Summer

July 15, Houston, MO

Summer has always had several distinct characteristics to me: Long, hot windless days where the sun beats down with a vengeance. Humidity that saps strength and the will to do much. Cicadas buzzing in trees and leaving their exoskeletons clinging to the bark. Clutches of wild tiger lilies brightening roadsides. And blackberry bushes drooping with their delicious fruit.

It was a summer day today. The sweat started soon after leaving Marshfield shortly after 6 a.m.. The still, humid morning led to an equally still, humid afternoon where the sun drove the temperature into the mid 90s. Cicadas buzzed relentlessly. A Michigan lily appeared in a roadside ditch. A couple of miles further on blackberries appeared in profusion along a field fence. I had passed miles of flowering blackberry bushes in Oregon and Idaho but was disappointed about being a month too early to enjoy them. Although I had to peddle 2,000 miles for a month and a half, I knew these Missouri blackberries would be just as good as ones from the Northwest. I downloaded blackberries for 15 minutes.

In Hartville I stopped for a rest and to get a Subway sandwich for later dining roadside under a shady oak. As I packed my sandwich I saw a man come out of the drug store on my side of the street. He had a huge. T-shirt-stretching, belt-breaking gut on him. In that moment I saw him being reeled in by his belly to the restaurant across the street. His shoulders were back to counteract the forward motion of his belly. His spindly legs took numerous small steps as he was drawn forward. At the door he had to turn sideways slightly to reach the knob. And then he was netted by the restaurant.

By the time I arrived at the air-conditioned Convenient Feed Store in Bendavis I was ragged out, heat-blasted. “You look like you need to stay here for a while,” said Ben, the clerk. “Want a piece of pizza?” he asked as I reached for a Gatorade. “OK,” I said. “Here. It’s on me,” he said handing me a quarter of a pie. “You’ve put in a lot of work and deserve a reward.”

It is in these sticks, boondocks, burgs, backwaters, jerkwaters, the wide-spots-in-the road, the don’t-blink-or-you’ll miss-it towns where I am constantly humbled by the kindness shown a stranger. I am reduced to near tears at such gestures. This is the most rewarding experience of travel, encountering the kindness of strangers