Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (4 page)

I took a deep breath and looked up at Della’s face. Her nostrils flared while her ears turned back and forth. When I looked back at the cart,
my wife was shaking her head. I called back to her, “Some adventure! Eh baby?”

“Some adventure? I just had the be--Jesus scared out of me, and all you can say is, ‘Some adventure baby?’” She was climbing out of the cab as she said, “I’ll show you some adventure!” Stumbling around the pot holes toward me Patricia said, “I damn near wet my pants back there. I’m not leaving this spot until you fix those brakes.”

Halfway down the good-ole’-boys’ table was a short round man in farmer’s overalls and a black cap with a confederate flag and “Forget, Hell!” on the front of it. He took a sip from his cup, then said, “I hear-tell they’re walking to the East Coast. I think New York.”

In unison, half a dozen of them said, “New York?”

The man at the head of the table said, “They’re crazy! Hell, in New York they’ll steal everything they’ve got!”

We had just begun to eat our dinner when three older men came in and sat down at a table next to us. The oldest was tall and skinny with every silver hair in place. Before his butt even hit the seat, he put his right hand on my shoulder and asked, “You folks live around here, or you just visiting?”

No introduction, no hello or anything. He just grabbed my shoulder, smiled like a politician up for re-election and posed his question–it made me bristle. “Just visiting.”

“Just visiting, eh? Where you from?”

“Hot Springs.”

“Hot Springs, eh? You going to be in Heber long?”

This was beginning to feel like a police interrogation. “A couple of days.”

“A couple of days, eh? You visiting family or you out at the lake?”

“We’re just passing through.”

“Just passing through, eh? Where you staying?”

This was getting tedious. It interfered with my eavesdropping, and I didn’t like his hand my shoulder. I turned toward him hoping to shake his grip, but he held on.

I said, “We’re camped behind Miss Magnolia’s Cottage.”

“Miss Magnolia’s Cottage?” He let go of my shoulder. “I’ve lived in Heber all my life, and I ain’t never heard of any Miss Magnolia’s.”

Joyce Moss had opened her wedding cottage a year earlier. It was in a quaint stone house across the street from the city’s park that had Heber’s springs in it. Miss Magnolia’s Cottage sat on three acres surrounded by lawn and trees. She invited us to camp there as long as we wanted.

Speaking so I couldn’t be heard at the good-ole-boys’ table, I described where Miss Magnolia’s was and told him about our journey. Then I gave him a flyer that explained what we were doing. After reading a few sentences he folded it, stuck it in his starched shirt pocket and turned to his companions. “You boys go on and eat. I’ve got to check this out.”

We had just finished our meal and were about to get up from the table, when the man returned. “I went by and saw your mule. She’s sure a pretty thing. Hope you don’t think I’m nosy or anything like that. I just had to see it for myself.”

When we walked toward the cash register he got up and went to the good-ole’-boys’ table with our flyer in his hand. While the manager rang up our bill, I complimented him on our meal. Then nodded toward the good-ole’-boys. “That’s a busy table over there.”

The manager grimaced and shook his head. “You want to take them with you?”

At the door I turned to see the man with our flyer holding court at the table. His thumb was in our direction and all faces were turned toward us.

Miss Magnolia’s was on a corner lot with streets on two sides and an alley beside it. After dinner, we went back and set up camp. We were rolling out the tent, when Patricia said, “Sure a lot of traffic on these back streets.”

Most were pick-up trucks, and as they crept by I began to recognize some of the faces from the good-ole’-boys’ table. Throughout the afternoon traffic increased. A few times it was almost bumper to bumper, and many of the same vehicles went by numerous times. Some of the truck beds were filled with kids, and all eyes were on us.

Patricia said, “Now I know how a fish in an aquarium must feel.”

“Della and the cart.”

CHAPTER 2

K
EEP
T
HE
F
AITH
A
ND
L
ET
G
O

T
HE PLAN WAS WHENEVER
D
ELLA
pulled the cart, I’d be at her side on foot. It really wasn’t a cart because it had four wheels. But I called it a “cart” anyway. It had eleven doors. Some of them opened up, others swung out and there were doors that folded down as work tables. Behind each one was a compartment. One held the computer and printer. Others had plastic drawers with food, clothing, and first-aid supplies. And we had a junk drawer. Who can live without one?

On the front was a compartment with a door that opened up like a luggage trunk. That was Della’s part of the cart–we called it “the nose.” It held feed, grooming and shoeing tools, extra mule shoes and the top of it could hold two bales of hay.

But the most interesting door was on the back. It folded down. When it was up it held our bicycles on metal pipes that extended from it. When the door was down, the pipes were legs for our dinner table or stage.

I’ve always been fascinated with traveling entertainers. Not musicians or actors who rush from one gig to another in jets or buses. It’s the wandering minstrels, small big top circuses and old traveling medicine shows that intrigued me. What a way to make a living! Amble into town, pitch a tent or drop the stage and entertain the locals.

That’s how I planned to finance this odyssey–as a vagabond poet. Like the old traveling medicine men, I’d put on a show. But instead of pushing
potions and pills, we’d pass the hat and peddle my self-published poetry books–books that we printed on the cart.

Electricity for the stage lights, sound system, computer and printer was produced by a solar panel on the top of the cart and two generators that were turned by the rotation of the back wheels. The power was stored in two golf cart batteries.

So the cart was our closet, kitchen, pantry, office, feed room, workshop, dining room, publishing company, theater and power plant. How’s that for mule power?

Several people said our cart looked like a red Model T Ford. My artist friend Benini dubbed it, “Model P”–P for poetry.

Two weeks after hitting the road, we produced our first show in Conway, Arkansas. It was in a vacant lot next to a coffee house on Front Street. “Something Brewing” was on the first floor of an old two-story white clapboard house. The front yard was covered with wooden decks that had tables and chairs on them. We parked the cart in the lot with our stage facing the decks.

I’m a performance poet. Meaning, I don’t just read the poems, I perform them–often acting out the parts of the characters in the verse. Like my poem, “Old Drunk Paul–A Tribute to Perfection” where I become stumbling-stuttering drunk. The show opens with “The Great American Way.” I hop on stage in the character of a TV car salesman and yell, “Boy have I got a deal for you!” In this piece I renounce the common conventions of American society. Things like owning an automobile, belonging to a church and holding a steady job. But in the end, the poem pokes fun at me when I ask, “. . . if you’re headed that way, could I catch a ride to Walmart?”

We only had two days to promote the Conway show. I put a handmade sign up in front of the lot, we hung posters in the coffee house and pinned some on bulletin boards around the campus of nearby Hendrix College. We had no press coverage, and yet, more than thirty-five people showed
up. They were generous when we passed the hat, and I sold several copies of my book
Songs Of Politics and Other Social Diseases
.

For me, the most memorable part of the evening was a conversation I had with a man after the show. He was dressed in faded denim overalls and wore a tattered red cap with the words “Woo-Pig-Sooie!” across the front. His right cheek bulged from the wad of tobacco behind it as he shook my hand and said, “The only reason I’m here is ‘cause the wife dragged me. I’d planned on going cat-fishing tonight, but she insisted.” He stopped and spit on the ground to his left. “And to tell you the truth, I’m glad I came. Ain’t never seen anything like this. I had a damn good time.”

He extended his hand, and as I shook it I asked, “Was it better than cat-fishing?”

“You’re pushing your luck, son.”