Day One-Hundred-Seventy-Two, The Buddha

Staying in motels just exhausts me.  I'm not altogether sure why.  I think it might have something to do with a lack of oxygen.  Your cheaper places tend to be stuffy.  They would not pass a blacklight exam.  Hot baths soften my calluses.  Soft beds weaken my thighs.  Watching six hours of Law & Order will give you peculiar dreams.

Notice I've italicised "Law & Order."  I'm not going to do it twice.  It took me fifteen minutes and three points of battery life.  But I do have a new blog editor.  I like the old one better.  But life goes on and things change, no matter how much it hurts my feelings.

I haven't changed so very much.  I'm a youthful forty-two.  Because I've spent a lifetime avoiding resposibility.  Which is after all what ages us.  I'll be forever young.  You might as well go ahead and admire me for it.  Jealousy is unbecoming.

Sure there is some grey in my beard.  My eyes have wrinkled some.  In the manner of Clint Eastwood.  Everybody likes him.  And every important part of me works, as well as it ever has.  Though I did while washing my feet this morning discover a missing nail.

On the little toe of my left foot.  It was never much to see.  But it's gone now, poor little fellow.  It has given itself to the cause.  Never again will I have to pay full price for a pedicure.

I did not get back on the road until noon.  It took me hours to walk out of town.  If I had not slept indoors I would have been in a pickle.  Trapped in a city after dark with no place to put up my tent.  It was nothing but my hobo skills that convinced me to sleep indoors.

Which I have been doing a lot of this month.  It is really slowing my progress.  I have been in Mississippi for what, a week, and I'm still up by Tennessee.  There are children who look up to me.  I feel I am letting them down.

But I never signed up to be a role model.  All I can offer is my best advice.  Read more and watch less TV.  Take up the banjo young.  Clean your room and take care of your teeth.   Eat your vegetables.  Avoid brown liquor and nicotine.  Smoke pot in moderation.

It was an unpleasant walk, even in daylight.  There was no shoulder at all.  For miles I was walking on the spongy grass growing next to the road.  Which is tiring and really hard on my feet.  They get knocked around in my shoes.  Which are fairly lightweight and not at their best on uneven surfaces.

I had by then abandoned Tupelo for Verona, Mississipi.  Which butts right up against it to the south and goes on for another few miles.  After that I had some sharp gravel to walk on.  Just like in Iowa.  But here it's a rusty red color and littered with prescription bottles.

I did find some countryside after that.  Traffic thinned just a bit.  And one or two raindrops landed on me but the skies never opened up.  They've decided that will happen tomorrow.  Hail and thunderstorms.  And maybe a tornado or two, just to keep me on what's left of my toes.

The Gulf of Mexico is behind it, they say.  Something about warm moist air.  And I am pleased to be so far south that the Gulf is even a factor.  Warm rains aren't going to kill me, I guess.  The day after that it gets cold.  Down below freezing again.  I thought I was free of all that.  I'm typing this in a T-shirt with my windows open.  At the motel I ran the AC.

Eventually I made it to Shannon, Mississippi.  I was walking in rather a daze.  My mind again wandered to other things.  I was not thinking of my feet.  Which is how a long walk is supposed to go.  It is why I've always liked walking.  It is like a sort of meditation, without going all Buddha on you.  But that sort of peace has been lost to me for nearly all of this trip.  Sad to think that I'm just getting it right when I am nearly done.

I'd had a big breakfast in Tupelo.  I had a big lunch in Shannon.  At a once gas station that is now P&G Wings and Things.  It is run by a retired minister.  We watched Let's Make a Deal.

With genuine interest.  There's no irony here.  In a perfect world we wouldn't need it.  But it is a force alive in me.  The Buddha was not ironic at all.

I walked on a few miles from there, until the sun went down.  And was at least briefly concerned about where I might set up my tent.  But I found a spot.  I always do.  Hobo skills, don't you know.  I am between a river and a ploughed field.  It is going to get muddy if it rains.

I HAD pecan pie at P&G.  I wasn't hungry, but I'm glad I made the effort.

WHILE I was having my biscuits and gravy, the cooks were arguing.  There was something very wrong with the biscuits, they said.  Neither would admit fault.  They tasted OK to me but it did get me thinking.  It rather ruined my meal.

THERE IS A critter outside my tent, heavy and seemingly bipedal.  I think it's one of them bigfoots.  I'll try to get a photo with him.

NO ONE can tell I'm a Yankee until I talk.  I feel like a spy.

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Day One-Hundred-Nine, Nature's Bounty

I packed up a very soggy tent. It had not rained overnight. But an hour or two before the Dawn's Early Light the sprinklers did come on. I would like to think they were on a timer, that it was not a deliberate attack. Because otherwise I slept undisturbed in the Atkinson city park.

It is my practice, when weather permits, to keep my windows open. It prevents condensation and brings in some fresh air. I need all of that I can get. Take a whiff of my poor little tent and you'd think I was keeping a cat. You get a little stinky when you're on the road. My conscience is more or less clean.

The deluge had stopped by the time I got up. I went out in search of breakfast. I'd been told my best bet was the cafe/stockyard on the far edge of town. It's where the cowboys gather between auctions. You can eat there if you'd like. The prices are good, the service is friendly and the food is agreeably big. I contented myself with just one breakfast and a double order of hash browns.

I like a crispier hash brown myself. But beyond that I cannot complain. They could, I suppose, make the coffee a bit stronger, but that is a regional thing. It does make me worry about Middle America. The bars close at ten o'clock.

I lingered a bit to mingle with the staff and recharge my little computer. I was back on the Trail at ten-thirty. It was not such a very early day. I was in no jolly mood for walking, anyway. I think the humidity is at fault. That and ill-fitting pants. No one knows how I suffer. I am doing it all for you.

I am Walking Across America so you don't have to. I am freeing you for higher things.

It was an easy ten miles to Emmet, Nebraska. Easy may not be the word. It felt like a very unpleasant six miles. There is something to be said for that. Emmet is a dozen or so neat houses and a repair shop for farm equipment. There was to the Hay Company/Post Office. They had a soda machine. I went in and got myself a can. I felt like some sort of crook. There was no one at all at home. I could have helped myself to stamps.

It was a Royal Crown cola. It tasted like bugspray. I drank it anyway. It is my understanding that they stopped making RC as part of the compromise by which we extricated ourselves from the Viet Nam war. So it did have nostalgic value. My only regret is that they were out of Fresca.

I ate Swiss cheese and hot dog buns, the same thing I'll have tomorrow. I have been carrying around two last cans of weeners but I've had about enough of them. It has cooled down some; I can buy proper cheese. It doesn't last too too long. But overwarming sharpens the flavor and makes it easier to chew.

Then it was on to O'Neil, Nebraska, a city of some twenty-four thousand. I did not get to see much of it. I just wanted to get out of town. A Gotham like that is no place to camp and it was getting late. I replenished by bun and cheese supply and climbed back on the Cowboy Trail.

I made it another three or four miles, which is where you find me now. Camped in a thicket behind some kind of antenna, in a marijuana patch.

"Oh, James, you're so silly!" you want to say. Am not, I quickly respond. I am wholly serious. I am camped among the pot. There are no men with shoguns, no punji sticks. It shows no signs of cultivation. It is just sort of growing here, and growing fairly well. If I were more mobile I'd take some with me, for scientific evaluation. But I am not so equipped; I'll let it be. Pot never hurt anyone.

Peace.

MY LITTLE radio tells me it is going to dip into the thirties again tomorrow night. And that there'll be frost. If only I had something to smoke.

ONE STATE MOTTO, no doubt there are others, is "Living in Nebraska is Fun!" How many other places can make that claim. How about a little respect.

I AM COLD, even tonight. Nobody knows how I suffer.

CONTACT ME and I'd be delighted to send you the coordinates of where the grass grows green. This offer is not available to law enforcement. Marijuana prohibition is ridiculous, you know it yourselves.

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