Footloose in America: Dixie to New England

by Bud Kenny

  Barb Jenks Tiffan was director of the Franklin Park Conservatory. Besides buying us lunch at their café, she offered us a free tour of the conservatory. The original glass pavilion opened in 1895 and has been in operation ever since. In it were botanical gardens and rooms with habitat that ranged from desert to tropical. In the Pacific Island Water Garden, the air was alive with butterflies from Asia, Africa and South America. It was a treat that thrilled all the senses.

  You could spend a whole day at the conservatory and not see it all. But we only stayed two hours, we had Della to think of. We had moved her to the “better shade” that Ernie told us about. He had me tie her to a “No Parking” sign, where I hung her a bag of hay. While we were in the conservatory, Ernie and his partner, Gary, kept an eye on Della. Even so, two hours was a long time to be away from our girl. We knew she’d be excited to see us. Especially when we showed up with two Hagen Daz ice cream bars.

  Bexley was the suburb of the well to-do on the west side of Columbus. Even the Governor’s Mansion was there. Annette and Steve lived in a stately old home, with ancient oak trees that shaded a lush green lawn. When I warned them about the damage Della could do to their yard, Steve said, “I plan to re-landscape the backyard anyway. She’s fine.”

  The next morning, when we left Annette’s house, she accompanied us on her bicycle. She wanted to take our picture in front of the Governor’s Mansion. It was a gothic stone house, with a huge manicured lawn, majestic oak trees and beautiful flowerbeds. All of it was surrounded by an iron and stone fence with massive gates and a stone drive that curved up to the front door.

  After Annette snapped a few pictures in front of the house, we went around the corner and stopped in front of two iron gates. Inside those gates, behind the mansion, was a smaller house with a State Highway Patrol cruiser parked in front of it. Two uniformed officers were close at hand, keeping their eyes on us.

  I had just turned toward Annette, so she could take a picture, when I heard a man’s voice behind me. “Say, what’s going on here?”

  He wore Bermuda shorts, a t-shirt and ball cap. The man was about my height and around the same age as me. I figured he was a gardener. “We just stopped to take a couple of pictures.”

  Both officers stepped up beside the man as Annette said, “It’s the Governor!”

  I asked, “You’re the Governor?”

  Bob Taft grinned as he put his hands on his hips and chuckled. “Last time I checked. So who are you? And what are you doing?”

  After I gave him a brief rundown, the Governor said, “You walked here from Arkansas? My wife is from Arkansas.”

  While I was telling him about our trip, a younger man walked up beside the Governor. He was Bob Taft’s nephew. The Governor told him, “Go up and get Hope. She’ll want to meet these people.”

  Then he turned to me. “Have you got a few minutes? I want my wife to meet you.”

  He motioned for the patrolmen to open the gate. I was leading Della up the driveway, when Ohio’s first lady came out the front door of the mansion wearing a pair of Burkenstocks, blue jeans and a frumpy shirt. At her side, was their daughter Anne. Hope Taft shook my hand as she said, “I know who you are.”

  The Governor asked, “You do?”

  “Yes. I read about them in the Cincinnati Enquirer a couple of weeks ago. Bob, have them come up to the front of the house. I want to get some pictures.”

  With that, Ohio’s First Lady turned around and trotted back into the mansion. We had just stopped in front of the house, when she came out with a camera and a clipping of the article about us from the Cincinnati paper. She handed it to her daughter. “Here Anne, I cut this out for you while you were on your trip.”

  The Governor had a hurt look on his face. “Why didn’t you show it to me?”

  Hope shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  Then she put the camera up to her face and motioned for the Governor to move closer to me. “Get next to Bud, so I can get you both in this picture.”

  We visited with the Tafts for better than an hour and a half. I gave the Governor and his family a tour of the cart. Then Mrs. Taft said, “Come in and let me show you around the mansion.”

  “I need to tie Della up to something first.”

  “Tie her to that tree.” Bob Taft pointed to one on the manicured lawn.

  “She might paw up the grass.”

  “We’ve got people to take care of that. Come on in.”

  He was in the middle of his first term. Before he was governor, Bob Taft represented Ohio in the US Senate. He was an avid bicyclist, and had ridden all 1,000 miles of Ohio’s Rails-to-Trails.

  During our visit, the Governor pulled out a state road map and we talked about our route. “You’ve got to go through Holmes County. It’s the largest concentration of Amish in the world.”

  “In the world? You mean even more than Lancaster County, Pennsylvania?”

  The Governor nodded. “The countryside is beautiful. Rolling hills with lots of farms–all of it tended to with horses. They’ll love you.”

  He brought us ice water in old jelly glasses. And Hope kept asking Patricia if she needed to use the bathroom. “We have several.”

  The governor, and the first lady, walked with us down their driveway toward the street. While we approached the gate, I could see that the patrolman was having a problem with the gate motor, so he manually tried to open it. When we got there, both Bob and Hope grabbed hold of it and helped him push the gate open.

  When we walked past him, Governor Taft saluted me. “If you come back through Columbus, and I’m still here, give me a call and let us know you’re coming.”

  In our guest book Governor Taft wrote “Thanks for coming to Ohio!”

  Showing Ohio Governor Bob Taft the cart.

  CHAPTER 11

  AMONG THE PLAIN FOLK

  WHEN WE WALKED ACROSS THE Kokosing River on the US 62 Bridge, I looked down and spotted a wide gravel bar at the base of the southern bank. It had lots of shade, good graze for Della and a long gravel beach next to clear flowing water. A perfect place to camp for a few days. It was time to re-shoe Della, and this would be a great spot to do it.

  Patricia said, “I don’t know if we should take the cart down there.”

  “Why not?”

  Long ago someone had bulldozed a short narrow driveway down through the bank onto the beach. My wife pointed at it and said, “It looks too steep.”

  “Get in and ride the brake. It’ll be all right.”

  She climbed in saying, “I’m not worried about going down.”

  It was steep, and going up would be a tough pull. But it was nothing Della couldn’t handle. Besides, it was dirt and gravel, so she’d have lots of traction. I signaled like a wagon master leading a train of covered wagons headed west. “It’s no big deal. Let’s go!”

  And down we went, me slowly leading Della around the ruts and holes–creations of storms gone by. Halfway down, a cart tire skidded in loose gravel. Patricia gasped, “I don’t know about this.”

  A minute later, we were down on the beach rolling smoothly along the gravel toward a perfect spot to camp. In less than an hour we had the tent up about twenty feet from the water’s edge, with a fire flickering in a circle of charred rocks that had held many previous fires. It was the perfect spot for a vagabond camp.

  The Kokosing wasn’t a wide mighty river. It was a canoe kind of stream, with rapids that looked like undulating wrinkles where they flowed in and out of long smooth pools. Our camp was next to a still pool that was about a hundred yards long. The newest Highway 62 Bridge was at the upstream end of it, and the downstream end flowed into rapids under the old bridge.

  Of all our campsites so far, this one was the most pleasing to the ears. There was the water that babbled and chattered over stones as it flowed in and out the pools. And then there was the sound of the crackling fire, whose flames leaped up between the logs to ignite the night with an orange glow. Every-so-often there was an
explosion of sparks that spewed into the night sky like fireworks. I think small fires, and jabbering rapids, are more meditative than major conflagrations and roaring cascades. The senses aren’t overwhelmed. Your spirit is free to be carried away by the flicker and babble of it all.

  Another treat for the ears was the sound of hoofs and carriage wheels up on the highway. Into the late hours of Friday and Saturday night, carriages with flashing lights rolled across the bridge above our camp. Sunday morning it was often like a parade of buggies. No doubt about it, we were in land of the Plain Folk. This was Amish country.

  We met lots of people during our three days on the river. None were Amish, but most had lived around there all of their lives. Men and women who grew up playing on that gravel bar. One middle aged man said, “I sure drank a lot of beer on this beach!”

  Sunday, late in the afternoon, a crowd of people came down to the river for a baptizing–the Pentecostal kind, where the baptized, and the preacher, wade into the river in their Sunday best. Bending them backwards, the preacher dunked them completely under, while on shore, the congregation sang, clapped, cried and testified. It was very exciting. But not as exciting as that evening.

  It began about an hour after sundown. Patricia and I were sitting next to our riverside fire, when a huge rain drop landed on one of the burning logs. It sizzled, spattered and steamed away before it could drip down into the heart of the flames. Then another, and another, followed by several more. Through orange steam my wife looked at me and asked, “What’s the forecast?”

  “Last time I saw the Weather Channel–”

  Suddenly, a jag of white ripped across the night sky. Like the report from a dozen sharp shooters, the heavens sprang to life with flashing. It sounded like bullets ricocheting all around us as we scurried to the tent. After a few moments of fighting with the door zipper, I yanked it open just as Mother Nature tipped her bucket over.

  “Got it!” I screamed, then pushed Patricia inside, with me tumbling in behind her.

  After zipping it shut, I turned toward my wife and said, “Rain.”

  Patricia was rubbing her head with a towel. “Huh?”

  “You asked for the forecast. I think it’s going to rain.”

  And it did, all night long. It was an hour past dawn before it quit. When I stuck my head out the tent door I was shocked at what I saw. “Oh-my-God!”

  My wife rustled around in her sleeping bag as she said, “What?”

  “The river is coming up. We need to get out of here!”

  Instead of twenty feet, our tent was now less than six feet away from the river. The clear sweet ripples had become churning brown rapids frothing around boulders that earlier had been high and dry on a gravel bar midstream. The once babbling Kokosing now was grumbling.

  We broke camp, packed the cart and hitched up Della faster than we ever had. Even so, by the time we got moving, the water was up to our wheels. Della had to step into the river to turn the cart around. When we got to the steep driveway, without hesitation, Della lunged into the pull. I had to trot to keep up as sturdy mule legs climbed up the hill. The rain had loosened the bank gravel, so each of her steps slid backwards a bit. Still she steadily kept moving.

  We were almost to the top, when the right rear wheel dropped into a rut, and everything jerked to a stop. I yelled, “Get up, Big Sis!”

  She leaped forward and popped the wheel out of the rut. But Della couldn’t get traction in the wet gravel. Gravity took control, and the cart started pulling Della toward the river. I helped her guide it back down to the beach.

  At the bottom, with hands on her hips, Patricia shook her head. “I knew coming down here was a bad idea.”

  And I knew that was coming. It sent a flare up my spine, but I ignored it and simply said, “Della can do it. If the wheel hadn’t hit that rut we’d be on the top right now.”

  Patricia’s rolled her eyes and arched their brows. “I don’t know about that.”

  After Della rested for a few minutes, we tried it again. “Come-on Sis, let’s go!”

  Della leaped up the hill, and got up it faster than before. But the right rear wheel dropped into the same rut and jolted the cart to a stop. Before I could say anything, she lunged and popped the wheel out. But gravity, and the soft soil won. Again we backed down to the bottom, where the gravel bar was getting smaller–and the river wider.

  “I knew it!” Patricia stalked around the cart with hands on her hips. “I knew we shouldn’t have come down here.” She stopped face to face with me, shook her trigger finger at me and yelled, “Didn’t I tell you she couldn’t make it?”

  “If it wasn’t for that rut she–”

  Patricia exploded, “Rut, smut!” She aimed her finger at the cart. “She can’t get it up there because we’ve got too much shit!”

  I wanted to yell, “If I didn’t have you, I wouldn’t need all this shit!” But I kept my mouth shut and just stood there seething.

  Exasperated, Patricia threw her hands up in the air. “So, now what do we do? Eh?”

  One of the locals that we had met was a volunteer fireman, Don Brunner. He lived a about a mile away and had a four-wheel drive pickup. He told us, “If you have trouble getting up the hill, come find me. Unless I’m out fighting a fire, I’m usually home.”

  So I took my bicycle off the back of the cart to go find Don. I was strapping my helmet on when Patricia said, “Don’t take too long. The river is still coming up.”

  At the top of the driveway, I climbed on my bicycle and headed toward the village of Millwood. Although the road was badly pot-holed, it was smoother than things back on the beach. When I looked down from the old bridge to where Patricia, Della, and the cart were stranded, I started sputtering to myself, “It’s bad enough we’ve got this problem, but I have to put up with her attitude too.”

  The further from the river I got, the more relaxed I felt. My legs were enjoying the smooth aerobic exercise and my spirit relished the lack of confrontation. Man, this is living! Just me and the road. I should have made this a bicycle trip. It would have been a whole lot easier than dealing with a wife and mule.

  Then a familiar voice from deep inside me said, “Hey, you’ve got a hundred bucks in your wallet. Go for a ride. Man, you deserve it. Get away from all that negative bullshit.”

  When I got to the road to Don’s house, I stopped and gazed at the highway ahead of me as that inner voice sang, “Go for it! Life is too short to be miserable.”

  Standing at that intersection, straddling my bicycle, I felt like I had been there before. Not the location, but the situation. A juncture where one direction would prolong my misery, while another offered hope for a better way. Every one of those times I took that vow “. . . for better or worse . . . .” I meant it. But damn it, if worse is all I’m going to get, then it’s time for me to get going.

  Suddenly, a shiver raced through me. What the hell am I doing? My family is stuck beside a flooding river, and I’m going for a bike ride?

  In less than thirty minutes we had the cart chained to the trailer hitch on Don’s truck. He shifted into four-wheel drive, then let out the clutch. At first, all four wheels spun in the gravel, but then they grabbed hold and everything began to creep up the hill. Patricia was standing next to Della at the top watching, while I walked beside the cart.

  Don tried to miss the rut at the top, but the right rear cart wheel slid into it anyway, and it stopped the truck just like it did Della. So he revved the engine and let out the clutch. Sand and gravel flew as the cart wheel popped out of the rut with a loud bang, and the truck raced up the hill–but the cart did not. It was rolling back down the hill. Instinctively, when it passed me, I reached out to grab hold. But better sense made me step back and just watch it careen toward the river.

  Patricia screamed, “No!”

  I was helpless. All I could do was watch everything we own roll away.

  Then, just a few feet from the bottom, the right front tire hit a big rock. The cart jac
k-knifed, and when it did, the back end crashed into the dirt embankment on the right side of the road. Teetering on just the two downhill wheels, the cart looked like it was going to roll over.

  I prayed, “Lord, please don’t let this happen!”

  And it didn’t. In slow motion the cart came down on all fours and bounced a couple of times. Not until it stopped completely was I able to inhale. Then I clasped my hands together, touched them to my lips and whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Except for some cosmetic damage, everything on the cart was all right. A repair link in the chain had come undone. This time we used a bigger chain, and I rode in the cart. If it did come loose, I could stop it with the brake. But it didn’t. Don missed the rut and we made it to the top.

  I tried to pay him, but he wouldn’t take it. After Don left, we hooked up Della and walked back out onto Highway 62 headed east. On the bridge I stopped and looked down to where we had been camped. Now it was under water.

  Patricia was standing beside me as I said, “What a great campsite.”

  “Not now.”

  “Yeah, but it was. Admit it, we had a great time down there.”

  My wife shook her head and scoffed, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had a great time down there. But I still say–”

  I jumped in, “You were right. We shouldn’t have taken the cart down there.”

  With her arms crossed, Patricia just stood there looking rather smug for a few moments. Then she grinned and said, “Thank you.”

  I couldn’t help it. I had to say, “Some adventure, eh baby?”

  Many of the hills in Holmes County looked like big loaves of bread. Hills are not something that normally comes to mind when most people think of Ohio. But Holmes County had some beauties. And, although I was born in the Buckeye State, I didn’t know Ohio had oil. But we saw several wells pumping in the middle of corn fields. Another thing most folks don’t associate with Ohio, is logging. But in those Ohio hills, several log trucks passed us loaded with hardwoods.