Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

It was the middle of a hot day in Northern Alabama. On the opposite side of Route 11 was a lumber place. A few men were standing in a large open doorway.

One of the men called out to me, “Where Ya Go’in?”

I casually pointed in the direction I was walking and replied, “That way.”

One of the other men asked, “What city you go’in to?”

I stopped walking south and crossed the road to join the men. “I’m going to New Orleans,” I answered the previous question. I usually told people that I was heading to New Oreans. That was easier to explain than “to the end of U.S. Route 11 as it dead ends at U.S. Route 90 east of New Orleans.”

The first comment about New Orleans was, “That’s about a nine-hour drive.”

I thought a moment and concluded that New Orleans was about nine hours away by car. That was a day. I also figured quickly that New Orleans was about four weeks walking distance (which was pretty accurate). It is funny how much faster driving is than walking, and how I didn’t realize the difference until that moment in the shade of the porch.
I was talking with four older men. They were probably retired as who else who be sitting in a doorway of a lumber place in the middle of the day chatting with someone who came walking down the highway?

Then one of the oldest of the four older men told a story (as best as I can remember it):

“There was this young fellow who came through here a couple of years ago. He was a soldier just come back from Iraq or someplace like that. The soldier was in California and wanted to go to the east coast. His first idea was to hire a taxi to drive him across the country, but then he saw a used car for sell for a couple hundred bucks.

He bought the car and started driving, but stopped in the first bar he saw. He got so drunk that they put him in jail to sleep it off. After he slept it off, he started driving again and stopped at the first bar he saw. He kept doing that. Get drunk, go to jail, sleep it off, and go on. Because he was wearing that soldier’s uniform, none of the police took it hard on him. They just let him sleep it off and go on.

He was on the road about a month before he got to Alabama.  That’s pretty slow pace, but considering how many times he stopped and slept in jail, he was making pretty good time. I guess he made it to where he was going.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t plan to travel that way, so I may make a little better time,”

They offered me a ride, I declined, and I continued taking a walk down Route 11.