Footloose in America: Dixie to New England Read Online Free PDF Page B

hot dust. I had grit in my mouth, behind my knees and inside my elbows. Every once in awhile, I had to take my sunglasses off topick a batch of crud from the corners of my eyes. You can imagine what it was like inside my nose.
    We paused at nearly every speck of shade we came to. If it was a wide spot off the road, we stopped to consider it for a campsite–especially if there was water nearby. Like a house with a spigot, or a pond to dip a bucket into, but every one of those places had something wrong with it–usually a sign that told us to keep out.
    Ballard Road crossed a creek with a few scummy puddles, then made a sharp left turn and went up a steep slope. At the top of the hill, on the right hand side of the road, sat an abandoned brick house. Some of the windows were broken and the yard was knee high in weeds. Along the front of the property was a line of pine trees that made shade where we needed it, and there were no signs telling us to keep out. So we walked up the overgrown driveway, and stomped through the crackling dry weeds to get to a shady spot where we could tie Della.
    We had two big blue plastic water jugs with us. Each held seven gallons, and all the water we had left was about two-thirds of a jug. I filled Spot’s drinking bowl, poured Patricia and me each a tall tumbler and dumped the rest into Della’s bucket. After I took our folding chairs off the back of the cart, my wife and I sat down to a tall drink of tepid water. It sure felt good to be off my feet. According to the pedometer, I’d walked over sixteen miles that day. And I felt every hot one of them.
    With a damp rag across the nape of her neck, Patricia leaned forward in her chair and took a sip of water. Then she smacked her lips, turned to me with a Cheshire-cat grin and said, “Yes sir, after a hard hot day on the road, there ain’t nothing I love more than a big tall glass of piss water. Nope, it don’t get no better than that!” She paused, then asked, “So, is this the great treat up ahead?”
    Okay, it wasn’t great. The only shade was from tall thin pines, which is better than nothing. But it’s not as refreshing as a big spreading oak, or maple, or just about any other deciduous tree. And the graze for Della wasn’t good either. Mostly thistles and some tall parched grass. But we had plenty of hay for her.
    I said, “Well, it’s better than nothing.”
    Patricia grunted. “Not much.”
    Catty-corner across the road was a mobile home with porches, decks and wheel chair ramps around it. Earlier, when we walked up the hill toward the abandoned house, I spotted a garden hose in the backyard of that place. So I stood up, grabbed the jugs and said, “I’ll see if I can’t find us some fresh water.” Then I headed toward the mobile home.
    On the way there, all I thought about was how ugly Patricia had been earlier. The heat, sweat and dust were bad enough, but now I had to deal with an attitude, too? While I walked up the wheel chair ramp toward the front door, I was thinking,
Should have stuck with just having a mule!
    The small bent old woman who came to the door said I could use the faucet behind her house. She was standing on the back step watching me fill the jugs, when I asked, “Do you suppose it’d be all right if we camp tonight in the yard across the road?”
    Her voice was weak and it shook when she said, “Well, I can’t give you permission ‘cause I don’t own it. But those people haven’t been down here in a couple years. I don’t imagine anybody’s going to say you can’t.”
    Back at camp, we had just unhitched Della from the cart when a four-wheeler with a man wearing a straw hat pulled out of the driveway from the house next door to the old woman. He drove across the road, stopped behind our cart, turned off the machine and said, “You aren’t going to camp here, are you?”
    I’m six foot two, and he was a couple of inches taller than me. He was in his late fifties, and the left side of his