Day 21 Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Beginning miles from Kennewick: 3,133.

Temperature 8 a.m. 45-50. Clear sky and sun.

Arrived in Clinton about 9 p.m. because I stopped at a city named Cookeville to have some coffee to boost my energy level. I felt drossy. There I sat at a table in a McDonalds next to three men who were obviously having a discussion. Two were old men, easily twice the age of the younger man. The younger man was trying to explain something to them about Iran. He spoke so confidently and fluently I thought he must have actually have been in Iran. The conversation widened out after that. I was fascinated, particularly by the younger man.

He was a large man (see photo at right), you might say heavy set or even rotund. But he had an attractiveness to him by the fluency with which he spoke and the mellowness of his voice. I assumed he was probably a teacher, most likely a history teacher for high school students or even a college professor.

The longer I listened to him in his sonorous brotherly manner of speaking to his two older friends the more my admiration grew. I felt something even brotherly toward him, for I doubted his two friends fully appreciated his intellect. I learned more about him after his friends, Bob age 86 and Mel a mere 83 had left. Like the farmer philosopher in Montana he seemed to me a kind of star in the heavens because of his intellect. He was for me a breath of fresh air. His name is Tom Willoughby. I will forever wish him well in Tennessee.

Tom Willoughby

But I see I've skipped ahead of myself. Back to Nashville Tuesday morning. I had a business scheme in my head that quickly dissolved once I attempted to put it into play in downtown Nashville. So I switched plans and detoured to the city library. There by accident due to lack of parking place for my car I discovered there was an Occupy Nashville enclave at something called War Memorial Plaza at the foot of the state capital building. So I hustled there before I called on the library and took some photos, including one of a young man named Jon Fellows from Clearwater, Florida. (see attached photo) Because I was parked illegally I hustled back to the library and then out of town. But had I been parked in a legal place I would have spent more time to interview some of the protestors as they were the first I have encountered on this Bigt Journey across America.

These young people are, love them or despise them, the first awakening of the American conscience. It is always the young who first man the barricades in any movement or revolution. Whether it leads to success of a asterisk in American depends, I suspect, on whether from their ranks will arise a voice to reach out to the masses.

I was very happy to reach the security and warmth of Lamar's spacious home in Clinton. I had recognized for some days my energy level was alarmingly low. And the weather forecast is for some nasty, cold, wet, weather moving in from the North.

Roger

Day 22 Thursday, October 27, 2011, Clinton, Tennessee

Beginning miles from Kennewick 3,133. Temp. 60, overcast and cloudy.

One of the road atlas that I have lists the mileage from Seattle to Nashville as 2,463 miles, add 175 miles to Knoxville and it is 2,638. But Kennewick is 220 miles from Seattle so it should read, 2418. But my speedometer reads 3,133. It means that with the detour to Billings, Montana is an extra 745 miles. Yet I have no regrets in detouring to Billings in order to try and locate the woman who wrote my first book review.

This day I used most of the whole day just doing paper work trying to catch up on work that I had been unable to do with a place to work. I felt a huge sense of slowness both mentally and physically without the stress and stimulation of road challenge. I immediately took a hot bath to start the morning to remove both the actual collection of road grime and the mental road grime that one feels sitting hour after hour immobilized behind the wheel of an automobile.

The summer-like sunshine held steady, but the weather man has promised by nightfall the rain and cold will arrive.

Roger