Another beautiful day in South East Georgia today we walk from Smithville to Plains the home of Jimmy Carter. We ended our walk today at the church that he still teaches Sunday school at and from what we understand 3 times a month. The day of course is filled with good walking and great talking and getting to know everyone. Beth and her friend Deb joined us today and tonight we watched a slid show presented by Skip Schiel about his experience in Israel and Palestine it was very informative and I would like everyone to visit his web site http://www.teeksaphoto.org I would also like to thank the community at the Mennonite Church in Americus GA for the evening meal and the space to see Skip’s slide show.

Today we left behind our friends at Koinonia Partners. This AM found us packing up our gear and heading out to start our day. The four nights there have been a dear blessing and respite. Our trail was going to take us through Marion County from Ellaville to Buena Vista . So, from Koinonia Partners we drove to the downtown square in Ellaville. Then from under the requisite Confederate Veterans Statue we started out our day under blue skies and clear cool weather.

            Our first three miles went quietly enough… other than the beginnings of some cloud cover. For some reason, the temperature seemed to be dropping as well. Someone mentioned a 10% chance of rain and we were wondering what that might look like after yesterday’s 30% rain that mostly damped shoes along with encouraging us to don our rain gear. We stopped at the Quebec Baptist Church, one of those small along side the road denominations where I wonder who actually goes there since I had not seen a house since downtown. It doesn’t matter to me or this account… they have beautiful grounds. No one seemed to mind while we to a ten minute break from walking, checked out the location of our rain gear, then started back off again. After a few spits and starts… blue sky again reappeared.

            The next rest began a long strange afternoon. We stopped near a small hay barn beside a dirt road. After we got scattered a bit, the few folks sitting near the road were approached by a normal looking gentleman who identified himself as a Colonel (Ret) US Air Force. He handed Laura, one of the POC walkers a tract, the gist of which was that progressive protesters had a hidden agenda of some kind (no, I didn’t pay that much attention to it… it came from some group out of Pennsylvania … so, whatever). The upshot of this all was that he went into monologue mode and ended up across the street screaming at us that we were being lied to and we didn’t know anything. There was something else about there only being one bad apple from the SOA and the rest of them were fine… or something along those lines. It was a tad disconcerting. Jim had just reported seeing, for the first time in his life, a real live Aryan Nation Flag in the town ahead of us. Behind us, we had just walked past a cluster of 4 houses calling them selves, “Rebel Hill”, all of them sporting some version of the old Confederate battle flag or old Georgia flag. So, maybe here is an area where we can really do some consciousness raising, we hope.

            After lunch, my life, anyway, got way more weird. Rachel and I seemed to be kind of far behind the crowd… not that far, but far enough back that a Sheriff’s car pulled in a driveway in front of us and way behind the group. Rachel was just a tad concerned that he was about to lecture us sternly about walking carelessly to the right of the white line. I was more concerned that we were some how getting cut from the herd for some reason. And, we were… in a way. Out of the car came a man with a Deputy Sheriff Investigator shirt… along with the usual badge and gun. He asked in a very friendly, almost off hand manner, after introducing himself, where were we headed? What? We aren’t under arrest or getting a ticket? Cool… so we filled him in on the heading for Fort Benning to support the SOA Watch rally on Saturday and Sunday. We may have even mentioned going to Lumpkin, GA on Friday… what the heck, nothing we mentioned probably wasn’t already known to anyone who wanted to know. He asked where we were sleeping tonight and what our plans were. I told him we had a host house in Buena Vista where we were going to stop for the night.

Were we going to protest anything in Buena Vista ?

Well, no… but we were going to have an ending prayer and ceremony when we finished walking.

Prayer?... That’s ok.

Do you want a ride?

Well, no, we think we can catch up.

Ok… have a nice day.

            Then, off he drove… sort of, almost. On came the blue light, on came the brake lights, then, on came the back up lights. He was heading back our way. Oops, someone radioed him about us or something. Back he came until the car was beside us. Down came the window, and he held out his business card.

Here, just in case you have any trouble, here is my card… just give me a call.

Thanks, I took the card.

Are you sure about that ride, I’ll be glad to catch you up.

Ok... I think we will. Thanks.

And, in just a short time later he let us out right at the walkers and off we went. Not too long after this someone with a camera stopped in front of us. He got in the middle of the lane and started taking pictures. A truck pulled over the hill. We called out and waved. He sauntered back to his truck, slowly. He climbed in his truck sporting a NWTP tag on the front and a base decal on the windshield. We never saw this guy again… but we wondered.

As we headed into town, a lady was standing by the sidewalk. In her hands were several of the tracts we received earlier. She was much more pleasant about disagreeing with us while she handed us the info. Several people took one… I didn’t… no need.

 We saw the Investigator one more time. We had stopped in Buena Vista to take a break. I guess he was just a little worried that I hadn’t told the truth or something… like maybe we were trying to camp out by the small convenience store. Once we spread out our tarps and pads, we do give an air of a campsite. No, we again reassured him that we were staying… and Mary Beth had the name of the church… at Saint Mary Magdalene Catholic Church. He seemed relieved and even accepted a peace button and a recently folded peace crane (thank you to Beth for that one).

            At the turn, my mom called (figuratively speaking)… I had to stop at the corner Chevron convenience store. When I got out… no one was in sight. I knew the direction and started walking. About a block later, over pulled a Georgia State Patrol car. Hop in… I’ll give you a ride to catch up. I would not want you to get hit by a car or anything to happen to you before you caught up with your group. Cool, thanks. So, here I went with my second ride in a patrol car. Someone mentioned that this Corporal had been video taping us earlier… so I guess I am now on his video tape explaining why I stopped to pee, oh well.

After a half hour wait at the church for Pat to show up with the key and dinner. I half expected the SWAT team to show up with sandwiches and coffee… no dice. Pat did show up with a great vegetarian dinner and the key. We were home for the night. I have more…but let’s stop here. In all, a great day for walking, and a great day to find a small part of the world where law enforcement took “To Serve and Protect” equally importantly.

Bob Watkins