Free Footloose in America: Dixie to New England by Bud Kenny Page B

brink of the ditch. It was all covered with water.
    Suddenly, from behind us, an air horn blared. Della bolted, but she quickly settled back into her normal pace. I turned around and found an eighteen wheel dump truck one car behind us. The driver blew his horn again and wildly waved behind the windshield for us to get off the road. His mouth was moving, but through the storm I couldn’t hear him. But it was obvious what he wanted. It was impossible.
    So sloshing backwards, I yelled, “What am I supposed to do?”
    Out the window of the truck emerged a black hand with all of its fingers–except the middle one–clenched into a fist. And it was pointed skyward and shook as he screamed something. I couldn’t hear, but I got thegist. So I shook my head, turned around and continued on. From then on, it seemed like every thirty seconds the truck horn would blast. But Della and I ignored it.
    Finally we came to a driveway, and got off the road. The moment we started into it, the truck’s engine revved spewing black smoke out its stack. I heard gears grind. Then after two rapid blasts from its horn, the truck roared around the car behind us. When it pulled up next to me, the passenger window was down. Again, he gave me the finger as he roared. “You stupid honky! Get your ass off the fucking road!”
    About half a mile from there, Highway 62 turned into a four-lane with a wide shoulder. The rain had eased into intermittent sprinkles. We were out of the traffic lane, and the storm was going away. Patricia wanted to get out and walk.
    While we three strolled further into Paducah, the rain stopped, clouds parted and people seemed to get friendlier. Every couple of minutes our arms were in the air returning waves, and a few times we heard shouts of “Welcome to Paducah!” And we saw several hands with their thumbs up. What a difference a digit makes!

    That night, a priest at Saint Thomas Moore Catholic Church gave us permission to camp in a field near the church. Next morning, when I poked my head out of the tent, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The air was crystal clear from the rinsing it got the day before. I fed Della, got the stove out and started a pot of coffee. In the middle of breakfast, Father Ken Mikulcik walked into our camp and announced he had come to bless Della. Earlier that morning, when we went down to the church to use the bathroom, Patricia–who is Catholic–asked the priest if he would bless the Big Sis. She didn’t tell me about it. So I was surprised when Father Ken showed up with his book and holy water.
    While he performed the ritual, a few clouds began to sail over us. Later, while I took down the tent, a car pulled into the church parking lot anda man with a camera got out. He was a reporter with the
Paducah Sun
. During his interview the clouds got thicker, and a breeze picked up. The sky was completely gray when the reporter closed his notebook and said, “They’re calling for thunderstorms this afternoon. What do you do when it rains?”
    In unison, Patricia and I said, “Get wet.”
    Unlike the rain the day before, this one started gradually. Initially it was just occasional drops, but by the time we reached downtown, it was a steady downpour. I didn’t walk on Jackson Street, I waded in it.
    Paducah was founded in 1821 at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers. It quickly became an important river town. Fortunes were made trading tobacco, fruit, timber and coal. The ornateness of the buildings downtown–near the Ohio River–stand as testimony to the wealth that was generated there. Paducah is a treasure-trove of 19 th and early 20 th century architecture. But that Friday afternoon, as we sloshed toward the river front, I was not able to appreciate it. The rain was too heavy and the traffic too intense to do more than wade on by.
    It was mid-afternoon when we pulled into a parking lot across the street from the Visitors Bureau. Behind their big front windows, I saw half a dozen