Footloose in America: Dixie to New England

by Bud Kenny

  After dinner, when we climbed into our tent, the rain-fly was fluttering like a kite hung up in a tree. Patricia asked, “Do you think we’ll be all right camped up here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  The wind was howling, with an occasional crack of thunder and flash of light. It wasn’t raining hard yet, but the night was ripe with storm.

  My wife said, “I sure would hate to get blown off this bluff.”

  “Do you have something else in mind?”

  Patricia was silent for a moment. “No.”

  A few minutes later the rain got heavier, but the wind was easing up. Soon the evening settled into an autumn shower. The danger was past. I snuggled down into my sleeping bag and went to sleep.

  In the background of a dream I heard someone say, “What’s that?” Then I started shaking, and as I shuddered out of sleep, I realized it was Patricia shaking me. “Wake up Bud. Listen! What is that?”

  Something was roaring up the river. It sounded like a locomotive, but then I remembered, there were no railroad tracks along the river.

  In a loud whisper Patricia asked, “What is that sound?”

  I’ve been in tornados before. The closer it got, the more it sounded like one. I was about to tell her that, when a huge burst of wind ravaged our tent. The poles bowed in, then snapped back as the nylon quivered and popped. That roar was no longer just down on the river. It was up on the ridge with us. The top and walls of the tent continued to collapse down on us, then explode away.

  Suddenly, the tent was ablaze in white as the sky exploded with thunder. So much lightning flashed around us, that it was like a strobe light inside our tent. Then, as if in slow motion, by lightning-light I saw the corner of our tent blew up off the stake and billow in toward us. It looked like the tent was going to roll up with us in it.

  Patricia screamed, “Bud!”

  “Oh shit!”

  Then the wind sucked the corner away and the nylon cracked like a bull-whip. I could hear pans and other metal blowing around the cart. Sitting up in my sleeping bag, I said, “I’d better go out and stake that corner back down.”

  Patricia grabbed my arm, pulled me down to her and yelled through the storm. “Oh no you’re not! You’re staying in here! Our weight is what’s going to hold this tent down. If you get up and go outside it won’t weigh as much. If this tent blows off this cliff with me in it, then by God, you’re going with me!”

  So I laid down and the two of us huddled together in our separate sleeping bags–both of us trying to be as heavy as we could. The tempest wailed on.

  I don’t know how long it was before it let up. It seemed like forever. But eventually the roar moved away, taking its light and thunder show with it. Soon the rain slowed to a steady soft shower.

  I whispered, “You alright Baby?”

  Patricia said nothing for a moment. Then she rustled a bit in her bag. “I’m okay.”

  “I think it’s over.”

  Patricia mumbled. “I sure hope so.”

  A few moments later I said, “Can I ask you something?”

  My wife was annoyed. “What?”

  “Are you still enjoying your honeymoon?”

  Patricia snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag and muttered. It was hard to understand what she said. I think it was “Yes I am.” Or maybe it was “Go to hell!”

  I didn’t ask her to repeat it.

  “You can’t camp here! Now, pack up and move on down the road!”

  When the police car pulled up, it was ten o’clock at night. We were camped on the side of the highway next to a roadside park east of Leavenworth, Indiana. I was in the cab of the cart typing on the computer when the cruiser stopped. The headlights blinded me, so I couldn’t see the source of the voice.

  “You want us to move now?”

  His voice was nasal, with a Kentucky kind-of-drawl. “That’s what I said. Now!”

  Right then, the body stepped from behind the headlights toward the cart. It was huge. Not tall huge–round huge. “There’s no camping here! Didn’t you see the sign?”

  The sun was sinking into the horizon when we came to the roadside park. It had lots of grass for mule grazing, picnic tables, restrooms and a hand pump with sweet well water. We would have loved to have camped there. But it had the “No Camping” sign. So we camped on the right-of-way nearby. Who would have a problem with that?

  “I’ve got a problem with that!” He waddled a couple of steps toward the cart. “Citizens have been calling me and complaining about the gypsies camped in the park. I can’t have that. Now pack up and get on down the road!”

  “But it’s dark. It’s too dangerous for us to be out on that highway now.”

  When he moved closer to the cart, the light in the cab lit him up. He was rotund, his uniform unbuttoned and pulled back behind his holstered pistol. He pointed to the cart and said, “You got lights on that thing, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but it’s still too dangerous. We aren’t hurting anything here.”

  He crossed his arms above his mammoth stomach. “Oh yes you are. There’s no camping here and my job is to–”

  Patricia shouted, “Protect the public!”

  She had gone to bed earlier. While the cop and I were arguing, I heard her unzip the tent door. Walking toward him she said, “I was in law enforcement for more than fifteen years, and that has always been job-one–protect the public! How in the hell do you think you’re protecting the public by sending us out on that highway tonight?”

  He was obviously taken aback. The cop’s round face was suddenly red as he uncrossed his arms and took a couple of steps back. He was speechless as my wife demanded, “Well, how is that protecting the public?”

  He stammered. “Well. . .uh. You were a cop? Where?”

  “Northern Illinois. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  He sounded like he was pleading his case when he said “Look, I’ve got citizens calling and complaining about you being here. If you wanted to camp here you should have asked me.”

  I slid out of the cart and stood next to my wife. “It was almost dark when we got here. How could I ask you anything? I don’t know you.”

  “Well,” he blurted out, “Everybody around here knows me. You walked right by my house. You should have stopped and asked.”

  I said, “We didn’t know this park existed until we got here.”

  He re-crossed his arms and started rocking back and forth on his feet. “That ain’t my problem. It’s against the law to camp here. You’ve got to go!”

  The absurdity of this irked me. I got louder with each word, when I said, “Ok! If you insist that we move in the middle of the night, we will. But let me tell you this. If something happens to us, we’ll make sure the whole world knows why we were in harm’s way. We’ve had lots of press in Indiana, and we’ll make sure they all know about this!”

  I had his attention. “Well. . .uh. . .”

  Patricia was softer. She walked up to him with one of our flyers in her hand. “We just want to spend the night. We’ll pull out first thing in the morning.” She handed the flyer to him. “This will tell you all about us. We are not gypsies, tramps or thieves. We’re just walking across the country.”

  He was looking down at the flyer in his hands. “You’ll leave in the morning?”

  “After breakfast, we’ll pack up and get on down the road.”

  “Well, . . .” When he looked up from the flyer, he had a sheepish expression and stammered when he said, “As long as you leave in the morning, I guess it’ll be all right.”

  Patricia said, “We’ll get out of here as soon as we can.”

  He got in the car and slammed the door. After he backed the cruiser around to pull onto the highway, he leaned out the window and said, “Now I don’t want no trouble out here tonight. No parties or nothing like that! You hear?”

  In unison we replied, “Yes sir.”

  While we watched the tail lights fade away, Patricia asked, “Were
you planning on a party tonight?”

  “Yeah. You want to come?”

  While the year turned into November, nearly every morning we woke to frozen dew on the tent and ice on Della’s bucket. On those days, we had to wait for the dew to thaw and evaporate before we could pack the tent. So we were getting on the road later everyday–sometimes past noon. And the days were getting shorter, so we were having to stop for the night earlier and earlier.

  “You need a place to camp tonight?”

  We met Ron on one of those days when it was after noon before we got on the road. We also had a lot of people stop to talk to us that day, so we’d only walked about three miles. The sky already had the orange of sunset creeping into it, and Highway 62 was rampant with homebound traffic. We accepted his offer.

  Ron was a short man, a bit hunched over, with a pitted face and lumpy round nose. We were talking to a group of people in the parking lot of a convenience store when he pulled in, got out and joined the group. He didn’t say anything until the others wandered away. When he spoke, he was timid. “How long did you think about traveling before you actually did it?”

  I told him, “About twenty-five years.”

  He wiped the end of his nose with his coat sleeve, then jammed his hands into his pants pockets. “That’s a long time. I’ve dreamed of living on the river for at least forty.”

  “Are you doing it?”

  A tone of defeat was in his voice as he looked down. “Naw. Wish I was.” Then he looked up with excitement in his blood shot eyes. “But I’ve got the boat.”

  That’s when he asked if we needed a place to camp for the night. “My house boat is sitting on a lot that I own. You could stay in the boat. It’s got a heater and beds.”

  A heated place to sleep sounded good to us. Ron said “It’s nothing fancy. But it’s livable. Wish I was living in it.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  He pulled his right hand out of his pocket and wiped his nose on the sleeve again. “It’s the wife. She won’t do it. She used to like to go out on the boat, and sometimes in the summer we’d spend a night or two on the river. It was a lot of fun. When we were young we used to talk about doing it full time–after the kids were gone, and I was retired. But now she won’t even go out for a day trip. I built her a fine home and she doesn’t want to leave it. She wants nothing to do with the boat.”

  With his hands still in his pockets, Ron shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Oh well. What can you do?” He pulled his right hand out and pointed down the highway. “Let me tell you how to get to my place.”

  Ron said his lot was about a quarter of a mile off the highway. It was three times that far. And when we got to it, had the hour not been so late, we would have turned around and walked back to the highway. Ron’s “lot” was actually a junk yard full of old rusty bulldozers, tractors with wheels missing, banged up trucks, a few wrecked cars–some laying on their sides. And there were piles of parts for all kinds of machinery everywhere. The place even had a couple of beat-up port-a-potties. And right in the middle of it all, on a trailer with a flat tire, was Ron’s house boat–The Island Queen.

  It was a twenty-eight foot pontoon boat, with a cabin on it that looked like a travel trailer without wheels. “The Island Queen” was painted in brown letters across the back of the yellow cabin. Because of the flat tire, the boat was listing to starboard.

  “Oh, my, God,” whispered Patricia as we stood facing the back of the boat. Ron was closing the gate behind us. “This is it? What are we going to do with Della?”

  When Ron first offered us a place to camp, we asked if there was room for Della. “Oh sure. The lot is fenced, so you can turn her loose. She can’t hurt anything.”

  While I looked around at the twisted metal, shards of glass, tangled steel cable and all the other junk, I had to agree with Ron. Della couldn’t hurt anything. But there were lots of things that could hurt her.

  “You could tie her out across the road.” Ron said. “Plenty of grass over there. They’re going to subdivide it. No one will care.”

  After we got Della taken care of, Ron gave us a tour of his boat. Because it was up on the trailer, we had to use a six foot step ladder to get on board. When he opened the door, it smelled like dirty socks in a locker. Ron turned to me. “Been a while since anybody has been in here. I’ll open the front door. It’ll air out pretty quick.”

  He was walking through the cabin when he said, “My boy, and some of his friends, use it to play cards and drink beer every now and then. Keeps the wives off their backs.”

  The cabin had a set of bunk beds on each side. Ron leaned against the top bunk on the port side. “Every once in a while I’ll spend the night here by myself. It’s not like being on the river. But it’s better than nothing.”

  By the time Ron lit the heater and left, it was dark. We decided not to use the bunks. “I don’t know who did what on those things.” Patricia said. “I want my own bed.”

  While I pumped up our bed, Patricia made cold cut sandwiches. I was detaching the hand pump from the bed, when my wife asked. “What would you do if you were Ron?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, after all those years of dreaming of living on the river, and then your wife says she won’t do it–what would you do?”

  I had a feeling this was a loaded question. So I treaded lightly. “Well, that’s hard to say. I mean, they’ve raised a family and–”

  Patricia interrupted me. “I’ll tell you what you’d do. The same thing he ought to do. You’d tell her, ‘You live in the house, I’ll live on the river. I’ll stop and see you now and then. If you decide to come along, you can.’” She paused. “And you would be right.”

  I had to think for a moment. “Sounds like me.”

  My wife handed me a sandwich. “That’s what I love about you. You’ve got the guts to be true to yourself. Most people are like water. They take the path of least resistance. Ron took the easy way out, and now his dream sits on a flat tire.”

  As the cabin got warmer, the stink got worse. It smelled like rat urine, or a dead rotten critter. Or maybe it was the decay of an old man’s dream.

  Louisville from the north bank.

  CHAPTER 8

  A HOME FOR THE WINTER

  “I am in love with America’s old river towns.

  . . For me the princess of the rivers

  (sorry, St Louis, forgive me Memphis) is

  unquestionably Madison, Indiana.”

  -CHARLES KURALT-

  LONG BEFORE WE GOT THERE, we had fallen in love with Madison, Indiana. We first heard about it back in Kentucky. Someone said, “If you liked those old buildings in Paducah, you’re going to love Madison!” The further up the river we got, and the more we heard and read about it, the more we loved “The princess of the rivers.” It’s a town of 13,000, and 133 blocks of downtown has been designated a National Historic District–the second largest in America. To quote travel writer Dennis Wissing, “There are enough pediments and columns and elaborate cornices in Madison to start a toga fad, . . .” In his book Traveling The Ohio Scenic River Route, Wissing quotes a first time tourist who said, “Madison is such a beautiful hip place, I half way expected the residents to be snooty. But they aren’t. . . (it’s) the kind of place where people sit on their front porches and talk to strangers.” Who wouldn’t love a place like that?

  “Hello Patricia. How are you?”

  My wife heard that question as she was bent over a produce case in the Jayco Supermarket downtown Madison. We had walked into town just the afternoon before, so she was shocked to hear someone call her name. When she turned around she found Sarah Green grinning at her.

  We had camped on Sarah’s property the night before we walked into town. She and her husband Gene owned a farm three miles west of town. On the bluff where Highway 56 began it’s descent into Madison, their 150 acres skirted the edge of a bluff that overlooked the Ohio River

  Sarah was a wisp of a woman wit
h gray hair that was cut in a bob. For thirty-five years she’d taught home-economics at the local high school, and when she spoke there was usually a hesitation before the words came out. Sarah didn’t stammer or stutter. It was more like she double-checked everything to make sure that what she said was what she meant to say. “So, are you staying somewhere in Madison?”

  We were camped in a lot on the west end of the city’s river front park.

  “Are you going to be around here long?” Sarah asked

  “We’ve fallen in love with this town,” Patricia said. “We hope to find some place close-by to spend the winter.”

  The next afternoon, a reporter showed up at our camp to interview us for the Madison newspaper. He had only been there a few minutes when Sarah walked into our camp with a small baked ham and a bowl of homemade potato soup. While the reporter interviewed me, Sarah and my wife went to the other side of our camp to chat.

  “Patricia, do you remember the old white house on our farm?”

  Constructed in 1840, it was a grand two-story brick Federalist style home. A rectangle shaped house with a high pitched roof, a chimney on each end and a large porch with tall white columns on the front. Gene Green told us most of the building materials came from that property. The bricks were made from clay dug on the farm, and the timber in the house was harvested on the place. It had been built as a gift for a slave mistress.

  “No one has lived in the house since my mother passed away three years ago,” Sarah said. “That is, nobody except Katy the cat.”

  Sarah and Gene Green’s home was about a hundred yards from the old house. The farm also had two large barns and several other out buildings. But the Greens were not farmers. Gene was an executive for a local company that built lifts for auto repair shops. No animals were in the barns, and the Greens leased out the crop lands to a local farmer.