by Bud Kenny
I kept my boat next to the opposite shore, and just watched this scene unfold. Here was this huge black bird with its brilliant white head and tail, roosting on one of the upper limbs of an ancient white barked tree that was decked out in the yellows of late September. Behind it rose a green Allegheny mountain whose rounded top looked like it was holding up the baby blue sky. Below the tree was its reflection on a shimmering pool with my wife gliding across it in a little blue plastic boat.
In the midst of all that natural splendor, as I watched my wife get steadily closer to the eagle, I was suddenly struck by the irony of it all. Back in those hills, less than twenty miles from here, and less than a hundred and fifty years ago, Col. Drake’s well was the beginning of the demise of lots of places like this. Worldwide, many pristine waters and lush woodlands have been spoiled to harvest Old King Oil.
Patricia was almost under the eagle and was putting the camera to her face, when with two flaps of his wings he sprang up from the tree and soared down river. A long stream of white poured from under his tail and rained down into the Allegheny as he flew away.
My wife yelled, “Holy eagle shit! I’m glad I wasn’t any closer.”
The cops kicking us off the highway also garnered us an invitation to the 20th Annual Johnson Barbeque. It was a clear, full moon night, and more than fifty people showed up for chicken cooked on spits over an open fire. Everyone brought a covered dish, and this potluck was one the lady folk took seriously. The food was tremendous and the camaraderie grand. They also had party games. Every man there, including me, tried to weasel out of the Newly Wed Game. But I was glad we played. Patricia and I won. Neither of us missed a question. First prize was a twenty-five-dollar gift certificate to Walmart.
But the highlight for me was talking to Cal–the hero in the family. He was a stock car driver, and they called him their “Rising Star.” To which he said, “Yeah, well, I’m NASCAR certified, but that don’t mean I’m going to Daytona anytime soon.”
He was strawberry blond, in his mid-twenties, with a daughter who was learning to walk. His thin little wife’s hair hung just below her shoulders and was the same color as his. She also had long pink fingernails and a face that looked like it belonged on the cover of Seventeen Magazine. His little girl, Cally, stumbled around the living room in a tee-shirt with a color picture of him in his racing suit on the front of it. On the back was his race car.
While Cal’s wife stretched her arms out to her approaching daughter, she said, “Don’t let him kid you. He’s better than Petty, or any of them!”
“Come on,” Cal said as he blushed and shook his head. “I am not.”
“He is too!” His wife, Angel, lifted Cally up onto her knee. “He may be quiet when he’s around people, but he’s a tiger on the track. Ask anyone who’s seen him–or raced against him. They’ll tell you.”
Cal’s father snatched a framed picture off the mantel and shoved it in front of me. It was of Cal in his racing suit, and he was kneeling next to a three-foot silver trophy with a stock car on top. Behind him in the picture was a wall full of trophies and ribbons. His father said, “That was over a year ago. He’s got a bunch more since then.”
Angel set her squirming little girl down to toddle across the carpet. “The only thing holding us back is sponsors.”
“But that’s changing.” His father handed me a picture of the car zooming past a big grandstand filled with fans. “With the way he’s winning these days, they’re going to be lining up at the door to get their logos on that car.”
Later that evening, I ran into Cal at the beer tub. He seemed a lot more relaxed than he was earlier in his father’s living room. When he pulled his arm out of the ice water, he held out a bottle of Miller Lite to me. “That okay for you?”
I twisted the cap off the bottle and said, “Your family is mighty proud of you.”
I expected a blush like before, but this time there was none. Cal was serious as he nodded his head. “I’m a very lucky man. I wouldn’t be where I am now, if I didn’t have my family.”
He was taking a swig from the bottle in his right hand when I asked, “Do you make a good living racing?”
“No. I’ve been winning a lot of money lately, but most of that’s eaten up getting there. Got to pay the pit crew, mechanics, parts, and transporting it all to the track.”
I interjected. “And the cost of the gas!”
Cal choked a bit on his beer. “Yeah, fuel! It’s not getting any cheaper. It takes a lot of money to race. No, I don’t make a good living racing. Not now, anyway. But like my wife said, once we get ourselves a few good sponsors, we’ll be doing all right.”
At that moment a hint of cockiness emerged from him as he tossed the empty bottle into the nearby trash. “You know what it cost to get your logo on Robert Yates hood?”
“Not a clue.”
He pulled another bottle out of the ice water as he slowly said, “More than ten million dollars.”
“Wow!”
“That’s just for the hood!” He flung the bottle cap in the trash. “A stock car has a lot of space for advertising. And when you’re winning, they pay big bucks for a spot on it.”
He held up his Miller Lite bottle. “Wouldn’t I love to have that logo on my hood.”
I saluted him with my beer, then we clinked bottle necks as I said, “Someday.”
“Hopefully, soon,” Cal sighed, and we both tipped our bottles up.
After swallowing, I asked, “So, what kind of mileage do you get with that car?”
He nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders. “A couple miles a gallon.”
“So it’s not cheap to run a long race like Daytona.”
Cal took another swig of his beer before he said, “What you burn in the race ain’t nothing compared to what it takes to get there. You’ve got time trials, qualifying rounds, and practice, practice, practice. A guy has got to do a lot of driving to get to Daytona.”
I tipped the bottle toward my lips, as I asked “How many homes do you think you could heat each winter?”
“Huh?’
CHAPTER 13
UP THROUGH BUFFALO
FROM THE DARK, HE STUMBLED into our camp and blurted out, “I need your help!”
It startled us. We were inside a picnic pavilion in Fireman’s Park at Kennedy, New York. And this man was so drunk he had to lean on a picnic table to keep from falling over. We didn’t hear him walk up because our pressure cooker was making so much noise.
I snapped, “What do you want?”
He was middle-aged, wore a rumpled brown suit coat and needed a shave. Still leaning on the table, he wobbled as he slurred, “I’ve got a bet on the bar at the steak house that says you’re the kind of people who would bring your mule in for a drink?”
The village of Kennedy only had a few businesses in it. One was the Cross Roads Steak House. Although it was on the other side of the highway, a couple hundred yards from our camp, every now and then the scent of grilling beef would waft through the pavilion. Earlier, while cutting up sweet potatoes for the pressure cooker, Patricia said, “I sure wish we could afford a steak.”
I told the drunk, “I’m not taking my mule in a bar.”
He flopped his butt down on the bench, then leaned over and pounded the top of the table with his fist as he slobbered through, “I’ve got forty bucks over there that says you will! It’s yours if you’ll do it. And they’ll buy you both a steak dinner.”
Patricia slipped her arm around me. “Honey, maybe we ought to consider this.”
This was trouble. The money was one thing, but a steak dinner? I knew my wife wouldn’t let me pass it up. She turned to the man. “What do you want us to do?”
“Just take your mule over there and walk in the bar with it. That’s all.”
She turned to me and started rubbing my forearm. “Sounds easy enough.”
“It’s not worth getting Della hurt for a couple of steak dinners.”
Patricia drew back from m
e as if I had insulted her. With hands on both hips she snapped, “In no way would I ever put her in danger! You know that!” Her tone softened. “I just think it wouldn’t hurt to check it out. If we get over there and you think it isn’t safe, we’ll turn around, come back and have sweet potatoes and cabbage for dinner.”
We decided to lead Della over, and if it looked safe–and she went in on her own accord––we would do it. I insisted, “But it’s up to her.”
When we walked into the brightly lit parking lot, all twenty patrons at the Cross Road’s were in it clapping. While we walked toward the barroom door I heard, “They’re really going to do it.” “This is awesome!” and the usual, “Man, that’s one big-ass mule!”
The plan was for Patricia to go in first and check the place out. It had three wide wooden steps up to a large landing. Then we would have to turn left and go up two more steps to get in the barroom. I was standing at the foot of the first three steps, holding Della’s lead rope, when my wife came out and said, “I think it’s okay. But maybe you should check it out.”
Still holding onto Della’s lead rope, I stepped up onto the landing to see what it looked like. When I turned around to hand the rope to Patricia, the Big Sis put her right front hoof on the first step and climbed up onto the landing. I had to leap into the barroom to get out of her way. Then she spun to the left, and the next thing I knew Della was standing at the bar beside me.
The place went crazy. Through the laughter, cheers and applause I heard, “Did you see that?” “Holy shit, she did it!” “Buy that mule a drink!”
Della sure knows how to make an entrance!
I knew she didn’t want a drink. But she liked the peanuts and potato chips a lot. And after a couple bags of each, she calmly turned around and faced the door. She was ready to leave. Then, as if she had done it every day of her life, our big girl stepped down to the landing and gracefully leapt to the ground. Enough slumming for her!
For us, every state line was a cause for celebration. New York’s was extra special because it’s the state that Patricia was born in. I was traveling with a broad from the Bronx.
When we crossed into New York from Pennsylvania, the most obvious difference for us was the roads. The ones in New York all had wide shoulders–many of them paved. It sure made walking a lot easier.
We also noticed that more people stopped to visit with us along New York’s highways than they did in Pennsylvania–maybe because it was safer for them to pull over.
Another thing we noticed was the appearance of poverty. In New York it looked like people were poorer than they were back in Pennsylvania. More homes were in disrepair, and many of the farms had tumbled down fences with barns that leaned in one direction or another. I was particularly struck with how many homes had been added on to and never painted to match the rest of the house.
Lots of Amish live in western Cattaraugus County. The appearance of poverty was even more pronounced among them. Although it was October, nearly all the women and children we saw were bare foot–many in ragged clothes. And we didn’t see the cheerfulness in the children’s faces like we saw in the Amish communities back in Ohio. All of the Amish kids in New York seemed to be sad. Not once did any of them wave at us from the back of a carriage.
The few Amish adults we did talk to were much more serious than any we had met so far. Back in Ohio, it seemed like every Amish person we met had a spice of humor about them. They all seemed happy, but in New York the Amish we met were mostly solemn.
In the Buffalo suburb of Lacawanna, we camped behind the Lake Erie Italian Club. The club house was a large, flat roofed, red brick building that looked like it could have been a bowling alley. Surrounding the club was a paved parking lot that could hold four-hundred cars. On the backside of the parking lot were several grass covered acres with shuffle board courts, bocce ball lanes, a huge covered barbeque pit, picnic shelters and places to play volley ball. Behind all of that was a wide open grassy area adjacent to a small forest. A perfect place for us to camp. Patricia went in to ask, and the manager was quick to say, “Sure. Make yourselves at home!”
Patricia and I had just finished pitching the tent, when I looked toward the club house and saw a group of four men sauntering across the parking lot in our direction. All wore suit coats, but none had ties on. They were all dark complexioned, with slicked-back hair at varying stages of gray, and everyone had a drink in his hand. It was the thickest of the men, the one with the cigar who said, “Louie was telling us about you, and showed me that paper yous gave him. I’m president of the club.”
“I hope it’s all right if we camp–”
A large ash fell off the cigar as he waved both arms. “Oh sure, sure, sure.” His voice had the deep rattle of a long time smoker. “No problem! Stay as long as ya want! This is real interesting, this thing yous are doing.”
They all spoke in that Italian/American dialect which demands the use of hands. While we talked, I couldn’t help but wonder, who among them was the man to know in Buffalo? They all told us if we needed anything, to let them know. It was the president who said, “Go up to the bar and have a drink on me. Tell Louie I said so.”
Lots of grass for Della to graze on, a good distance from the highway, water nearby, and drinks waiting for us at the bar–A perfect place to camp.
“Just watch out for the poacher.” Anne said.
She lived next door to the Italian Club and had read about us in that morning’s edition of the Buffalo News. “Some nights there’s more than thirty deer out here,” she said. “And there’s a poacher who drives back here in the middle of the night with his lights off. Then he shines a spot light on the herd, blinds one and shoots it. We don’t know he’s here until his gun goes off. By the time we get up, he’s got his deer in the truck and driving off.”
Patricia asked, “Have you called the law?”
“Oh, sure. But what can they do? They said they’d start patrolling back here. But what’s the chance of them showing up when he’s here?”
When we were on the road we hung our folding chairs on the back of the cart over our bicycles. On the backs of each one I stitched a piece of bright orange material. On one I wrote our website address. The other had “Mule Ahead” on it. I took the Mule Ahead chair and set it up between Della and the parking lot. Then we hung our florescent safety vests out in the area, and we put orange banners on Della’s halter, mane and tail. It would take a pretty stupid poacher to think she was a deer.
Just before sunset, we went to the Italian Club for cocktails. The main topic at the bar was the local news–Lacawanna was the center of an international story. Seven local men, of Yemeni descent, had recently been charged with running a training center for the Taliban. They were known as the “Lacawanna Seven.” That afternoon they were in court for a bail bond hearing, and one of them got out on bail.
“Oh, great! Now we got a terrorist running loose.” The bartender said. “Just what we need, eh? How’s you supposed to feel safe with someone like that out on the streets?”
When we went to bed that night, I wasn’t concerned about a foreign terrorist. We were worried about some local with a shotgun out to fill his freezer. Patricia and I both had a hard time getting to sleep.
“Did you hear that?”
When Patricia nudged me with her elbow, I was already awake. I had been listening to it too. Either a car, or a pickup, had pulled into the parking lot with its lights off. It stopped behind the club house and sat idling for a while. Then I heard the tires slowly roll across the grit on the asphalt. It sounded like it was headed our way. When it got to the edge of the asphalt it stopped.
That’s when Patricia asked me, “Did you hear that?
Just as I said “Yes” the motor revved a bit. Then the tires started to creep out onto grass in the direction where Della was grazing. I already had my jeans on, and was reaching for the flashlight, when a floodlight suddenly blazed on.
Patricia screamed, “It’s him! It’s the poache
r!”
Headlights came on and engulfed Della with light, as I tripped and stumbled through the tent door. Waving my flash light, I yelled. “Hey, stop! Over here!”
Suddenly, the vehicle made a sharp right turn and its headlights blinded me as it came my way. It wasn’t until it stopped next to me that I realized it was a police car. The officer asked, “What’s going on here?”
I pointed toward the club house. “They told us we could camp here.”
“This ain’t no damn campground! What’s with the mule and all this stuff?”
He was moving his floodlight back and forth on the tent and the cart while I said, “We just stopped for the night. We walked here from Arkansas, and we’re headed–”
The cop blurted out, “Hey. Hey! Hey!!” Each “hey” was crisper and louder.
“Yous was in the paper today! I read it just before I came to work. You’ve got the mule and walking to the East Coast. Then yous are going around the world or somethin–right?”
He shook my hand and wished us luck. Then he said, “You know there’s been a poacher back here.”
“We heard.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep an eye on things tonight. Welcome to Buffalo!”
We got lots of press coverage everywhere we walked. We never asked for it. It just happened, and I had mixed feelings about that. Most of them good. But sometimes it was nice to encounter people on the street who didn’t know anything about us.
Patricia always said, “I think the press is good. Because when people read about us first, then they know we’re not gypsies, tramps or thieves.”
I had to admit, being in a big newspaper like the Buffalo News did have its advantages. After reading our story Roy Haller, a member of the Upstate Mule and Donkey Association, took the route the paper said we were on when he drove into Buffalo that morning. He was going to try to find us winter accommodations in western New York.