Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (24 page)

Patricia was sitting at the cluttered kitchen table with a steaming cup of tea in front of her. I was rubbing the rain off my head, as Arlene said, “Like I told your wife, I’m sorry for the mess. But since I lost my husband, there just doesn’t seem to be any reason to put all this stuff away. He’s been gone a year.”

The table was cluttered with boxes of paper records, photos and old newspapers. There was also a stack of that sort of stuff in a corner on the floor. Arlene insisted on fixing us dinner. “But we’ll have to clear a place to eat. I usually just sit at the counter.”

While I helped her move some of the boxes from the table to the floor, Arlene said, “I’m trying to get this all sorted out so my kids don’t have to mess with it when I’m gone. Should have done it a long time ago. But my husband got sick, and . . .” She sighed, and slid the last box across the table to me. “Well, one thing about it, now I’ve got the time.”

Dinner was going to be hot dogs, home baked beans, apple sauce and angel food cake. Arlene was at the stove fixing it as she told us her oldest son lived on the other side of the hayfield next door. She was dropping hot dogs into the steaming pot when she said, “He comes by a couple times a day. His wife stops in a lot too. And so do my grandchildren. They all want to take care of me. But I can take care of myself.”

Arlene put the lid on the hot dog pot as she said, “Lord, that’s all I’ve got left to take care of, is me. And that’s no fun.”

After she said grace, Arlene looked across the table at me with twinkles in her eyes. Her face was beaming. “I just can’t believe it! I saw you on TV last night, and now here you are. It’s such a blessing!”

She handed Patricia a glass bowl of apple sauce. “Sometimes my husband comes to me and tells me things. Most of the time it’s in my dreams.
But sometimes it’s when I’m awake in the middle of the day. And he’ll be just as alive as you or me.”

With the spoon that she was about to stick into the bean pan, Arlene pointed across the table at me. “When I came out here this morning he was sitting right where you are. And he was smiling as big a smile as I ever saw on him. He told me I was going to have a great day today. And that tonight was going to be extra special. He said it was something I really needed. But he wasn’t going to tell me what it was. He just started laughing.”

Shaking her head, with a chuckle in her voice, Arlene plopped a small pile of beans on her plate. “When he was alive he used to do that to me all the time–tease me like that. Tell me I was going to get something, then wouldn’t tell me what it was. He’d just laugh and say ‘You’ll see.’ That’s exactly what he did this morning.”

She handed the pan of beans to Patricia and said, “Now I know what he was talking about. You can bet he’s getting a big kick out of this.”

When Arlene invited us in, she said she had an extra room with a double bed already made up. “I changed the sheets on all the beds today.”

I figured Patricia and I would sleep in the extra room. But when it came time for bed, Arlene insisted that we take hers. It was king-size with a big screen TV at the foot of it. We hadn’t watched TV in ages. The last time in bed was back in the hotel in Paducah. We decided to live it up and watch Jay Leno’s monologue. But we barely made it through the local weather. It was going to be clear in the morning.

Patricia turned off the bed lamp, then whispered, “Isn’t this something? Here this dear lady took us in out of the storm, fed us, gave us her bed, and she acts like we’re doing her favor.”

“Yeah, I know. And I keep asking myself, ‘What did we do?’”

Slowly my wife said “We knocked on her door.”

I pondered that for bit. “I guess she really needed that.”

“Bud, lots of people need someone to knock on their door.”

Crossing the Ohio in Cincinnati

CHAPTER 10

W
ELCOME
T
O
C
OLUMBUS

“G
IT THAT ANIMAL OUT OF
here,” the security guard’s voice squeaked. “Now, git!”

It was a steamy Friday afternoon in the suburbs of Columbus, rush hour was in full swing and the smog was at choke-level. We had just pulled into the parking lot at Westland Mall, when the security guard emerged from the building. It was a huge parking lot with barely any cars in it. I wanted to give Della a drink of water and rest her a bit, so we stopped in the shade of a small tree close to the highway. The security guard had to stomp a long ways to squeal, “Now git!”

At the beginning of this book, I told you all the people in this story were real, but I changed some of their names. This is one of them. From here on, that pasty little pear-shaped security guard will be known as “Officer Pinky.”

I fear Pinky must have said “Git!” at least half a dozen times before he got close enough for me to understand him. Rush hour was drowning him out. But long before I heard him, I could tell he didn’t want us there. Sweaty Pinky was huffing and puffing when he reached us. If you could have heard his voice, and seen his face, you would understand why I call him “Pinky.”

“We just stopped to give our mule a drink of water,” I said.

He pointed toward the parking lot entrance, puckered up and snorted, “I don’t care what you stopped to do. We don’t want you here. Now git!”

“But–”

“No but’s about it,” Pinky squealed. “This is private property. You’re trespassing! We don’t want you here. Now git!”

At first he was comical. But now he was pissing me off. I stepped toward him. “Are you telling me that if my wife wanted to shop in that mall, I couldn’t wait for her?”

For the moment that he pondered that thought, I could see the pulse in the veins on his pale pink head. The man’s heart was racing. Then, as if his index finger was the barrel of a pistol, he aimed at me and squeaked, “I told you, we don’t want you here. Now git!”

He was shaking. Whether it was with fear or anger, it didn’t matter. A shook up man with a badge, a walkie talkie and a loaded finger is not someone to mess with.

So I untied Della. When I turned around to lead her away, I came face to face with Pinky. I made sure he knew I was reading his name badge as I glared down at him and said, “Let me tell you something Officer Pinky, I’ve walked a all over this country–coast to coast and half way back again. That’s a lot of miles. And I’ve never had anyone be so rude, or . . . or stupid as you are right now!”

He took a couple of steps back, put the walkie talkie to his mouth and screamed. “This is Pinky! Call the police! He just threatened me!”

“I didn’t threaten you. We’re leaving.”

With that we started toward the next exit.

“Not that way,” Pinky squealed. “The way you came in.”

“But that way is easier.”

“We don’t want you crossing our property. Go out the way you came in” Repeatedly he jabbed his finger in that direction. “Now git!”

At the entrance to the parking lot, as we waited for a spot in rush-hour traffic, I turned to my wife and said, “Welcome to Columbus.”

It was the first Friday afternoon in August, and it felt like it. Everything was hot. The sun, the air, the pavement, the traffic, the exhaust, my temper–it was all hot. We needed to get off the highway and into some shade.

A little farther down the road, we came to a large manufacturing plant owned by the Delphi Corporation. I never did find out what they made
there. I was more interested in their shade. They had a row of huge oak trees along both sides of a long driveway. It was the entrance for shipping, receiving and employees. The factory was surrounded by several acres of green grass. A hundred yards before the security shack was a shady place, with picnic tables and a small pond that had ducks swimming on it. It would be a perfect place to camp. While I waited there with Della, Patricia hiked to the security shack to see if we could stay there for the night.

They weren’t able to find the person who had the authority to say “yea” or “nay.” But the shift manager said we were welcome to rest in the shade and wait for rush hour to slow down. So we did.

In that shade, I kept rehashing what happened with the security guard back at the mall. What did we do to provoke him? To be honest, sitting in the shade on Della’s bucket, my feelings were hurt.

While I sat there pouting, I heard in the distance a woman’s voice on a public address system call out, “Parts department, line one.”

Then, from another direction it was, “Steve Brown to customer service, please.” Hardly had that voice hung-up, when another one clicked on across the highway. It had a nasal tone. “Jim Williams, call accounting.” Somewhere closer, a seductive woman’s voice said, “Paul Tucker, Paul Tucker. Please report to the body shop.”

Nearby, both sides of the highway were lined with car-dealerships. Places with names like, “Westside Dodge–The Home of Trader Bud,” “Lyman’s Chevrolet–Save thousands Bobby’s Way” and at least half a dozen more were within earshot.

Listening to this flurry of announcements, I began to mellow out. Because if someone had said, “Bud, go here or call there!” I knew it wasn’t for me.

Then my brain conjured up, “Officer Pinky, call security!”

My imagination could hear resonating throughout the mall, “Officer Pinky, we have gypsies in the parking lot. You go out there and tell them to git!”.

The thought put a smile on my face.

We camped that night in a vacant lot at the end of Huron Street in the Hill Top District. The next morning we walked on Broad Street toward downtown Columbus. The heart of the Capitol City is on the Scioto River. From Hill Top it was a steady descent into the heart of town.

People didn’t stop us to visit, like they did in Cincinnati. The stories I told you about our walk through the Queen City were just a sampling of our encounters there. But on our walk through downtown Columbus, not much happened.

We did have three twelve-year-old black kids accost us at a traffic light. They were getting kicked out of a church as we walked by. A big wedding was going on inside, and these boys obviously weren’t on the guest list. All of them were crazed with laughter as they scrambled down the church steps toward us. One of them screamed, “Hey man, let me ride that donkey!”