The next morning I collected more addresses and phone numbers. Phil Morris was encouraging me to come work at the camp next summer. Maybe he’d learned of my roofing skills, because I can’t think of any other reason.

I made good time to Reeves, then to DeQuincey where I stopped at an ex-Dairy Queen. There I bought a Sprite and ate some carrots and the piece of cake I’d been given by Marcia’s mother.

DeQuincey was a good place to get some errands done, so I bought some more film and mailed the roll I’d completed to my parents’ house where I would get it developed later. After buying cards and another notebook to journal in, I realized I should eat so I stopped at Pioneer Fried Chicken. 

In my journal I wrote “Pioneer Fried Chicken (eating place in town).” Maybe I was thinking that if I hadn’t written it’s an EATING place then I would’ve mistaken the word “fried” for a verb. THAT would’ve been something to write about.

Five miles beyond DeQuincy, the clouds ahead of me became very dark, and lightning started flashing across the sky. The storm appeared suddenly, and there was no shelter, so I turned around and sprinted the way I came. 

I rolled up to the first building I saw… a house? an office?  There, I stood on the porch watching dripping cars pass, one after another, with their wipers and headlights on. It seemed like I'd been dodging storms during the entire Gulf Coast section of this trip. 

When the storm did roll over the building, the small porch became woefully inadequate to keep the blowing rain from pelting me and I started getting wet. I was surprised when the door behind me opened and I was invited in and handed a towel with which to dry off. For the next hour and a half I talked with Diane, Dorothy, and Jerry. I don’t remember the kind of service, I'm thinking a plasma donation center, but I remember we had a great conversation. 

Their office closed at 4:00, and that was my cue to leave. The rain had finally stopped, but the ground was still wet. At this rate, I suspected it would stay that way until November. 

The 17 miles to Starks was unpleasant. The road was narrow and filled with unhappy motorists and honking truckers. Several times, a semi missed me by about twelve inches.

At one point, three kids in a truck with a Confederate flag in the rear window passed by and hit my shoulder with a glancing blow of ice. I smiled and waved, thinking a larger mass of the ice and a better aim would’ve been nicer. 

They passed again, yelling something incomprehensible, and on the third pass waved a gun out the window. 

I ignored them, as I would a barking chihuahua at my ankles, and continued riding.

When I saw a sheriff pass, I flagged him down. He turned the patrol car around and came up behind me. I smiled to myself when I saw him…. he couldn’t have appeared more stereotypical than if he’d just stepped off the set of The Dukes of Hazzard… the mirrored sunglasses, the big gut threatening to launch a couple of buttons into the next county, the swaggering gait with his thumbs tucked into his belt, and the slow drawl which sounded like he had a bit of chaw between his cheek and gum. I looked for the final touch, a stain from a jelly donut on his uniform, but didn’t see one.

When I told him about the kids waving a gun at me he seemed about as interested as if I’d started telling him about my bowel habits in great detail. It made me wonder if brandishing firearms was a normal occurrence in Louisiana, and whether they needed to fire the weapon, perhaps into me, before it would elicit a raised eyebrow and be considered a serious enough offense to warrant the subsequent paperwork…   Probably not, unless I was a resident of Louisiana, and maybe not even then.

His only response was a slow, reluctant,

“I can escort you to the State Line…..  if you WANT me to.”

I declined his unenthusiastic offer of assistance. It seemed more of a roundabout way to get me out of his jurisdiction than any actual interest in helping. I wondered what would keep those kids simply from crossing the border after me….  a giant, invisible force field? Their mothers having told them they had to stay in Louisiana? Their fear of bigger guns in Texas?

A few miles down the road when I crossed the border into the final state of this trip, he was parked on the shoulder and, I kid you not…  

...eating a donut.