samsung Corporation, Which As Everyone Knows, Sucks.

It was fairly warm but windy. A deer was kazooing nearby. Or a hunter who was trying to sound like a deer. I wore my yellow hat packing up. And my bright orange hunting vest. One so dislikes to take chances. I really don't want to get myself shot before I reach Florida.

Then it won't really matter so much. How can you talk that way? I tell you, it's all about poetry. This story needs a conclusion. I limp into Miami and then I go home? That will not do at all. I need to Fall in Love or be Born Again or Felled by a Hunter's Bullet. Drama is what this adventure's been lacking. I'm only thinking of you.

I'll try to linger long enough to type up that final scene. And I'll forgive my murderer, but never the Samsung Corp. Because they suck. They should admit as much in all their advertising. We are Samsung, they could say, and we suck.

I had an eight mile hike to Baldwyn, Mississippi, population God-knows-what. Not so very many dozens. It is a fairly small town. But I was glad to be there. I was starving to death, or at least to grumpiness. And was much looking forward to my biscuits and gravy and eggs and sausage and toast. And hash browns. And pie, of course. I think good nutrition is key.

"Not on Sunday," said a grumpy old man when I asked if there were anywhere to eat. I asked several other people as well. The answer was always the same. I knew it would be; I just wanted to hear them say it. I liked how they looked at me. As if I were the Devil himself for even suggesting such a thing.

It left me with a bitter choice. The next town was ten miles off. Or I could head back north a bit and join the big highway. I took that option. A boy's got to keep fed. Otherwise a boy can get cranky.

At the highway I was spoiled for choice. McDonald's, a gas station, or Subway. Mooshy burgers or breakfast burritos or, God help us, Subway. I went to the gas station first. There was nowhere to plug in. So I tried McDonald's but that was no good, so now here I am. Subway is the Samsung of the American sandwich industry.

It has blossomed into a beautiful day. It was cloudy this morning. Cloudy in layers of latticework with blue sky filling the gaps. It gave the heavens depth and dimension. It did too threaten to rain. So I'm glad to see the plain old blue sky, even if it is less interesting.

From here I'm back on 45, having backtracked a bit. Which is fine; I have to be careful to stop short of Tupelo. Which is too big to invite tent camping. I'll walk into there in the morning. If I haven't been shot, skinned and tanned, and made into moccasins.

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It was somewhere in the seventies but it never felt that warm. There were cooling breezes of 20 mph or so. Headwinds. They're almost always headwinds, no matter which way I point.

But I wasn't complaining. I was enjoying my walk. A little extra challenge made it fun. There are times that I would jog if I didn't have to carry my pack. But the road itself was not very good. There was a shoulder of sharp gravel. Which after some miles turned into soft grass. Which is harder to walk on still.

I abandoned the highway at a place called Guntown and hiked back to 145. It's a smaller road with no shoulder at all, but there are not many cars. A few mean dogs but that's about it. The trick is to be meaner still.

I cannot tell you much about Guntown. A thousand people live there. Which would make it a force in northern Nebraska, but it isn't very much here. I do not know why it's called Guntown. Something about guns, I'd guess. Its specialties are muffler repair and what looked like project housing.

Fairly nice project housing, as project housing goes. Everyone waved at me.

I stayed only long enough to wave back and then I continued south. Over a few blind hills but it wasn't so bad. There was a lot less wind back there. And the walking came easy; my mind was busy thinking about other things. Like how very pointless Life seems to be and how tired of it I am. And about the corrupting nature of lonesomehood. And just what it means to be me.

You know, that kind of shit.

I did eventually make it to Saltillo, which has maybe three thousand people. And is where Elvis Presley's mother came from. I want to call her Gladys, but I might be wrong. I stopped at a Hardee's restaurant to suck down some calories.

My burger was peculiar if not altogether bad. It was I thought overpriced. You can get better burgers at a saloon for a dollar or two less. But worse, I had misjudged the time. I had to eat in a hurry. Now I am a fast eater at the best of times, but I like to set my own pace. I wound up making myself somewhat sick, a condition that yet persists.

But I had to walk on. I had maybe half an hour to find a place for my tent. And was not at all sure I was on the right road. Traffic was just awful. I had to walk in a muddy ditch to keep from getting sqooshed. Uneven ground is hard on my feet. Hardee's is hard on my guts.

In the end I had to make use of the Force. And my renowned hobo skills. I think I did alright. I am in a clump of trees on the edge of a field, too close to someone's backyard.

I don't think I'm going to get shot here. I will wear my hat and vest. At least tomorrow is a weekday. My murderer may be at work.

Tupelo is maybe two miles off. I had to stop where I did. It is a city of fifty thousand, if the rumors are correct. And it is where I will be most of tomorrow. I hope to hit the Elvis museum. Elvis was born in Tupelo. Tupelo's reputation is made.

It may rain tonight but it shouldn't be cold. It may rain and be hot tomorrow. Which is what you expect from Mississippi, a certain humidity. I'm not too far from Alabama. I can shoot over any time. But so far Mississipi's been good to me. I think I'll walk south for a while.

SAY IT with me. Tupelo. What a neat name for a town.

LAST NIGHT I pooped and buried it. While I slept someone dug it up. Weirdos.

I DON'T THINK I'll ever kill myself. There must be a dozen people I'd rather see dead.

NEWT GINGRICH? Jesus Christ.

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Day One-Hundred-Sixty-Six, Tombstone

A man I met in Henderson told me it was going to rain. I chose to disbelieve him. My little computer promised clear skies. The rain came at four a.m. I was awake. I am going to sleep awfully early these days. There is not a lot to do in my tent after the sun goes down.

I don't so much mind walking in the rain, not if I'm going somewhere. Home to dry clothes and a hot shower. A little wet ain't going to kill you. But when you're just walking walking walking... Read your Victorian novels. Back then if you went out in the rain you were dead two chapters later.

The worst I'll get is a case of the snoofles. I might feel sorry for myself. But self-pity is always good sport and I've been snoofling since Nebraska. But I figured I'd wait until nine or so to see if it cleared up. I ate a Pop-Tart and read my Bible. I hacked some dead bits off my feet. I listened to Nicholas Nickleby and entertained dark thoughts.

The rain did stop eventually. I rolled up a muddy tent. And spent half an hour making a bridge to get back up to the road. I had set up in a sort of swamp, spongy but not too too damp. Now I was on a small island in the middle of a giant mud puddle.

It was eerily warm. Before too long the sun cooked off the clouds. And it was another summery day, if you kept out of the shadows. I hoped to find breakfast in Bethel Springs but there was not very much there. Just one big house, a few dozen small ones and a beautiful elementary school. It didn't look the least like a prison. It was the nicest thing in town.

Bethel Springs, Tennessee has seen better times. I'm told Elvis had his first concert there. And worse. It was home to Unionists in the Civil War. They did not get along with their neighbors. They moved the highway some years back. Now most of the businesses are closed. I counted one antique furniture/junk shop and a tombstone factory.

I've seen several of these in past few days, some bigger than others. I remember one in South Dakota with display samples out front. PIERCE was carved into one of them. I thought it was in very poor taste.

I was geting pretty hungry at this point. There was nothing to do but walk to Selmer. Which was up and over some steepish hills down four miles of country road. There is a trend in these parts, amongst those who can afford it, to live in enormous homes. Plantation style with great white columns. I don't think they're all antiques. But they're built substantially, as in back in the day. They must cost a fortune to heat. Dusting alone must set you back, now that you've got to pay your help.

The north end of Selmer didn't promise much. It got better soon. Selmer is a town of some five-thousand people. I found a great cafe. And had the best breakfast I've had in weeks, though they'rs famous for slugburgers. Which contain not slugs but soybeans and are unique to this locale.

I had a lot of fun sitting there, absorbing the local scene. Pat, my good hostess, was effusively friendly. Everyone was nice enough. It is, I'm sure, a Tennessee thing. I wish I had longer in this state. But I am by necessity just passing through. I don't stay anywhere as long as I'd like.

You might think Walking Across America is a good way to see the country. It is as far as riding an escalator is a good way to see a department store. It gives you some sense of the scale of the place. You see what they have on offer. But you don't make a lot of lasting friendships and a lot of it goes unexplored.

You do get to try on a lot of shoes. So there's that.

I hiked over to the library, some distance out of my way. I am still having some difficulty with my little computer. It's bleeding power. It's a software thing. And I don't know how to plug the hole. But I have learned something about the Droid operating system. It sucks.

Samsung sucks. Droid and Samsung suck.

The library was closed of course. I headed back to my road. And walked another ten miles or so. Maybe less. I don't know. I don't dare waste my battery power looking it up. Without checking my map I rarely have any clear idea where I am.

I am now in a vast hay field or on the very edge of one. Between a thinnish row of grasses and shrubs, as close as I can get to the highway. Cars can't see me once it gets dark. Hunters can see me for miles. It'll be harder come the weekend with more bullets in the air.

It is meant to be damnably cold tonight, at or around freezing. I guess I'll be warm enough if not as warm as I'd like. A bit bored though. These long long nights are a bit on the lonesome side.

Goodnight.

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