Trip to Bountiful

In 1994, 37-year-old California journalist Mike McIntyre decided to walk and hitchhike across the United States without money. He would accept only food, rides and shelter. He began in San Francisco and arrived six weeks later on the shore of the Atlantic in Cape Fear, N.C. He slept in a tent and foraged for food, but also he was often taken into the homes of people and offered a bed and a meal.

His reason for this personal odyssey was a sense that he had never taken chances in his life. His discovery was that in what he saw as dangerous and distrustful times, people across America were inspired by his story and offered to help him on his way.

He has described his journey in a book, “The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America” published this month by Berkley. The following excerpts describe some stops along the way.

Hot and Hungry

My head throbs from hunger and heat as I wilt on the side of a country road in Northern California. The cardboard sign I level at oncoming traffic reads “Eureka,” though my latest discovery is that I’m out of water. I ate my last meal two nights ago--in a dream.

The summer sun tattooing my face suggests hitchhiking inside a microwave oven. My baseball hat would bring relief, but it stays in my backpack, leaving drivers to get a clear look at my baby blues. No matter. Nobody stops. And who can fault them? It’s 1994. This is America. Land of the free and home of the serial killer.

I stagger around the bend in a futile search for another road that feeds into Highway 101. When I return, someone has taken my place. His dark eyes fix me through strands of greasy, black hair. I don’t have the strength to fight, or run.

“You must’ve just got dropped off,” I say, squinting at the stranger. “Where you coming from?”

“Jail.”

The man laughs. He doesn’t have a tooth in his head.

He says his name is Rudy, and the judge gave him three weeks for unpaid traffic tickets.

“Hey, you don’t have any food you could spare, do you?” I say. “I haven’t eaten in days.”

He reaches into his grimy jeans and pulls out two pieces of candy, each wrapped in cellophane.

“It’s the only food I got,” he says, holding the candy in his palm.

They’re frosted gumdrops. One orange, one grape. I eye the sweets as my saliva glands do back flips. I settle on the grape one.

“Go ahead, take ‘em both,” Rudy says.

I grab the orange one too.

“Well, I’m gonna walk up the road a bit,” he says. “They see two of us here, they won’t stop.”

Before he’s around the bend, I tear open the wrapper of the orange gumdrop. I tell myself I’ll save the grape one for later, but I gobble that down too.

There’s a noise behind me and I whirl to see the disheveled figure of Rudy. He’s got something in his hand, but it’s not candy.

“Hey, I got to thinking up there on the freeway, he doesn’t have any money.”

Rudy unfolds two $1 bills and smooths them flat against his chest. He irons out every wrinkle, as if the notes were shirt collars bound for church. He extends the money toward me.

I stare at the greenbacks. Two dollars. I know what that will buy. A loaf of bread and a pack of bologna. Or maybe a jar of peanut butter. I won’t have to worry about food for three, four days. “In God We Trust,” it says. Hallelujah! I’m born again.

“Go on, take it,” Rudy says.

I reach for the cash, then pull back.

“I can’t,” I say. “I’m crossing America without a penny.”

*

I load my pack into Linda’s minivan, and we head for her house in Redway, Calif. Linda is 42 and twice divorced. She and her second ex founded two hugely successful mail-order record companies, specializing in children’s and world music. They’ve just been bought out by a Hollywood entertainment conglomerate. Linda is a rich hippie.

Linda owns one of the area’s original hippie mansions, a two-story octagonal structure built with scraps of redwood left behind by logging companies. A skylight in the shape of a pyramid crowns the roof. The house is circled by wooden decks. The trees are so close you can reach out and touch them. Forty African drums fill a corner of the living room. There is no TV, no curtains in the windows, and [her three daughters] call their mother Linda.

After the girls have gone to bed, I sit with Linda on a wicker sofa, gazing out the picture window into the dark forest. The house is still. Linda says she is inspired by my journey. Linda seems to possess an inner calm, an unshakable sense of her place in the universe. I feel like a sham in comparison. I want what she has. I confess to her that I am not brave and wise. I’m a frightened boy in the body of a man. I’m afraid of the dark, the wind in the trees, the animals in the forest.

Linda smiles kindly.

“An Indian taught me something I’ll never forget. He said, ‘We don’t have a word for loneliness in my language.’ I said, ‘Why, because you’re always surrounded by uncles and aunts and grandparents?’ He said, ‘No. It’s because we think of nature as our kin, so we are never alone.’

We talk late into the night, then Linda shows me to the guest room. A bed! With flannel sheets, no less. I drift toward sleep, feeling safe and warm and profoundly grateful.

In the morning I shave and shower, washing my hair with Linda’s Irish moss shampoo. The shower is made of stone and stands in a corner of the greenhouse, butting up against a wall of glass. I bathe, naked to the world, or at least to my cousins, the redwoods.

Linda fixes French toast, with honey in the batter, as I eat sliced cantaloupe and sip grapefruit juice. I’ve never been a comfortable guest, even in good friends’ houses. But I feel totally at ease in this stranger’s home. My stomach churns, but not from hunger. I must soon leave, and I know the uncertainty of the road is about to resume.

The Dreams of a Grandmother

A junior high school on the edge of Boise, Ida., is letting out when I drop my pack in the dirt. I draw a sign for a place called Murphy, a dot on the map in southwestern Idaho. Kids cruising in cars read my destination and bust loose laughing. I guess Murphy is where all the geeks live.

An old Jeep Wagoneer stops to pick me up. The driver, Sue, must weigh close to 250 pounds. Her 55-year-old mother, Edie, rides shotgun. Sue’s little girl, Katie, stands on the floorboard, as my pack and I now take up the whole backseat. Sue’s other daughter, Laura, age 11, is sprawled across her grandmother’s lap. She wears a protective helmet. Her body is as limp as linguine.

“Murphy!” Edie says in a voice like gravel.

“There isn’t even a town there. Murphy!” Then, in the next breath: “Well, you want to have supper with us?”

I’m not even hungry, but I’m suddenly smitten with this crusty woman. I quickly accept.

Sue turns into a tract housing development set among dull brown hills void of trees. From Edie’s appearance--she’s dressed in baggy sweats and a dirty T-shirt--I expect her place to be a dump. But when we pull into the driveway, I see that hers is the tidiest house on the street. The modest box with white aluminum siding is bordered by a neatly trimmed lawn. Concord grapes hang from a lattice arbor out back. Edie has just been to the farmers market, where she sold $10 worth of grapes, which I gather for her is no small sum.

Edie invites me to run a load of wash. The laundry room is a sight more welcome than the kitchen table, as my jeans and shirt can probably stand on the side of the road and hitchhike by themselves.

As Edie fixes dinner, Laura watches her from the kitchen table. She bounces in her chair, a sock dangling from her mouth.

Sue never married Laura’s father, a neighborhood boy who got her pregnant when she was 15. One day, when Laura was a baby, Sue fell asleep in another room while listening to loud music. She didn’t hear her daughter entering the earliest stage of sudden infant death syndrome. When she awoke and saw she wasn’t breathing, she phoned her mother, who worked as an orderly at a hospital. Edie rushed home and performed CPR on Laura. She saved her life, but she had already lost much of her brain.

Through the years, Sue proved a careless mother, leaving Laura with anybody. Edie sued for custody of her granddaughter. She went to school and got a license to care for the severely handicapped. The state now pays Edie to care for Laura at home.

I ask Edie what her dream is. She says that because she’s three-quarters Crow Indian, she was able to obtain a 120-acre parcel on a mountainous reservation in Montana. One day she’d like to sell her house and move there with Laura.

“I wanna build a log cabin, and I wanna get a horse for her. That’s my plan.” She looks adoringly at her granddaughter. “I love her. She’s special. The doctors said she wouldn’t live past 5, but here she is. As long as God gives me the strength, I’m gonna take care of her. I really believe God made her this way so I could have her.”

‘The Most Contented Man in the World’

I walk east out of Billings, Mont., along the interstate. There’s not much of a shoulder and the cars blowing past almost topple me down the embankment. An old pickup with a camper shell stops ahead of me in the middle of the road.

“Where yew goin’?” an old man says when I reach the window. He’s as annoyed as he is curious.

“South Dakota. Where are you headed?”

“Albuquerque.”

Lester is 63. He’s been up visiting his grown step-granddaughter over near Helena. He worked on her house a bit, then went backpacking for nine days in the Beartooth Wilderness, sleeping under a piece of plastic. He comes from a family of 13 kids in southern Missouri. He pronounces it “Misery.”

Lester is a backgammon fanatic. He’s on the road much of the year, traveling to tournaments from California to New Mexico. Before that, he laid sewer lines in Albuquerque.

“If yew make it as far as Casper with me, I’ll buy yew lunch,” Lester says. “And to show yew my heart’s in the right place, I’ll let yew order anything on the menu--as long as it’s not more’n 35 cents.”

He grins.

The peaks of the Laramie Range are blanketed with snow when we pull into Casper. Lester guides me to a diner on the truck loop. He flirts with the waitress and jaws with some old-timers about the weather. We both order fried chicken, which comes with lentil soup, salad, fries and rolls.

I ride with him another 60 miles and get out at a rest stop at the intersection of Highway 20.

“If you could do something different now, what would it be?” I ask Lester.

“Not a thing. Yew are lookin’ at the most contented man in the world.”

“What’s your secret?”

“I guess I made the most of what comes and the least of what goes.”

A Little Trust and Hospitality

I stumble down the road, barely able to lift my feet. At last I see a water tower perched on stilts, the ubiquitous symbol of the rural Midwest. A sign at the edge of the village reads: “Welcome to Liberty, America’s Freedom Town.” I take a look around. Liberty, Ill., is free, all right. Free of a drinking fountain, free of a bathroom and free of a campground.

I cross the town park, aimed for a bench under a shelter.

I rest my aching feet and write in my journal. Around sundown, a father and his four boys drive up. They carry ice chests to a picnic table and spread out their dinner.

The man asks where I’m going. I tell him.

“Where you staying tonight?”

“Don’t know yet.”

He laughs.

“So, what’s your purpose?” he says. “What’s your goal?”

He’s about my age, with black horn-rimmed glasses. He is the custodian at the local school. His name is Brian.

“I know where you can stay tonight,” he says after I’ve finished my story.

“Where?”

“At our church,” he says, smiling.

There are cookies, cake, popcorn and Kool-Aid. Brian has already spread the word about my trip. The congregation swarms me.

The preacher sits down next to me. He is young and energetic, fresh out of Bible school. He offers to let me sleep in his office. His wife goes next door to their house to fix me a steak sandwich.

After the preacher and his wife go home, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and friendly eyes comes through the church door. He is one of the people I met at snack time, but we didn’t visit much.

“Would you like to sleep in a bed tonight?” he says.

I follow Jim outside, where his wife, Linda, waits in their new Cadillac. I get the idea that they left and returned to extend the invitation after grappling with their collective conscience.

Jim is a contractor, and Linda is a school librarian. Their sprawling, two-story brick house is set back among the woods outside town.

I doubt that my sense of comfort is ever completely matched by my hosts’. No matter their ability to judge character, their gut instincts, their faith in humanity, surely there must always come a moment--perhaps in bed, after they’ve turned out the lights--when an inner voice asks them, Can we really trust this stranger with our lives?

I say good night. On my way upstairs, I stop and turn back to the family.

“You were leery about letting me stay here, weren’t you?” I say.

“Yeah, we thought about it a little while out in the car,” Jim admits.

“Well, I sure appreciate your hospitality--and your trust.”

“Yeah, I’m glad we invited you home,” Jim says.

A Schoolroom Epiphany

Jamestown, Tenn., lies in Fentress County, one of the poorest in the nation. The screen at the drive-in movie is overgrown with vines. A mobile home dealer on the edge of town advertises trailers for as low as $129 a month. “Making Your Dreams Come True,” the sign says.

The Chamber of Commerce occupies the former jail, a stone building from the last century. I see a man inside jump up from a cluttered desk.

“Come on into my house,” he says with a smile.

The chamber president, Baxter, is 59. He wears a tweed coat, khaki pants and a plaid tie. A plaque given to him by the Rotary Club reads: “To a chicken fightin’, chicken pluckin’, over the fire barbecue expert.”

I ask him about camping in the area.

He unfolds a map of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, 10 miles away. When I hesitate, he hands me a brochure for a campground closer in. I see it costs $12.

“Tell you what, I’ve got a big farm about 10 miles south of here. I’ve got to pick my son up at football practice, but if you’re here at 5:30, you can ride out with me. Then you can ride into town with me in the morning.” He smiles. “We may even find a barn for you to sleep in.”

Baxter returns for me at his office an hour later.

“Practice isn’t over, but I knew you’d be sitting out here in the cold,” he says.

We drive along a pine-studded plateau out to Banner Springs. A dirt road leads to a magnificent country house perched on the edge of a gorge. I can hear the Clear Fork River rushing 80 feet below.

Baxter says come on in. I follow him along a porch that wraps clear around the two-story house. There isn’t a barn in sight. I realize he has just invited me to spend the night.

[Baxter’s wife] Carol is cooking pot roast when we walk into the kitchen. Baxter quickly dons an apron and makes a sheet of biscuits from scratch, using a chilled wine bottle for a rolling pin. Carol is a seventh-grade science teacher. She is a picture of Southern grace and charm.

When I come downstairs in the morning, Baxter is frying sausage and eggs, while Carol grades papers at the kitchen table. She asks if I’ll come to school today and tell her class about my trip.

I prove a hit with Carol’s students. Before long, I’ve agreed to talk to every class in the school.

The kids are very well-mannered and attentive. The questions keep coming: Where are people the kindest? How many pairs of shoes do I have? Am I carrying a gun? Has anybody tried to run me over? Is there racism in other states? Are the pigs’ feet as good in other parts of the country? Have I fallen in love with anyone? What am I most afraid of?

A patriotic tone runs through the talks I give in the afternoon. I tell the students how my faith in America has been renewed. I tell them how proud I am to live in a country where people are still willing to help out a stranger.

I keep looking at the map. I see “Cape Fear” written in the blue part, where the country bumps up against the Atlantic Ocean. My journey is almost over. Only one more state to go. I am excited, and sad.

Then all at once a realization hits me. It’s so simple.

It took giving up money to have the richest experience of my life.

* Copyright 1996 by Mike McIntyre. Reprinted from “The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America” by Mike McIntyre (Berkley Books).