by Bud Kenny
Grandma and her daughter ate from the buffet, while the children got something off the kiddie menu. The one in the highchair ate what Grandma spooned into her mouth. After a few spoons full, the toddler spit half of it out and it drooled down her face, onto her bib and into the highchair tray. Then she started bawling.
The tears stopped when Patricia brought a couple of fresh damp napkins and helped Grandma clean up the mess. During the cleanup, baby’s head wobbled about with wide eyes fixed on the newcomer in her life. She rewarded the waitress with a fat cheeked smile that had bubbles coming out of it. Then, as my wife went to the next booth to check on those patrons, the baby started to whimper.
To keep her quiet, Grandma laid a paper napkin on the highchair tray and plopped some of Junior’s fries down on the napkin. (Junior was boycotting them and the burger because it wasn’t a McDonald’s Happy Meal.) Then, to keep the baby entertained, Grandma squirted a blob of ketchup on the napkin. That way baby could use the fries, or fingers, to decorate the highchair. Most of the fries–coated with ketchup–fell on the floor.
After one spilt Pepsi, a tipped over milk and a kiddie burger thrown on the floor, they were ready to leave. When Grandma got the bill she said, “It’s Senior Citizen’s Day. Where’s my discount?”
Patricia showed Grandma where it was taken off her meal. “But I’m paying for their meals too. It should be taken off the whole bill.”
My wife was just the Slave Waitress. Grandma had to take it up with the manager. “He’s at the cash register.”
They all scooted out of the booth as Mother thanked my wife for being so helpful. “We’re sorry about the mess.”
Grandma got nowhere with the manager, but Junior got his way. Grandma said, “Honey, the boy has to eat something! We’ll just pull into the drive-thru at McDonalds. It’s on the way.”
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you they didn’t leave a tip. Not only did Patricia make nothing, but she had to pay income tax on $2.40 of their bill.
The best part of Patricia’s day was the ride home. Madison had a public transportation system called “CAR” (Catch A Ride). It was a service that picked you up at your door and took you to most of the commercial areas. In the afternoon, she came home on a small bus with a dozen residents from Madison State Hospital. They did piece work for a couple of the local manufacturers and lived at the hospital.
Patricia was the only one on the bus who didn’t live there, and she was the last passenger they picked up on their way home. Most of the time they would get to the restaurant before Patricia was off the clock. So they’d wait in the parking lot–sometimes as long as half an hour–for her to come out. The patients were assigned seats on the bus, so Patricia was too. She sat in the back seat with Chucky who was in his mid-twenties, had light red hair and Downs Syndrome. In the parking lot at Friches, he would wait outside the bus to help her get on. Angel, who sat in the seat behind the driver, would always call out, “Here she comes. Here comes Patwisha!” Then she’d start clapping her hands, squirm in her seat and giggle as my wife stepped up into the bus. In un-unison chorus they’d all say “Hello, Patricia!”
“Hello, everybody!”
No matter how bad a day it had been, no matter how upset she was walking out of the restaurant, it all melted away as my wife looked down at the faces that welcomed her aboard. Some were contorted, there were those with nervous twitches and others just weren’t normal. But they all had a separate sweetness to them. Some would wave up to her, others would touch her hand or pat her on the leg as she went by. And then there was Bert.
Bert was wiry, in his mid-twenties, with thick black eyebrows and a feisty grin. He was in the fourth row in the seat next to the aisle, but he could never just sit there. It seemed like Bert was always up to something. When my wife walked down the aisle, he’d wink at her in a Casanova sort-of-way. Then, when she got next to him, he would reach for her hand. “Hey Patricia, you can sit with me.”
Chucky followed her and would always slap Bert’s hand away. “No she can’t! She sits next to me. Stay away from him, Patricia. Bert’s nasty!”
After they sat down in the back seat, Chucky hardly said another word the rest of the way home. Bert, on the other hand, would turn around every few minutes, wink at my wife and give her a thumbs-up. Sometimes he would blow her kisses and point to himself as he nodded his head. But he never got out of the way with Patricia.
Bert was the jokester on the bus. He would slip out of his seat, sneak up behind someone and pinch them. Or maybe drop something down their back, then scurry to his seat. Every time, he would turn around, wink at Patricia and giggle. Chucky would always say, “That Bert! Nobody likes that Bert. He’s no good! He’s nasty!”
Then there was Gloria–the matriarch of the bus–who sat two seats ahead of Bert. She was at least ten years older than him and outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. Several times on the way home she would yell, “Bert, grow up!” One time he leaned over the seat in front of him and stuck a cold bottle of Dr. Pepper on the back of Gloria’s neck. She whirled around, slapped him hard across the face and screamed, “Grow up!”
Bert laughed, then turned and winked at Patricia with his thumb up.
One evening, on the way home, the guy in front of Gloria was complaining that he felt sick. Every time he said something about it, she would reach around, put her palm on his forehead and say, “Yup, you’re sick all right. Sick in the head.”
Late in the winter, Patricia got bronchitis and couldn’t go to work for two weeks. Her first day back, when she climbed into the bus, it was pandemonium. They were all cheering and clapping. And the girl in the front seat cried as she bounced up and down yelling “It’s Patwisha! It’s Patwisha!” On his feet, in the middle of the isle, Bert was doing the twist with his thumbs up.
Patricia turned to the driver, a semi-retired man with a big grin on his face. “You’ve got yourself a fan club,” he said. “They asked about you every day.”
But the one who touched her the most was the man in a seat two rows ahead of her. He was always by himself, curled up in a ball, pressed against the wall of the bus. He never looked at or spoke to anybody. A couple of times Patricia saw him look at her as she walked toward her seat. When she smiled at him, he turned away and drew into a tighter ball. But that day, after she sat down next to Chucky, this young man slid out of his seat and shuffled to the back of the bus with his eyes cast down. He stopped in front of my wife, and without a word, leaned over and kissed the top of her head. Then, silently, he turned around and shuffled to his seat where he turned back into a cocoon.
We made lots of friends while we were in Madison. Among them were John, Cheryl and their twelve year old son, Dylan. We met them while camped on the river front when we first got to town. John was a boat builder and ran Eagle Hollow Marina a mile east of Madison.
I wanted to put a lighter back axle on Della’s cart, and John offered to help. The plan was that when we started traveling again, we would walk from the farm to Eagle Hollow on Friday, May 17th. On Saturday, John and I would replace the axle. then Monday we would hit the road headed east.
Cheryl home schooled Dylan and was active in a local home schooling group. She asked me if I would put on a poetry show for the group at Eagle Hollow. We set the time for 7 p.m. Friday night.
Thursday night when we said goodbye to the Greens, there were lots of tears. During the past six months we had become part of the family. Sarah said, “Next winter, if you don’t find a good place to stay, just give us a call. We’ll get a horse trailer and bring you back here.”
Friday morning after everything was packed, the house cleaned and thank you cards set on the kitchen table, Patricia and I walked down to the barn to get Della. When my wife led her out of the barn, my attention was drawn to Della’s right rear hoof. It had only half a shoe on it. She had broken it, and the outside half was gone. I would have to re-shoe her before we went anywhere. It was early enough in the day to do that and still hike
to Eagle Hollow in time to do the show.
Della was in no mood to have her feet worked on. She had watched us get the cart ready. We were highway-bound, and she knew it. Being shod was not part of Della’s plan.
She and I danced around for a bit, but finally she settled down and I got both feet trimmed. Then, as I reshaped the new shoe, I broke it. I didn’t have another one road-ready. On the phone from Eagle Hollow, John said, “Bring it over and weld it back together.”
So, I borrowed the Green’s truck, drove across town and welded the shoe. While I was getting ready to put the shoe on, Patricia said “Shouldn’t we take her for a walk first?”
It was mid-afternoon. I still had to get both shoes on Della, we had a six mile hike ahead of us, and then we had to set up the stage and put on a show. “I don’t have time to take Della for a walk. We need to get going.”
“But she’s been standing here a long time.”
I snapped, “She’ll be alright!”
After I got the fourth nail in the right shoe, Della started to fidget and lean on me. So I poked her in the ribs with my elbow. “Straighten up!”
I had just finished the last nail, when she leaned so hard on me we both nearly fell down. I elbowed her again. This time she jumped so far the other way that I couldn’t get under her. So I walked around to the other side of Della to push her back in place.
I was directly behind her when it happened. It came quick–deliberately and precisely. Della’s left rear hoof slammed into my right thigh. I flew through the air and landed in a painful heap four feet away.
Patricia screamed, “Oh my God, no! Bud, are you okay?”
When I landed on the ground it knocked the wind out of me. Literally, I saw stars, and I couldn’t breathe–much less answer my wife. She was frantic, “Bud, are you okay?”
A couple of days later, as Dr. Steve showed me the x-rays of my thigh, he said, “You have a bruised femur. Sometimes a bruised bone can be more painful than a broken one. You need to stay off this thing for a while.”
“How long?”
He knew about our journey. “If you stay completely off it for two weeks, you could start using it slowly. Then, in another week you may be ready for the road.”
He paused, “Don’t push it. You’ll just make it hurt longer.”
I followed doctor’s orders and just sat for two weeks with my leg propped up as spring got prettier. The longest string of perfect-for-traveling days we’d had, were those three and a half weeks that I was laid up on the farm.
Sarah Green said, “Maybe Della kicked you because she doesn’t want to travel.”
I could fill a couple of chapters with stories about how Della proved to us she loved the road. Like the way she’d paw the ground as we packed the cart in the morning. Then, as we hitched her to it, Della would get so excited that she could hardly stand still long enough for us to get hitched up. While we were walking, she was constantly looking from side to side checking out the scenery. Patricia called her “the perennial tourist.”
Sarah asked, “So why did she kick you?”
“Because I had it coming. I got in a hurry and none of us were having fun. So Della slowed me down.”
Downtown Madison with Belle.
CHAPTER 9
INTO THE HEARTLAND
“HEY, WHAT GIVES OVER THERE?”
He had just sat down at a booth close to ours in a Bob Evans Restaurant near Aurora, Indiana. His was next to one of the front windows, and his stomach came close to keeping him from getting into the booth. He was inching his way across the vinyl seat, when the waitress said, “What’s that Charlie?”
Out of breath, he stopped scooting and jerked his left thumb toward the window. “That over there–across the highway. What the hell’s going on? Somebody open a campground over there?”
We had left Madison three weeks ago and took our time following the river. Later today we would cross the state line into Ohio. Now we were camped in an open grassy area next to the busy four lanes of US 50. It was a good distance off the highway, but everyone in Bob Evans had a view of our camp. A very fish-bowl sort of place.
The waitress was kind of cute, in her mid-thirties with a touch of Kentucky in her voice. She poured Charlie’s coffee and said, “I read about them in the paper. It said they’re walking across the country with a mule. Goin’ east somewhere. I think Maine.”
She pulled out her order pad. “So Charlie, what are ya’ having? The usual?”
He nodded and stirred his coffee as the waitress scurried off. The way he stared out the window at our camp, I sensed something about it bothered him. When she brought his food, Charlie looked up at the waitress and grimaced. “So why are they doing that? They walking for cancer or something?”
“Naw, nothing like that.”
While we listened to her, Patricia and I were impressed with how much of our story she retained. She told him we were poets, that I was writing a book and we planned to travel on foot for several years. The waitress ended with, “But mostly they just wanted to do it. I’ve got the paper at home. Want me to bring it tomorrow?”
He turned toward the window and shook his shaved head. “So they’re just wandering around camping anywhere they damn well want, eh?”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
When he turned back toward the waitress, his fleshy face was puckered with disapproval. “Who said they could camp there? Probably nobody. Just squatted. Sounds like a bunch of damn freeloaders to me.” He picked up his fork and pointed it at the waitress. “They got a home somewhere?”
“I don’t know. I’ll bring you the paper.”
“Don’t bother. I got it figured out.”
Dumping salt on his hash browns, Charlie laughed and shook his head. “In other words, they don’t really have a life.”
We decided to bypass downtown Cincinnati. It seemed like the safe thing to do. When I walked across the country in the 1970s with the pack pony and dog, I never hesitated to trek through a city. I walked into the hearts of Cleveland, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco and Denver. But it’s like a lot of people kept telling me, “That was thirty years ago. Things are tougher now!”
I was also younger then, and I was single. But now I had a wife to think about. And Cincinnati had all those race riots. I saw it on TV. White guys being pulled out of trucks and clubbed in the streets.
“And you ain’t even got a truck,” said one good-ole-boy back down the river road. “They’ll kill you, rape your wife and barbeque your mule!”
So I thought it best to go through the northern suburbs instead.
Jeff Swinger said, “They’ll love you in Cincinnati.”
We met Jeff as we walked into Aurora, Indiana. He and his wife passed us on their way home to Cincinnati from Madison. He was a photographer for the Cincinnati Enquirer. “When we drove by you, I told my wife, ‘There has got to be a story here.’”
When we first saw Jeff, his face was behind a Nikon with a long white monster lens. He was in front of us, walking backwards, snapping away when he asked if we were going downtown. I told him why we weren’t.
“Every city has its problems. And none are trying harder to fix them than Cincinnati. It’s a great town. Come see for yourself.”
That night in the tent, Patricia said, “If we’re not going downtown because you’re looking out for me, forget it!”
“Well–”
“Listen, I told you I would do this trip however you wanted to do it. And if you want to walk downtown, let’s go!”
It first felt like we were coming into a big city when we camped in the town of Cleve on the west edge of Cincinnati. We spotted a big grassy spot next to a NAPA auto parts store, and they gave us permission to camp. In front of the lot, next to the highway, was a deep ditch with water in it. At the back of the lot was a row of trees, and behind them was several sets of railroad tracks. A few hundred yards to the west of our camp, was a switch yard for some sort of industry. Nearby, to the east was a crossi
ng. So every train had to blow its whistle several times as they approached, and the tracks were busy throughout the night. So was the highway in front of our camp. And every once in a while a jetliner would fly low over us. We were definitely coming into a city.
“Hey, you’ve got a phone call!”
The guy who yelled that at me had just come out the side door of the NAPA store and was walking toward us. He was halfway between the store and us when he stopped, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. I hollered back, “For me?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s inside the store.”
I was dumbfounded. Who would call me at the NAPA store in Cleves, Ohio? We’d only been camped there an hour. When the parts guy and I walked back toward the store I asked, “Are you sure it’s for me?”
“You’re the only one around here traveling with a mule.”
“Hi, I’m Chris Hursh with WKRC--TV Channel 12 in Cincinnati. Could we come out and interview you? We’d like to get it on this evening’s news.”
In the backroom of the parts store, with the receiver to my face, I was still awe-struck that I got a phone call. “How did you find me?”
The newsman chuckled. “I’ve had a lady tracking you all day.”
Cincinnati grew up in a basin on the river. It’s where the Miami and Little Miami rivers run into the Ohio. A semi-circle of ridges and hills encompass the north side of the basin. Most of Cincinnati’s residential neighborhoods and suburbs were up in those hills. Downtown is in the bottom of the basin.
Our route into town was Highway 50, which paralleled the river with railroad tracks between us and it. The closer to the city, the heavier and more rapid the traffic. Highway 50–a.k.a. River Road–was hard to walk on. Sometimes we had a shoulder, but most of the time we didn’t. In some places it was a four lane, in others it was not. Almost all of it was pot-holed with wide spots of crumbled pavement. None of that deterred the speed of the traffic. Front-end alignment had to be big business in that part of town.