Footloose in America: Dixie to New England

by Bud Kenny

  I couldn’t help it. I had to say, “That’s a nice change.”

  “Huh?”

  Then I told him about our reception so far in Franklin. “It’s a pretty town, but folks sure have been unfriendly.”

  He sighed. “Most people around here are real conservative. If they don’t know you, they’re not going to wave.”

  Originally from Marshall, Minnesota, Jerry had worked at the newspapers for a little over two years. “Doing this kind of work, I deal with lots of local people. And I’ve met some really great folks around here, but they’re just not very open to strangers.”

  When Patricia stopped her shopping cart in front of the reporter, she shook Jerry’s hand and said, “It’s certainly refreshing to see a smiling face around here.”

  Then she turned to me. “I just met the rudest checkout person ever. I’m telling you, it was–” Patricia waved her hand over her head and said, “Never mind. I just want to get out of here!”

  Jerry interviewed us and took pictures while we loaded provisions into the cart. After everything was packed, he said, “I’m going to drive ahead and find a spot to get some shots of you walking toward me.”

  Highway 62 to Oil City paralleled the Allegheny River and most of it was four lanes with a shoulder. We had walked quite a ways from the supermarket when I spotted Jerry ahead of us on a corner across the highway. A policeman was standing next him as he aimed a huge telephoto lens at us. He and the cop smiled and waved as we walked by.

  About two hundred yards further, I heard the sound of a car motor directly behind the cart on the highway shoulder. Then there was a short bleep of a police siren followed by an amplified man’s voice. “Would you please stop?”

  Patricia said, “Now what?”

  Behind the cart was the police car we had seen earlier. The officer was climbing out of it as Jerry pulled up behind him. Quickly, the reporter got out and scurried toward us with pen and pad in hand.

  The officer was about the same age as the reporter–in his early twenties. A handsome, dark haired man who was smiling as he first approached us. I figured this was going to be a photo-op for the paper. But as he got closer, that smile began to fade, and his face looked strained when he said, “You have to get off this highway at Reno.”

  Officer Ryan didn’t have demand in his voice. It was more like he was just passing information on to us. So I calmly asked, “Why?”

  I sensed reluctance in his voice. “My supervisor said you can’t walk through Reno on US 62. He says you can’t have a horse on a four-lane highway.”

  Patricia snapped, “She’s a mule!”

  I put my hand on Patricia’s shoulder to calm her down as I said, “Your supervisor is wrong. We can’t be on an interstate highway. But we can be on a US highway, no matter how many lanes it has.”

  He was almost pleading when the cop said, “Look, I don’t know what the problem is. I told him you weren’t hurting anything. But he says that if you go into Reno on this highway, I’m supposed to arrest you.”

  In unison Patricia and I yelled, “What?”

  Officer Ryan stepped back a bit, looked down at the ground and began to shake his head. His hands were on his hips as he said, “Look, I’m just doing my job. That’s all. I don’t want to hassle you people. I think what you’re doing is really cool.”

  This young man was quickly winning both mine and Patricia’s hearts. Back when she was a cop, several times Patricia was sent to do something that she didn’t want to do. My wife was gentle when she asked, “So what are we supposed to do?”

  “You want to go to Oil City, right?”

  He pulled a note book out of his shirt pocket and said, “These are the directions they told me to give you.”

  Throughout this exchange, Jerry had been circling around us taking pictures. Then when Officer Ryan read me the directions, both the reporter and I wrote them down. “Take the first left in Reno and go to the stop signal. Then turn left on Walnut Street to Shafer Run. Take it to Route 428, that’s Holiday Run. Go right–”

  Jerry blurted out, “Holiday Run? You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “I’m just telling you what they said.”

  When Officer Ryan pulled away in his patrol car, Jerry said, with delight, “Boy, have I got a story! The boss is going to love this. I can see the headline now, ‘Sugar Creek Cops Stop World Travelers. Reroutes Them Onto Holiday Run.”

  I asked, “What’s the big deal about Holiday Run?”

  “Driving it is anything but a holiday. It’s a nightmare! It’s steep, narrow and busy. I can’t imagine walking it.”

  After we made the first two turns that the police prescribed, I spotted a two story house with a hose in the yard. We needed water. So I grabbed Della’s bucket, one of our blue jugs, and hiked up the dozen concrete steps that ascended the front yard. It was littered with four or five bicycles, a torn-apart go-cart, a couple of plastic rifles and a few big pieces of cardboard. When I stepped up onto the front porch, big dogs began to bark on the other side of the front door. Suddenly, it swung open and two huge Rottweiler’s lunged at the screen door. I feared they were going to bust through the screen as they growled and barred their teeth at me.

  A ten year old shirtless boy smacked each one on the top of their heads with his hand as he yelled. “I said, shut up! Sweetie, you git back and sit down. Knuckle Head, that means you too. Now sit!”

  They both did. I was thrilled.

  With a bit of a hillbilly drawl, the boy said, “What do you want?”

  The question was barely out of his mouth, when a taller thirteen year old version of the boy walked up behind him. “Say man, what’s happening?”

  “I’m traveling with that mule down on the street and we need some water.”

  The younger brother yelled. “Wow, look at that! He’s got a big-ass donkey.”

  The screen door slammed against the front of the house as the boy sprinted past me and bounded down the concrete steps in bare feet. “Hey, how much for a ride?”

  Right then, one of the dogs barged past the older brother, out the screen door and began to sniff my bare legs. The wetness from his nose dripped on my calves as the huge head moved around me. My skin, my muscles, my bones, all of me cringed. His canines were too close.

  “Sweetie, get back in here!”

  The older brother was shirtless and barefoot, too. He grabbed the choker around the dog’s neck and yanked her back into the house. Then he pointed at a spot next to where the other dog sat. “Now sit down and shut up!”

  She did. My flesh and bones felt much better. I said, “Maybe I should move on.”

  This boy had the same drawl as his brother. “I’ll ask my grandma if we can give you some water. Wait here.”

  Whenever we went to someone’s door to ask for water, or a place to camp, we always took one of our flyers with us. I handed one to the boy. “It explains who we are.”

  “Cool! I’ll be right back.” He was already reading it when he turned around and headed back into the house yelling, “Grandma!”

  While I stood on the porch waiting for Grandma, I surveyed the situation. Two barefoot boys, yard full of junk, a house in need of paint and repair–it felt very Appalachia. Grandma reinforced that feeling when she showed up at the door without her teeth. She was wearing a moo-moo, had our flyer in her hand and a toothless grin on her face. When she pushed the screen door open she said, “Well sir, the boy here says you need some water for your mule.”

  “Yes ma’am, but if it’s a problem I–”

  She had a chuckle in her voice. “No honey, it’s no problem.”

  Her vacant grin got bigger as she eyed me from head to toe. It felt like she was undressing me as she held the door open. “No sir, not a problem at all. Just come on in here and make yourself to home.”

  When I stepped past her, I thought I heard her mutter, “Said the spider to the fly.”

  She turned to the boy, “Go git the basement key from your mama. She’s upsta
irs in bed watching the TV.”

  When the boy left the room, both dogs got up, walked over to me and began to sniff my legs. Grandma said, “Don’t worry about them. They won’t hurt ya as long as one of us is around. Would ya like to sit down?”

  Even if I had wanted to sit, I don’t know where I would have done it. Every piece of furniture had something on it. Clothing, newspapers, books and toys were everywhere.

  “Thanks, but I’d rather stand. Look, if this is going to be a hassle we can–”

  “It’s all right honey. The spigot for the hose is in the basement. We keep it locked so’s the boys don’t wander off with the tools or leave the water running. My daughter has got the key.”

  The boy was running down the stairs as he said, “Mama says to get water out of the sink in the kitchen.”

  Saliva spewed out of Grandma’s mouth. “What is she talking about? Even if there weren’t dirty dishes in it, there ain’t no way he can git a bucket in that sink.”

  She handed the boy our flyer. “Now take this up and tell her we need that key.”

  The boy dashed up the stairs as I said, “I think we’ll find some other–”

  “You just wait right here,” Grandma said as she grabbed my arm with her sweaty palm. I felt violated. I wanted to leap out the door and run away. She smacked her gums together as she spoke. “I’ll get this straightened out.”

  She waddled toward the stairs. “Now don’t go nowhere. I’ll be back with that key.” Ascending the steps she yelled, “Honey git out of that bed! Ya want to pet a mule?”

  As soon as she was out of sight, I turned toward the door. Both Rottweiler’s were sniffing me as I steadily moved myself out onto the porch. When I closed the screen door, both dogs were still inside. I said, “Sit!”

  They did. I was delighted.

  I had just stepped down off the porch, when the younger boy appeared at the top of the stairs from the street. A mean pout was on his face. “That lady said I can’t have a ride!”

  “We don’t give rides.”

  “That’s what she said.” He stomped past me, up the porch steps and yelled, “That stinks! I’m just a kid. I ought to git to go for a ride!”

  I was putting Della’s empty water bucket in the cart when Patricia said, “What was that all about? Who does that kid think he is?”

  I held up my hand. “Let’s just go.”

  On Shafer Run we came to a buff-brick ranch-style home with a nice yard. A twelve year old boy was in the garage rolling up a hose, so I asked, “Could we get some water?”

  “Sure. Let me hook it back up.”

  While I filled our jugs and Della’s bucket, I told him about our experience with the police. When I finished, he shook his head. “Sugar Creek Cops. They’re all rotten.”

  After a mile or so, the road led out of a residential area into a forest. Woodlands laced with rusted pipes, old oil pumps and gray tanks stained from where black gold had spilled down them. Shafer’s Run was a gradual uphill route, in a narrow valley, with a clear tumbling brook running through it. It would have been a beautiful place if it hadn’t been littered with old oil-field machinery. We saw a couple of pumps working–the kind that look like grasshoppers bobbing their heads up and down. So oil was still being pulled out of the ground around there. But most of the equipment was idle pieces of metal and tangled coils of cable with tall weeds and saplings growing up through it. The property on both sides of the road was all fenced off with sagging, rusty barbed wire and locked gates.

  The sun was low in the west when we finally we came to an open gate with no signs saying we couldn’t go in. So we did, and the drive led us back into a scruffy place with lots of brush and dead equipment, but there was enough room to tether out Della and pitch our tent. That night we fell asleep to the tap-tap-tapping of a distant pump pulling Old King Oil up to the surface.

  Early the next afternoon, when we got to the top of Shafer’s Run, the woods gave way to a suburban neighborhood, where each house had at least an acre of ground. We were walking by a ranch-style home with ladders leaned against it, when the man on the roof yelled, “I read about you in the paper this morning. How do you like our local Gestapo?”

  From behind me Patricia said, “I can’t wait to see what Jerry wrote.”

  A couple of blocks further, a lady walked out her front door with a newspaper in her hand. “Could I have your autograph?”

  I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t read the caption under the front page picture of me looming over Officer Ryan. When I handed the paper back to the woman she said, “I’m so sorry for the way the police treated you.”

  And so it went throughout the rest of the afternoon. Person after person stopped to apologize. Many of them had us sign their newspapers. We had just turned right on Holiday Run when Patricia said, “What a difference a newspaper story can make. Yesterday, no one would even look at us. Today, it’s like we’re heroes.”

  When we first got on Holiday Run, it wasn’t too bad. The traffic in both lanes was heavy, but there was room for us to get out of the way. That all changed when the road began its descent toward the Allegheny River. The shoulder disappeared, the pavement narrowed and we were out in the traffic lane as the highway twisted down the side of a ravine. To our immediate right was the rock face of the hill. Across the road was a guard rail and a drop off. Jerry was right, there wasn’t room to pass, but that didn’t stop people from doing it. They’d rev up their motors, tires would squeal, then a whoosh of steel, glass and exhaust would roar past us within inches of my body. I couldn’t tell you how many times that afternoon Patricia and I yelled, “Oh my God!” or “Oh Shit!” or “Son-of-a-bitch!” Of the two of us, Patricia was the most vocal–but Della just kept plodding along. The only vehicle that bothered her was the school bus.

  After all the thousands of miles I’ve hiked along this nation’s roads, I’ve come to recognize the motor of a school bus. They all have a universal rattle in their motors, and in a blind curve I heard one rattle up behind us. I couldn’t see if anything was in the approaching lane, so the bus driver couldn’t either, but that didn’t matter. The horn blared as the long mass of yellow and black careened into that lane, and charged past us. When the bus swerved back into our lane, its tires spun grit up into mine and Della’s faces. Had I not side stepped into Della, the bus’s back bumper would have snatched my left thigh. Della reared back when I bumped against her. As the bus disappeared around the corner, my wife screamed from the cab, “Can you fucking believe that?”

  With my arms wrapped around Della’s neck I prayed, “Lord, please help us get down this thing alive.”

  A few minutes later, a police car from Oil City stopped in the uphill lane with its blue lights flashing. The driver and his partner looked to be in their mid-thirties, and both of their faces were beaming as the driver leaned out the window and said, “You want help getting across the highway at the bottom?”

  I felt like I was pleading. “What we need is help getting down there!”

  Patricia’s voice was frantic. “Could you follow us? These people are crazy!”

  I said, “Someone needs to stop them from passing us on the curves.”

  The officer behind the wheel saluted me. “We can do that. I’ll follow you the rest of the way down. See you at the bottom.”

  While the patrol car pulled in behind us, I looked up to heaven and said, “Thanks.”

  When we got across the highway at the bottom of the hill, I led Della onto a side street where we stopped beside the curb with the police cruiser behind us. After both officers got out, I said, “Thanks guys. It was scary up there.”

  The driver shook my hand. “Glad we could help.”

  His partner said, “Read about you in the paper.”

  “Yeah, we had quite a day yesterday.”

  “Sounds like it. They sure picked a rough way to get you here.”

  “But hey,” The driver said. “Welcome to Oil City!”

  From Oil C
ity, Highway 62 climbed up into the Alleghenies and it was a ridge road for ten miles or so. Then it descended down to the bottom of the valley and became a river road all the way to Warren. For more than forty-five miles it twisted along the east shore with lush green slopes all around us.

  The Allegheny is a National Recreational River all the way down to Pittsburgh. Everyone we talked to said the most scenic part of it was from Oil City up to Warren. For thirty miles the river and the highway were in the National Forest–but we were not in a wilderness. Big homes, small trailers, rustic cabins and camp grounds were all along the route. It seemed like nearly every flat dry place had some kind of shelter on it. That could have posed a problem for us finding campsites, but it didn’t.

  Socially, getting kicked off the highway at Reno was the best thing that could have happened to us. Because of it, our first day out of Oil City we were invited to a pot luck dinner and given a riverside campsite in Clark’s Campground at President, PA. They read about our scrape with the law, were outraged and eager to have us join the party. We stayed two nights.

  In Tionesta, Mark and Paula Cook, who owned Eagle Rock Motel and Campground, also read about it. They invited us to stay in their campground on the river’s edge. They also ran a canoe and kayak service, and treated us to a seven mile float trip.

  The Allegheny flows through the oldest river bed in America. It has a sheet of bedrock more that one hundred feet thick. Because it flows over rock instead of mud or sand, that part of the Allegheny is clear. On most of our kayak trip, I could see the bottom.

  If you’ve never floated a big river in a kayak, you need to know it’s not always rapids and white water shooting you downstream. They all have places where the water relaxes in long sleepy pools–places where the current takes a nap and lets you take control.

  Patricia and I were floating in just such a place, where the banks were at least a quarter of a mile apart. My wife was paddling toward the western shore to get a good shot of a bald eagle with our camera. He was perched high in a poplar tree that leaned out over the Allegheny. Carefully, she dipped the paddles in and out of the blue water trying not to scare the eagle away.