Tales from the Trail #08: Surfing the shade in Somerset …
I did indeed eventually make it “back to civilization” (after my looooong walk through the heart of the Daniel Boone National Forest the night before), initially coming to the “harsh-toned” village of Burnside*, where the overtly suspicious glances & openly dismissive words of the vast majority of the local residents I encountered quickly inspired me to head onward through the heat of that steamy mid-morning, until I finally crossed the Cumberland River and entered the initial outskirts of the city of Somerset, Kentucky…
Now Somerset was a great anomaly of sorts – a relatively small town, yes, and yet also a town with a unusually “large” feel to it – especially along its Floridaesque strip of stores and gas stations and banks and restaurants that extended almost unbroken for almost 8 miles due northward along both sides of Highway 27. Almost needless to say, this was not my favorite type of metropolis, and to make matters even more challenging, it was extremely hot & glaring on that particular day. And so I engaged in – quite successfully, I might add – a practice I affectionately called “AC hopping”; moving efficiently from store to store in any given town on any given hot day, entering establishment after establishment, telling each of them about my Walk, and then asking if I might sit awhile therein to cool off before heading back out to walk along the steaming roadway – doing so until the local traffic waned and the day’s Sun began to set, both of which allowed me to far more easily walk onward, often through the far cooler and much less frenetic nights. And far more often than not, seeing as how I was quite openly walking for a Noble Cause (while asking for nothing more than a few minutes of their time &/or what amounted to no more than a single glass of water from their taps), the employees &/or store owners I encountered quite gladly acquiesced to my requests and allowed me to cohabitate their spaces for a time. And this was never more so the case than along the Somerset strip on this particular day – with me taking well over 8 hours to steadily tread the town’s 8-mile thoroughfare; doing so step-by-step in the the glaring heat, while sitting store-by-store in their blessed coolness …
For those who might be interested, here is a summation of many of the places I paused that day, along with the acts of kindness that were regularly offered me therein:
*My very fist stop was at Diego’s Bar & Grill, where Alyssa welcomed me inside without pause or question, immediately brought me a plate of chips & salsa, told me I could stay as long as I wished, and then offered to treat me to lunch (undoubtedly with the approval of the place’s boss &/or head chef) – all on the restaurant’s dime (the vegan burrito I thereafter received was absolutely delicious, by the way) … *I next stopped by the local Wendy’s, where I was kindly invited to remain inside for a while, though I found myself involuntarily (and somehow “inappropriately”) nodding off in my booth there, inspiring me to move on sooner than expected … *My third stopover was not an inside-job at all, but instead was a surprisingly peaceful pause on the shaded portico of Wendy’s next-door neighbor – a closed branch of Caldwell Banker – where I found myself sleeping quite soundly for over an hour … *Thereafter I stopped by the local Arby’s, where employee Skylar was immediately enamored with my Walk – telling me that I could stay and use their WiFi connection as long as I liked, and then bringing me a large order of freshly cooked French Fries to boot (Thank you Skylar!) … *Fazoli’s was my next stop on this day’s jaunt, and here employee Rebecca was similarly impressed with my Adventure – offering me a tiny sub sandwich (that was unfortunately non-vegan, and thus remained non-eaten) and a large cup of cold lemonade – and engaged me in some meaningful conversation about my mission of spreading Kindness on the more than a few trips she made to my table … *The local Cook Out was the strip’s only pure “strike out” of the day, where the manager on hand coldly told me that water was going to cost me 37 cents per cup and the sheepish employee at the register told me that I had to quietly sit “around the corner at the smallest table” if I wanted to stay (Newsflash: I gently thanked them both for their “kindness” and left right away) … *I thereafter arrived at the local Starbuck’s, where the employees were kind and the water was cold and the air conditioning was blessed. Even better, I had not been seated but for a few minutes when fellow “Peace Walker” Dennis Godby arrived and sat down nearby. It turned out that he has been taking long-distance walks for various charities & social causes for more than a few decades, and that he was at that time walking for “Health Equity” in the United States ( Walk USA For Health Equity – https://walkusaforhealthequity.org ). Almost needless to say, we shared a warm & heartfelt conversation that afternoon – about his Walk and my Walk; about needed healthcare reforms for the poor and about the the need for more decency & kindness for all; and – of course – also about the sometimes amusing difficulties that long distance walking always brings forth (more specifically, about the massive stretch of “lovely nothingness” that we had both recently traversed through the Daniel Boone National Forest) … *It was later in the waning afternoon when I finally concluded my “AC Hopping” by first stopping off briefly in the local Penn Station sandwich shop and then thereafter in the Wendy’s next door, where gentle-hearted customer Daniel Lopez read my smock, figured out (despite being neither a fluent speaker nor reader of English) that I was walking for Peace, and then humbly offered to buy me dinner – which in the case of Wendy’s was a delightfully large order of French Fries – before heading off into the early evening with his lovely family in tow.
*In defense of the Burnside townsfolk, and the same Golden Core of decency & goodness that almost certainly resides within them all, it was possibly just a combination of morning rush hour plus surprise over my large & unusually-clad presence plus an obvious divergence between my core political & religious beliefs and their own that led them to be so dismissive (in f not downright rude) towards me that morning. Still, it was more than a handful of encounters back to back to back to back that evinced said disdain (with “Andy” at the local shell gas station not even allowing me to sit and rest outside his store at all!) – a devotion to distance that I had rarely encountered in any of the many thousands of miles I had walked on pilgrimages previous.
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