by Bud Kenny
The farther we went, the more big trucks we saw. And it seemed like there was always a train on our right. On the other side of the tracks, perched along the river, were miles of giant oil and chemical tanks behind rusted chain-link fences. We passed several manmade mountains of coal, and a couple of times we saw huge white piles that looked like salt. The acrid smell of industry, with a hint of sulfur, was the predominate bouquet of that neighborhood. And the reds of rust, with the yellows and blues of corrosion tinted everything made out of steel.
In the middle of all that industry, we pulled onto a wide dirt area beside the highway. It was lunch time. Patricia opened the kitchen compartment on the cart and began to make sandwiches, while I sat on Della’s bucket and held her rope. She was grazing on a small clump of grass, when a mid-1980s brown Pontiac pulled in next to us with four young black men in it. The car had a few spots where it had been painted primer gray, and the right front hub cap was missing. From the front passenger seat, a guy with sunglasses and dread-locks leaned out the window and said, “Say Man, what ‘ch you doin?”
I held up Della’s rope so they could see it. “I’m holding onto my ass!”
The car was silent as they looked around at each other. Then the one who asked the question looked back out the window, pointed toward Della and blurted out, “I got it!” A huge grin was on his face as he mimicked my grip on Della’s rope. “He’s holding his ass!”
Instantly, they all burst into laughter. The Pontiac was rollicking as high fives made their way around the inside of the car. With a chuckle still in his voice, he leaned back out the window. “No, really man, what ‘ch you and your woman doin’?”
“Right now we’re walking to the coast of Maine.”
“For real? You’re walking all the way to the coast?”
“Sure am.”
“So, you walkin’ for cancer, or Jesus or something like that?”
“Oh, you want to know what our cause is?”
“Yeah man. What’s your cause? Why you doing this?”
I stood up from the bucket and walked over to them. “Be-cause we damn well want to do it. We’re just taking our time to see America. That’s all there is to it.”
A wide grin bloomed on his face. He took off his sun glasses, and a sparkle danced in his brown eyes as he extended his up-turned palm toward me. “Wow! Now, that’s really bad man. I mean, really bad!”
Everyone in the Pontiac nodded and grinned as other hands emerged from the windows. When their car started to pull back into traffic, the one in the front seat leaned out and yelled. “Hey dude, you’re in The Queen City now. Welcome to Cincinnati!”
Longfellow was the first to call Cincinnati, “The Queen City”.
Further in town, Highway 50 took us through a neighborhood with narrow row-houses and old skinny buildings. Some of the houses were in good repair, but most were not. A lot of the buildings were empty with broken windows and graffiti. Weeds grew out of cracks in the buildings, sidewalks and curbs. It seemed like anywhere there was a crack, mother nature was trying her best to take over. Some sidewalks had chunks of concrete and bricks laying on them that had fallen from building facades And there were bits of glass glistening everywhere.
“Hey! I want to pet your donkey!”
It was a little white girl. She was four or five years old, jumping up and down and screaming at us from across the highway. A young black boy, probably a sixth grader, ran up and stopped behind her. He had the whine of the ghetto in his voice when he yelled, “Hey, mister! Wait up!”
Behind them were at least half a dozen more kids. All colors and sizes, running and screaming. I yelled at them from across the street, “Wait! We’ll come over there.”
The older kids kept the little ones from darting out into the traffic. By the time we got across the four lanes, the group had grown to fifteen–including a couple of young mothers with babies in their arms. When we pulled across the highway onto their street, the kids surged toward us jumping up and down and screaming. I held my hand up and roared, “Whoa! Stop right there.”
They did. I had their attention. Loudly and slowly I said, “You will all get a chance to say hello to Della. But you can’t jump or scream. That will scare her and make her jump and she could land on you.”
They all said at the same time, “Oh.” Then in unison they took a few steps back, as the oldest boy said, “Oh man, that would kill you!”
An older girl, who was holding the hand of one of the smaller ones said, “Baby Girl, if she stepped on you, there’d be nothin’ left!”
Finally I got them to calm down. Then Patricia started escorting the little kids up to Della–a couple at a time. Each one of them squealed when her big mule nose first got close to their little faces. But within moments, all of them had relaxed and were giggling when she breathed on them. They all fell in love with Della.
“What’s she eat?”
“She loves ice cream.”
“Naw man, for real?”
“Yeah, she does. But she likes hay and grass and stuff like that, too.”
Within moments kids were pulling weeds out of those urban cracks and feeding them to Della. After about twenty minutes, I said, “We need to get going. We’ve got a lot of miles to walk before we stop for the night.”
“Dude, you can stay at my house,” the sixth grader said. “People crash there all the time.”
While we walked on Central Avenue toward the heart of the city, it was obvious Cincinnati knew who we were. Every couple of minutes from the windows of passing cars, or from people on the sidewalks, we heard “I saw you on TV the other night.” or “Read about you in the paper this morning.” And there were a few who yelled, “Hi Della!”
A block before we turned off Central, a man walked out the side door of an Italian restaurant with a handful of long carrots. They were scrubbed clean, with the lacy green tops still attached. Patricia was in the cart running the brake. When he handed them to her, he said, with an exuberant Italian accent, “I saved these for Della. I read about you’s in the paper this morning. I knew you’s come by here. God bless!”
On Fourth Street, we turned toward Fountain Square. Jim Macke, who owned the Cinderella carriage in Madison, picked up passengers for his Cincinnati carriages in the square. He told me when we got downtown to look for him there first.
In the middle of the square was the Tyler Davidson Fountain. Dedicated in 1871, it was a huge bronze sculpture more than forty feet high. On top of it was a woman with outstretched arms. From her hands water rained down on numerous bronze figures who were using or looking for water. They ranged from a fireman on a burning roof, to a boy strapping on ice skates.
It was mid-Saturday afternoon as we walked toward the fountain. Traffic swirled all around us, with cars, buses, taxis and delivery trucks jockeying for position. All around us was the unrelenting racket of revving motors, squealing brakes and intermittent horns. But above all that, was the sound of the water falling from the bronze woman’s hands. It made the other urban noise much more palatable.
While we made our way through the chaos, Della was a princess. She just plodded along and responded to my every request. When we started into Fountain Square, the road surface went from pavement to metal grating. As we approached it, I began to get nervous. I hadn’t walked Della across anything like that before. What if it freaked her out and she wouldn’t walk across it? But she didn’t even hesitate. With her shoes clicking across the steel grating, she acted like she had done it every day of her life.
Then suddenly, something exploded under us. A huge blast of steam rushed up through the grates and enveloped Della and me. We both lunged forward to get out of the steam. But as soon as we were out of it, Della immediately went back to plodding along.
When I tied her to a street sign in front of the Westin Hotel, it only took a moment for a small crowd to gather around. Some of them knew about us, and those who didn’t were soon filled in by those who had read the story in that morning’
s paper. Among them was a young woman who asked us to autograph the article.
Patricia stayed with Della and the crowd, while I went in the Westin to find a phone to call Jim Macke. It took about twenty minutes to track him down and get directions to his carriage barn. When I walked out the hotel door, I discovered Della had done her part to beautify downtown Cincinnati. She’d nipped off a limb from the young urban tree in front of her. Part of it hung out the side of her mouth as she chewed. And behind her was a perfectly stacked pile of dark green mule turds.
Up to now, I haven’t said anything about the poop aspect of traveling with a mule. We had a scoop shovel and a leaf rake to take care of it. But rarely did she do it while she was in the harness. In front of the Cincinnati Westin was the first time. What a classy girl!
We spent three nights at Jim Macke’s farm across the river in Kentucky. On Sunday he showed Patricia and me around Cincinnati in his BMW. Monday we toured the city on our bicycles. Then Tuesday we hitched up Della and were back on the road.
It was around noon when we stopped for a traffic light at Sixth Street and Vine downtown. A pack of pedestrians flowed from the sidewalk into the crosswalk in front of us. Among them was a tall woman, dressed in a tight fitting business suit, with amber hair draped about her shoulders. She had a cover-girl kind of face with a wide glossy red smile. With long graceful strides, she quickly got to the front of the pack, and it seemed like she was determined to get to us before the rest of the pedestrians–and she did. Then, stopping directly in front of me, she said, “Thank you for coming to Cincinnati.”
She said that with such sincerity that I was dumfounded at first. I stumbled through, “Oh, uh, well. You’re welcome.”
While the rest of the pedestrians scurried past her, the woman stepped closer to me, reached over, took my left hand and held it with both of hers. “I really mean it. I read about you in the paper the other day. It was such an uplifting story. We talked about it at church Sunday. It’s a wonderful thing that you’re doing. You’re living your dream.”
She stepped closer and caressed my arm to her chest. Tears were in her eyes when she said, “Thank you for showing us that people can still do this in America!”
Then she dropped my arm and disappeared into the downtown crowd. When the light changed and we started through the intersection, I recalled what Jeff Swinger said when he talked us into going downtown. “They’ll love you in Cincinnati!”
That afternoon as we hiked out of the valley, up through the suburbs, I often found myself thinking about what that woman said. I kept asking myself, “What did we do that was so special? All we did was walk through town. I don’t get it.”
“Oh, I think you do,” Father Terry said, as he poured me another glass of beer from the pitcher. “If you don’t, you should. It’s really very simple.”
The hike up to Silverton had been a long, hot, urban affair. So we appreciated it when they told us we could camp in the shade on the grounds of St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church. We especially appreciated their offer to open the church beer-tap after their meeting that night. The priest, a couple of nuns and a few parishioners, brought cold glasses and frosted pitchers full of beer to our camp just after dark.
I asked the priest, “What do you mean, it’s very simple?”
“You’re living your dream. Just seeing you walk down the street, it’s obvious that’s what you’re doing. So that’s what you did. You brought your dream to Cincinnati–a place where it’s easy for dreams to get lost. People in a place like this need to see that.”
I looked up at the illuminated bell tower with the silver half-moon shimmering above it and tried to think of a response. All I could come up with was, “Oh.”
Father Terry put his hand on my shoulder. “You say you’re walking just because it’s something you’ve always wanted to do. But it’s more than that. You’re a sign of hope that there is more to life than just the everyday grind. It’s your way of doing God’s work.”
How do you respond to something like that? I was speechless. It just seemed natural to look back up at the bell tower. After a few moments of silence the priest said, “And I would like to thank you for something, too. Thank you for camping here.” He motioned toward the moon. “I have never seen the prayer tower look as beautiful as it does right now. I don’t take the time to come back here at night to just sit and enjoy it.”
He held up his beer glass in a salute. “Thank you. I will certainly do this again.”
I yelled to eager faces across the highway. “Do you want to come meet Della?”
They were the urban black faces of two young mothers with six small children huddled around them. The oldest child was about ten. When I told them to come over, the street corner sprang to life with squealing little kids jumping up and down clapping their hands. One of the smallest hopped off the curb like she was going to dash across the four lanes. But each mother grabbed a shoulder and yanked her back onto the sidewalk. One of them bent over and swatted the little girl’s bottom as she scolded her. The ten-year-old grabbed his little sister’s hand and held it as she stood on the sidewalk bawling. But, by the time traffic was such that they could get across, she was bright faced and skipping her way toward us–with big brother still holding onto her.
Like most little kids that first met Della, they were all in a hurry until they got close. About six feet from her they had slowed down to a nervous shuffle. Little sister, who was only as tall as Della’s knees, was still bubbling with excitement, but she too was afraid to get closer. And the mothers stayed with their kids.
“It’s okay, you can pet Della,” Patricia said as she stroked our mule-girl’s neck. “Just come up to her slow so you don’t scare her.”
While they were scooting closer, the ten-year old, with little sis in hand, suddenly veered away from the others toward Della’s rear end. I yelled, “No! Don’t go back there!”
My wife whirled around, lunged in front of those kids and guided them toward the others at Della’s head. “You can get hurt back there. Stay up here with everybody else.”
The children giggled and squealed as they ran their little hands up and down Della’s front legs. Both mothers were petting her neck, when one said, “I never touched a real horse before.”
“Really? Me neither. She sure is soft!”
Right then, a small school bus turned off the highway and stopped on a side street near us. I had seen the bus earlier back down the highway. What drew my attention to it then, was the beaming round face and enthusiastic waving of the woman driving it. When the bus door opened, she was the one who got out. A short, plump, white woman who walked up to us in hasty steps and said, “I just had to stop!”
The words bounced out of her. “We have a few disabled children on the bus who’d love to meet your mule. Could we bring them over?”
A few minutes later, two other women got out of the bus and began to lead five girls toward us. They were about ten years old, and each had some sort of impairment in their movement. A couple used metal crutches that wrapped around their arms just below their elbows. Another girl–without a crutch–dragged her right leg with each step, and there was one who limped like both her left leg and left arm were frozen stiff. Then there was the girl who had no physical problem, but she just couldn’t seem to keep her mind on where she was going. She’d take a few steps with the rest of the group, then suddenly turn and go another way. The women guiding the girls toward us spent most of their time keeping track of that little wanderer.
When they got close to us, it was obvious the black mothers were getting nervous about that group. They thanked us, hastily collected their children and left before the girls from the bus reached us.
While the girls stroked Della, one of the women said, “We have one more girl, but it takes longer to get her off the bus.”
A few minutes later, the driver stepped out the bus door with a folded wheel chair. One of the other women said “I’d better go help with Lilly.”
“But she can hear and understand just fine,” the driver said as she pushed Lilly’s wheel chair closer to Della.
At first, the Big Sis didn’t know what to make of it--the wheel chair with this bobbing and twitching girl in it. She had been patient with all of the children so far, but this was a lot different. Della wasn’t sure she wanted anything to do with it and side stepped away from the chair. So I motioned to the bus driver to stop. “I don’t think Della has ever been around a wheel chair. Let her figure it out before you come any closer to her.”
The bus driver leaned over and said, “Lilly, the mule hasn’t ever seen a wheel chair before. So we’re going to sit still so she can get used to it. We don’t want to scare her.”
A series of excited grunts came out of Lilly, as she tried to nod. That piqued Della’s curiosity. Slowly she moved her regal head toward the girl and sniffed the air around her. Then, Della took a step toward the chair while she continued to sniff. After another step, she stretched her neck out until her muzzle was next to Lilly’s cheek. The air from her nostrils blew strands of the girl’s blond hair about her face. Lilly squealed with excitement. Della drew back a bit as the bus driver said, “Lilly, be careful not to scare Della.”
Our big mule girl was more surprised than scared. She slowly moved her face toward the girl again. But this time she didn’t sniff. I could tell Della desperately wanted to make contact with Lilly. When her whiskers touched the girl’s cheeks, Lilly squealed again. But this time Della didn’t pull back.