Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (17 page)

The Ohio is a curvy river. In some places the river twists around so much that it nearly meets itself coming and going. Although the Ohio basically runs east to west, in lots of places it’s a north/south river. In the nearly 1,000 miles that the river flows from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi there’s only an eight mile stretch where it’s straight. It’s called “Schenault Reach”, and it’s on one of those north/south portions of the river. Named after a French military officer, Schenault Reach starts just north of Derby and runs south.

Derby, Indiana was one of those old river towns that had been burnt down, flooded out and carved up by ice. Before the Ohio was dammed and locked, moving ice was a big problem. In the winter and early spring, huge chunks–some the size of two city blocks – would sail down river and wreak havoc with everything in its way. In 1910, the heart of Derby was in the way. It was situated in a basin that was open to the river with bluffs and high hills around the rest of it. The wharfs, mills, warehouses and business district were all down there when a wall of ice sailed into town. It turned Derby into a giant pile of rubble. The splintered wood and busted brick was so jammed up against the hills and bluffs, that most of it was burnt where it landed.

Derby rebuilt. But twenty five years later came the flood of 1937. Again Derby was in the way, and most of it washed down steam. It never recovered.

When we were in Derby, there was still a bit of a town. It had a grocery store/gas station and a tavern up away from the river. The basin, where the town used to be, had been turned into a riverside park. Up on the hills were several homes. Some were lived in, but a lot of them were not.

We initially stopped at Ramsey’s Tavern to have a beer and inquire about camping on a spot we saw on the south edge of Derby. It was a flat place, on a bluff above the river. They told us it used to be a night club that burnt down a long time ago. No one would care if we camped there for the night.

When we first walked into Derby, gray clouds were gathering. While we set up our tent the clouds got darker, and every once in a while a heavy drop or two would splash into us. The wind picked up and got blustery, which made it hard to pitch the tent. I piled rocks on the stakes to keep them from pulling up out of the dirt when it got soaked.

With the wind and rain it would be hard to fix dinner in camp. Plus, just down the hill was Ramsey’s Tavern that supposedly had great food. So we stepped out for dinner. The special that night was two steak dinners for the price of one. I don’t recall what kind of steak it was, but I remember it being good.

After dinner, when we climbed into our tent, the rain-fly was fluttering like a kite hung up in a tree. Patricia asked, “Do you think we’ll be all right camped up here?”

“What do you mean?”

The wind was howling, with an occasional crack of thunder and flash of light. It wasn’t raining hard yet, but the night was ripe with storm.

My wife said, “I sure would hate to get blown off this bluff.”

“Do you have something else in mind?”

Patricia was silent for a moment. “No.”

A few minutes later the rain got heavier, but the wind was easing up. Soon the evening settled into an autumn shower. The danger was past. I snuggled down into my sleeping bag and went to sleep.

In the background of a dream I heard someone say, “What’s that?” Then I started shaking, and as I shuddered out of sleep, I realized it was Patricia shaking me. “Wake up Bud. Listen! What is that?”

Something was roaring up the river. It sounded like a locomotive, but then I remembered, there were no railroad tracks along the river.

In a loud whisper Patricia asked, “What is that sound?”

I’ve been in tornados before. The closer it got, the more it sounded like one. I was about to tell her that, when a huge burst of wind ravaged our tent. The poles bowed in, then snapped back as the nylon quivered and popped. That roar was no longer just down on the river. It was up on the ridge with us. The top and walls of the tent continued to collapse down on us, then explode away.

Suddenly, the tent was ablaze in white as the sky exploded with thunder. So much lightning flashed around us, that it was like a strobe light inside our tent. Then, as if in slow motion, by lightning-light I saw the corner of our tent blew up off the stake and billow in toward us. It looked like the tent was going to roll up with us in it.

Patricia screamed, “Bud!”

“Oh shit!”

Then the wind sucked the corner away and the nylon cracked like a bull-whip. I could hear pans and other metal blowing around the cart. Sitting up in my sleeping bag, I said, “I’d better go out and stake that corner back down.”

Patricia grabbed my arm, pulled me down to her and yelled through the storm. “Oh no you’re not! You’re staying in here! Our weight is what’s going to hold this tent down. If you get up and go outside it won’t weigh as much. If this tent blows off this cliff with me in it, then by God, you’re going with me!”

So I laid down and the two of us huddled together in our separate sleeping bags–both of us trying to be as heavy as we could. The tempest wailed on.

I don’t know how long it was before it let up. It seemed like forever. But eventually the roar moved away, taking its light and thunder show with it. Soon the rain slowed to a steady soft shower.

I whispered, “You alright Baby?”

Patricia said nothing for a moment. Then she rustled a bit in her bag. “I’m okay.”

“I think it’s over.”

Patricia mumbled. “I sure hope so.”

A few moments later I said, “Can I ask you something?”

My wife was annoyed. “What?”

“Are you still enjoying your honeymoon?”

Patricia snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag and muttered. It was hard to understand what she said. I think it was “Yes I am.” Or maybe it was “Go to hell!”

I didn’t ask her to repeat it.

“You can’t camp here! Now, pack up and move on down the road!”

When the police car pulled up, it was ten o’clock at night. We were camped on the side of the highway next to a roadside park east of Leavenworth, Indiana. I was in the cab of the cart typing on the computer when the cruiser stopped. The headlights blinded me, so I couldn’t see the source of the voice.

“You want us to move now?”

His voice was nasal, with a Kentucky kind-of-drawl. “That’s what I said. Now!”

Right then, the body stepped from behind the headlights toward the cart. It was huge. Not tall huge–round huge. “There’s no camping here! Didn’t you see the sign?”

The sun was sinking into the horizon when we came to the roadside park. It had lots of grass for mule grazing, picnic tables, restrooms and a hand pump with sweet well water. We would have loved to have camped there. But it had the “No Camping” sign. So we camped on the right-of-way nearby. Who would have a problem with that?

“I’ve got a problem with that!” He waddled a couple of steps toward the cart. “Citizens have been calling me and complaining about the gypsies camped in the park. I can’t have that. Now pack up and get on down the road!”

“But it’s dark. It’s too dangerous for us to be out on that highway now.”

When he moved closer to the cart, the light in the cab lit him up. He was rotund, his uniform unbuttoned and pulled back behind his holstered pistol. He pointed to the cart and said, “You got lights on that thing, don’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s still too dangerous. We aren’t hurting anything here.”

He crossed his arms above his mammoth stomach. “Oh yes you are. There’s no camping here and my job is to–”

Patricia shouted, “Protect the public!”

She had gone to bed earlier. While the cop and I were arguing, I heard her unzip the tent door. Walking toward him she said, “I was in law enforcement for more than fifteen years, and that has always been job-one–protect the public! How in the hell do you think you’re protecting the public by sending us out on that highway tonight?”

He was obviously taken aback. The cop’s round face was suddenly red as he uncrossed his arms and took a couple of steps back. He was speechless as my wife demanded, “Well, how is that protecting the public?”

He stammered. “Well. . .uh. You were a cop? Where?”

“Northern Illinois. What’s that got to do with anything?”

He sounded like he was pleading his case when he said “Look, I’ve got citizens calling and complaining about you being here. If you wanted to camp here you should have asked me.”

I slid out of the cart and stood next to my wife. “It was almost dark when we got here. How could I ask you anything? I don’t know you.”

“Well,” he blurted out, “Everybody around here knows me. You walked right by my house. You should have stopped and asked.”

I said, “We didn’t know this park existed until we got here.”

He re-crossed his arms and started rocking back and forth on his feet. “That ain’t my problem. It’s against the law to camp here. You’ve got to go!”

The absurdity of this irked me. I got louder with each word, when I said, “Ok! If you insist that we move in the middle of the night, we will. But let me tell you this. If something happens to us, we’ll make sure the
whole world knows why we were in harm’s way. We’ve had lots of press in Indiana, and we’ll make sure they all know about this!”

I had his attention. “Well. . .uh. . .”

Patricia was softer. She walked up to him with one of our flyers in her hand. “We just want to spend the night. We’ll pull out first thing in the morning.” She handed the flyer to him. “This will tell you all about us. We are not gypsies, tramps or thieves. We’re just walking across the country.”

He was looking down at the flyer in his hands. “You’ll leave in the morning?”

“After breakfast, we’ll pack up and get on down the road.”

“Well, . . .” When he looked up from the flyer, he had a sheepish expression and stammered when he said, “As long as you leave in the morning, I guess it’ll be all right.”

Patricia said, “We’ll get out of here as soon as we can.”

He got in the car and slammed the door. After he backed the cruiser around to pull onto the highway, he leaned out the window and said, “Now I don’t want no trouble out here tonight. No parties or nothing like that! You hear?”

In unison we replied, “Yes sir.”

While we watched the tail lights fade away, Patricia asked, “Were you planning on a party tonight?”

“Yeah. You want to come?”

While the year turned into November, nearly every morning we woke to frozen dew on the tent and ice on Della’s bucket. On those days, we had to wait for the dew to thaw and evaporate before we could pack the tent. So we were getting on the road later everyday–sometimes past noon. And the days were getting shorter, so we were having to stop for the night earlier and earlier.

“You need a place to camp tonight?”

We met Ron on one of those days when it was after noon before we got on the road. We also had a lot of people stop to talk to us that day, so we’d only walked about three miles. The sky already had the orange of sunset creeping into it, and Highway 62 was rampant with homebound traffic. We accepted his offer.

Ron was a short man, a bit hunched over, with a pitted face and lumpy round nose. We were talking to a group of people in the parking lot of a convenience store when he pulled in, got out and joined the group. He didn’t say anything until the others wandered away. When he spoke, he was timid. “How long did you think about traveling before you actually did it?”

I told him, “About twenty-five years.”

He wiped the end of his nose with his coat sleeve, then jammed his hands into his pants pockets. “That’s a long time. I’ve dreamed of living on the river for at least forty.”

“Are you doing it?”

A tone of defeat was in his voice as he looked down. “Naw. Wish I was.” Then he looked up with excitement in his blood shot eyes. “But I’ve got the boat.”

That’s when he asked if we needed a place to camp for the night. “My house boat is sitting on a lot that I own. You could stay in the boat. It’s got a heater and beds.”

A heated place to sleep sounded good to us. Ron said “It’s nothing fancy. But it’s livable. Wish I was living in it.”

“Why aren’t you?”