ice cream man
I didn't really intend to walk across America, had more in mind walking across New Jersey and joining up with the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania and following it south. It was tempting to be a purist about it and walk up Manhattan and across the George Washington Bridge, but I took the easier route of the train under the Hudson to New Jersey and set out from the station. I had little idea exactly where I was, just kept heading west. Getting through Newark involved passing through some pretty seedy black areas of town but although some of the residents looked startled to see a white backpacker walking down their streets there was never any sense of it being unsafe.
Nevertheless, I was happy to leave the city behind and by early evening reached a large cemetery in the suburbs where I settled down for the night. I had been told by the New Jersey Tourist Board that it was permissible to spend one night in cemeteries or public school yards and was only once questioned by a policeman who was just checking to make sure I wasn't an escaped convict on the run. Once out of the suburbs and into the countryside, it was a delightful walk. I took a very slow pace, stopping to visit Revolutionary War and Civil War graves and often calling it a day early if I found some especially attractive place to spend the night.
I had an ample supply of dried foods and only bought breakfasts from local cafes, since that was the cheapest meal of the day. When I had announced my intention to leave New York almost everyone thought I had gone totally crazy. Only two friends helped finance buying the gear I needed and I had set out with very little cash, so was being cautious about each dollar spent. One night there was a fierce storm, it rained so hard my little tent was saturated, as was everything I was carrying. Even food in sealed plastic bags got damp and much of it spoiled as a result. It was my first experience of scavenging for food, and I wasn't very good at it.
As I neared the Pennsylvania border, I took a detour to see the haybarn we had used as a summer studio in the early 60's. It had been horribly gentrified, had almost none of the feel it had when we were living in it, and that whole area outside Frenchtown had been upscaled to more resemble the nearby summer artist colony of New Hope. After crossing the Delaware, I reached a wonderful state park, made my way off the road following a large creek and found a secluded place to set up camp. I stayed there for several days, seeing no other human beings except for one afternoon when two fishermen passed as I was enjoying the sun at the edge of the creek. My tent was green and even from a short distance away, my campsite was well camouflaged. That was the happiest interlude of the journey.
After leaving there, I spent one incredible night in an open field without the tent. I was wearing a brown wool knit cap and I guess my head must have looked like dinner to a very large white owl which swooped at me several times until I got my flashlight out and let it know I wasn't a rabbit. The next day, it started to rain heavily so I took shelter on a covered porch of what appeared to be a deserted house. I noticed a window had been recently broken and suspected a burglar had been there not long before. I tried the door, it was open. I went into the kitchen, took a large plastic bag and put some food in it, including a quart of ice cream. Just as I was about to leave, the teenage son of the owners returned. I said "someone was here before me" and ran out the back door and into the woods in the still pouring rain.
I ran through the woods trying to find a road so as to quickly put more distance between me and the house, but reached a reservoir with no choice but to go around it in the direction of the town or to cross a dam at one end of it. I had gotten about halfway across the dam when I heard someone shout "freeze!". Busted. I was handcuffed and taken to the Bucks County Sheriff's office where at one point a clerk said "someone should put that ice cream in the freezer".
After a few hours I was taken to the Bucks County Correctional Facility, a quite luxurious new prison complex complete with private rooms and air conditioning. I arrived too late for dinner, and the guard, knowing I was there for having stolen food, kindly managed to get a couple of sandwichs for me. I think everyone expected me to call someone and arrange bail, so they were surprised the next day when they realized they had to assign me a permanent cell and arrange for a public defender to talk with me.
That afternoon, sitting with some of the cellblock residents in the large common area, I was asked the usual question newcomers got asked, why was I there. When I explained, everyone started laughing and I was immediately given the nickname Ice Cream Man, which stuck with me the entire time I was there. The story spread to the other cellblocks and whenever we had ice cream for dessert, it wasn't unusual for some big dude to stop by with a grin and say, "hey, Ice Cream Man, you want mine?"
BCCF was a facility primarily for people awaiting trial, transport to the state prison system, or serving short sentences for minor crimes. Thus we had everything from people who may actually have been innocent but had no means of arranging bail to convicted murderers awaiting transfer. There was rarely any trouble, mainly because the reputation of the state prison was sufficiently grim to inspire good behavior, since that was the alternative faced by troublemakers.
My room was actually larger than the one I had lived in at the Vanderbilt YMCA and had its own toilet and washbasin as well. The common area was equipped with two large color television sets, complete with cable service, and a wide assortment of games and magazines. The food was excellent and abundant. Aside from having to clean our cells, vacate them for a daily inspection and return to them at a set hour for the nightly lock-up, we were not required to do anything. Had it not been for the unceasing noise in the place, I would have seen it as quite an ideal residence.
There was a small, but adequate library and the kind lady who was a volunteer worker in it was delighted to have someone there who was interested in books and would get anything I wanted from the main public library in Doylestown. So in the early weeks, I stayed more or less on my own, sitting in bed and reading. Then I made friends with two young local fellows, Gilbert and Joe, and began to spend more time hanging out with them, playing chess with Gilbert, and joining Joe in his cell where he had his own television set. They had both spent much of their young lives in one institution or another but were basically sweet guys who just weren't able to cope with life on the outside without getting into trouble.
There were other friendships, usually with men who just wanted someone to talk to, some of them people I would not have been likely to meet anywhere else. One young lad had been given the name Mad Dog, because he wouldn't talk to anyone but would often spend an entire evening glowering as he walked round and round the second-floor walkway which surrounded the common area. My cell was in one corner off that walkway, next to the shower. One afternoon I was sitting in bed reading, Mad Dog came out of the shower stark naked, marched into my cell and said "I want to talk to you." I told him to put on his shorts and sit down. That was the first of many such hours, just listening to him as he sat on my floor, usually just in his underwear, and talked fairly incoherently about his life and his worries. The guards were relieved he had found an outlet, worried that he would at some point explode from the pent-up anger he so obviously had, and we were never disturbed during his visits to my cell. He was a handsome young man with a beautiful body. It was a pleasure to be in his company, but I took great care to conceal any physical interest I had in him because that wasn't what he needed and any such activity could not have happened in that small, confined group of men without becoming known.
The young lawyer assigned to my case was delightful and I greatly looked forward to the meetings with him. Although a preliminary hearing was held fairly quickly to satisfy a point of law, its only outcome was to schedule trial some three months later. I had no interest in pleading innocent, so the trial was held with just the judge, and no witnesses were called aside from me. It was the first time the owner of the house and I had seen each other, and after hearing my story he asked that charges be dropped. The judge however sentenced me to "time served" and I was a free man again.
I wasn't happy about it, even seriously considered committing some minor felony to get sent back again, like so many men did. Only the fear that I might get sent to the state prison, as sometimes happened with repeat offenders, discouraged the idea. My old Army buddy had arranged a ticket on Greyhound to Seattle, so I took up my backpack, walked down to King of Prussia, got on a bus and resumed my journey across America on wheels.
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