He Walks Alone : Schoolteacher Encounters as Much Hostility as Hospitality on Boston-to-Venice Trek

It didn’t take long for the romance of the open road to fade when John St. George set out last year to walk across America.

He’d read Kerouac and watched Kuralt. Certainly the real people of the United States--the ordinary folks living on the back roads and byways--would welcome a traveler into their hearts, if not their homes.

But front doors and fence gates were slammed in the 49-year-old Boston schoolteacher’s face throughout the 3,600-mile stroll that is expected to end about noon today at the beach in Venice.

There were scant words of congratulation offered to St. George as he passed through town after town during his 425 days on foot. Those willing to stop and talk with a man carrying a backpack and a road map spoke of the need for caution.

“People in the city would tell me to be careful out in the country because there were witches’ covens out there,” St. George said Friday as he took a breather on Hollywood Boulevard. “People in the country said to watch out for the gangs in the city.

“People constantly talked to me about danger. ‘Don’t go to Memphis because they’ll pick you clean.’ ‘Watch out in Dallas.’ People were anxious and cautious about a stranger coming through town.”

St. George started his odyssey Aug. 5, 1992, by taking a subway to the beach in South Boston, five miles east of town. He splashed a bit in the Atlantic, then headed west.

“I needed a break from teaching. I needed a challenge,” he said. “I figured I could do it in an about eight months for maybe $3,000 or $4,000. I cashed out my pension money to pay for it.”

The walk ended up costing St. George more than a year and nearly $10,000--mostly for motel rooms and meals.

Fewer than a dozen families invited him to stay in their homes as he trudged through New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

St. George discovered why at the first house he visited. A 19-year-old bicyclist he had encountered on the road invited him to stop in. But the young man’s mother was clearly ill at ease when St. George knocked on the door.

“She was blunt. She said, ‘I wondered if the latest serial killer was coming into my house,’ ” St. George recalled.

“I tried to make some lame joke about Jeffrey Dahmer being on the road. But that was a constant during the trip. It’s a sign of the times. In town after town people were either wrapped up in a local horror story or in a national one.”

He camped in a tiny tent that he carried most nights. But even then he was uprooted by military police and kicked off military land one evening in New Mexico. The same thing happened another night on an Apache Indian reservation in Arizona.

He was attacked by snarling dogs in Kentucky. Teen-agers tried several times to brush him with their car in West Virginia. Beer cans were tossed at him from passing vehicles. Quail hunters mistook him for game and shot at him. A carload of pistol-firing young men harassed him in Arizona. A policeman in Garland, Tex., questioned him at length because St. George looked “suspicious.”

“I was very upset. I called the Civil Liberties Union to complain, but all I got was a recording that said to send the information by fax. Of course, I wasn’t carrying a fax machine,” he said.

There were plenty of kindnesses, of course. The Larry Turner family of Kingston Springs, Tenn., invited him to stay in their guest house Christmas Eve and insisted he join four generations of the family for Christmas dinner the next day.

Pastors let him camp behind churches. Police officers and state troopers helped him find safe places to stay. A group of Marines stopped to offer him a ride and ended up helping him set up camp and sharing beer with him.

Mindful of Los Angeles’ reputation, St. George plans to keep a tight grip on his backpack and the red wagon he bought to tote water across the desert when he visits Venice today. After that, it’s back to Boston--by train.

“I’m in the mood for a little couch potato action now,” St. George said.