I could’ve had lunch on the discards of the motorists as I walked in the twenty-degree wind chill near Branson on Highway 65 Sunday afternoon. I had to hitchhike; my car repossessed the previous Thursday, north to my home in Springfield, the Queen City of the Ozarks. Oranges, bananas, sandwiches, preserved in the chill of February, and some still in baggies. They looked good, but I resisted.

The flags were everywhere. Whipped off of antennas and scattered among the beer bottles, Pepsi cans, and cigarette butts. Flags of plastic, polyester, and one especially nice synthetic cloth one I kept. Most of them were wind-whipped and worn, tattered and torn, but this one was Tide White in the white stripes and totally intact.

I was certain someone would give me a ride. This was, after all, Middle America. I didn’t look spooky or suspicious. I had a fresh haircut (granted, achieved at my own hand) and I knew somewhere out there, my fellow American was going to see that I was a guy headed somewhere, a man on a mission. I passed the convenience stores I used to get gas at when I had a car. I passed the Subway I had eaten at when I had a job.

But they didn’t stop. Car after car and truck after truck. And I began to think about all the walkers I had never offered help to, writing them off as I drove past as potential serial killers or mad hijackers.

And that’s how Middle America was seeing me as I walked amongst their discards. One kid took a chance and gave me a ride from Lake Taneycomo to F Highway. I didn’t know where that was, but it was further on my forty mile journey than where I was. It turned out to be about five miles, and after two hours of being passed by in the cold, I thanked him as if her were sent by God.

Beer bottles. No good ones. Just cheap domestic. And more flags. I felt my bright flag in my pocket and pulled it out. I tried to fold it triangular, like you do when storing a flag, but the material was too thick. By the time I’d made the two folds lengthwise and started halfway down with the shifting triangular fold, I knew this thing would be a ball of stars at the end.

It was getting dark and my legs were tired. I figured I’d done about 15 miles up and down these Ozark hills and the cars kept passing. I was getting mad ay my countrymen.

In the New America, I reasoned, where we are all brothers and sisters at peace with one another and helping our neighbors, why couldn’t one of these hundreds of pickups with empty beds let me jump in one? Aren’t we all in this together? Blacks, Whites, Asians, Hispanics – all banded together now like never before, keeping an eye out on the nearest Middle-Eastern looking person? Not even the Coca-Cola truck hesitated, its driver apparently not aware that his truck was displaying the logo we look to in times of trouble. If I can’t get help from something as All–American as Coke, I am done for. I was, after all, going their way, and I couldn’t fathom what about me was giving them pause. My coat was long. Maybe they thought I had weapons. And maybe this was the New, Vigilant America, suspicious and guarding the Homeland.

I knew I could use my new flag. But I didn’t. I wasn’t going to depend on it. I could’ve held it out there like a beacon and flagged a ride easily, I was sure. But my priorities had changed. Now I wanted help from my fellow man, not my fellow citizen.

There was a church I had passed many times before that I knew should be coming up on the horizon soon. But it never appeared. I thought I might get there in time for their Sunday evening service and convince one of their members to give me a lift. I didn’t remember which hill it was just beyond, but it couldn’t be far.

My legs were aching and my hands were freezing as I bemoaned my new bum’s life to the Most High God. I was sick of being without wheels, in poverty, and pursued by the creditors. This was no way to live in America. Where were the jobs for the honest writers? Where were the jobs for the dishonest ones even? Come on, God! Cut me some slack and at least give me a ride here.

God must’ve heard me as two guys on their way to church in the town of Ozark, quite a few miles toward my destination, pulled over not long after in a huge Dodge crew cab with one of those spare tanks complete with a gas nozzle in the bed. The driver, Chuck, asked me three times if I was sure I didn’t want to join him and his passenger, Steve, (a man with a dream to minister blocked by his denomination’s objection to a prior divorce) as they attended a service to hear a certain missionary speak. After Chuck’s third request, I obliged and agreed to join them.

I was worried about my appearance, hair under a hat all day and face frozen by the north wind I walked into the last four and a half hours. I knew enough to take my hat off upon entering a church and tucked it into my coat pocket, alongside my American flag.

The guest speaker’s name was Wally. Wally was from the Philippines and spoke quietly and then with much animation, tears, and pain as he recounted his imprisonment in Saudi Arabia, arrested for spreading his faith in a strict Islamic country. His story was grim and included beatings, solitary confinement in a 3x4 cell, naked and shackled. He told of lying in human waste. And finally he told of how he cried out to God in desperation to rescue him. God heard him. Sentenced to hang, he was pardoned by the King of Saudi Arabia himself at the last moment and ordered to leave the country in 24 hours.

I didn’t have it so bad here in America, I figured. I’m not in a 3x4 cell for my faith. I’m not naked and shackled or lying in human waste. I’ve only been cast to the side of the road with the McDonald’s trash and the maxed-out gift cards from Wal-Mart. (I saved one and checked the balance. It was gone.) I was only a walker among the beat up old flags, passed by thousands of my countrymen who live in fear. Afraid to assist a traveler. They want to. They pity you and wish you well, most of them, but they just can’t take the chance. You might be Charles Manson, or a guy with exploding shoes.

Chuck and Steve gave me a lift home after church on their way for ice cream. They were both on cell phones; Chuck to his girlfriend who would meet them for dessert, and Steve to his 2nd wife and love of his life at home in Oklahoma. I asked them to just drop me off at the corner near my home but they insisted on taking me all the way there.

“Naw, we’ll take you to the door,” Steve said, “You’ve walked enough today.”

Brothers. Countrymen.

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