Journeyer Finds Hearts of Gold : Good Folks Everywhere Hearten Walker in His Trek Across the U.S.

Ever heard of Earp, Calif.? Well, Fred Turner says, “You should have. It exists.”

So does Ocmulgee State Park, in Georgia, and Surprise, Ariz.

And Deleon, Tex., has the best peach and melon festival around. Turner knows: Deleon Mayor Charles Chupp placed him under house arrest--as a guest in the mayoral manor for the two-day fete.

Limping slightly and flashing red suspenders, Turner strolled into Carlsbad on Wednesday after walking America’s back roads all the way from Beaufort, S.C.

A stringy-white-haired 53, with a ruddy tan and hollow cheeks, Turner is 25 pounds leaner than he was when he started walking May 5. But the philosophy that motivated his cross-country walkabout remains unchanged: fewer than 1% of the people out there are bad, and the rest are gold, Turner says.

He did get a taste of the bottom 1% eight days after he set out when he was robbed on a highway bridge that separates Georgia from South Carolina. The thieves grabbed his money bag and he flipped over a 3-foot railing, plunged 80 feet into the Savannah River, and lost consciousness--along with some precious belongings, like $480, his right shoe, his hat and his walking stick.

The mishap put Turner on the fast track to media fame. He flashed his smile on television news in Phoenix, and a reporter in Rising Star, Tex., drove miles to a makeshift campground to get an interview with the rambler, who used his newfound notoriety to express his views on the good/bad ratio of heartland America. He prefers to talk about the good.

“I used to say it wasn’t my day. But it was my day. I didn’t die,” Turner said of his river fall. “I’m a positive thinker.”

Before the trek, Turner was working as a business manager in Sparks, Nevada. But after putting everything he had into the job for six years, and working weekends to deal with customer complaints, Turner decided he needed a breather. He put all his belongings in storage for two years, and headed off on a long vacation, behind the wheel of a 14-year-old Ford pickup.

In Beaufort, the alternator in his truck broke. While Turner had his head under the hood repairing it, a stranger walked by, noticed the Nevada license plates, and joked that he might just have to walk home.

That stranger kicked off the coast-to-coast odyssey that ended in Carlsbad on Wednesday.

“I weighed the pros and the cons, and the only con I could find was that some people would think I was crazy,” Turner said. “So I thought I’d walk, take the back roads and stop at every dot.”

Turner recorded hours of his own musings on a micro-cassette recorder, entered nearly 400 names of people who touched his life in a computerized data-holder, and got someone official to stamp his small white notebook in every dot of a town he passed through.

In Show Low, Ariz., it was Police Officer 134 who signed. In Albany, Tex., the only official stamp around came from the City of Albany Cemetery Trust Account.

In Earp, the postmaster offered her official seal. And in all the towns in between, Turner met with police chiefs, mayors, shopkeepers and just about anybody who would answer his greetings. He did accept rides along the highways that lined his route, but only to the next town.

“This wasn’t a ‘Hey, look at me,’ or a physical feat,” Turner said of his trip. The point, he insists, was to stop and talk, with anyone and everyone.

Three days after Turner was robbed, a woman at Hall’s Bait and Tackle Shop pressed a sterling silver St. Christopher’s medal into his palm. He sewed it onto his backpack.

But walking across the country made Turner conscious of weight. Most of the souvenirs he came across he passed on to new friends. In Superior, Ariz., the mayor gave him an Apache Tear stone, which he turned over to a little boy in Del Dios, Calif.

His list of friends goes on: There’s Benny Adams, the 66-year-old World War II vet from Mt. Vernon, Ga., who left his leg on Iwo Jima and hosted Turner in his home. And there’s Frank Turner, a woodcarver from The Grove, Tex., who carved his name in a hickory walking stick for the traveler.

In Brawley, Calif., a woman near the Laundromat saw Turner and offered him a complimentary trim for his beard. In Roby, Tex., he was the lead speaker for the Lions Club lunch: no one else was scheduled to speak, so he did.

Other than the fateful fall, Turner’s only brush with violence was a child’s BB gun, fired at his tent in Seminal, Tex..

“Everybody told me you always get shot at in Texas,” Turner joked.

He hopes to compile his remembrances in a book, but plans to spend the next 30 days resting in California before deciding on his next step.

The final page of Turner’s notebook is marked by the official gold seal of Carlsbad.

“I tore out the remaining 16 pages. To me it was symbolic,” Turner said. “This trip is finished.”