Chapter 1 Long Hot Day

Chapter 1    

Long Hot Day

Dad’s WALK didn’t get off to a smooth start. The first day, Friday, September 3, 1982, was a hot one, and Dad hated the “God-damned Florida sun.”

He had planned the trip for the waning days of summer as he headed north out of Florida, and hoped to reach Washington before it got too cold there.

Thom was there to see him off, and he remembers hefting Dad’s backpack onto his own shoulders, just to see how it would feel.  Loaded with 50 pounds of books, canned goods, sleeping gear and clothing, it pulled Thom over, toppling him off his feet, which Dad found amusing, because Thom was bigger and younger than Dad, who was a compact 5’6” and 150 pounds. 

                                            

As he headed out the door, Dad turned to listen to a bit of last-minute advice from Thom. “Don’t start picking up wheel weights.”  Thom said, with a smirk.  Dad and Thom shared a hobby of shooting, and Dad had taught Thom how to re-load his own spent bullet casings using melted lead.  Always frugal, Dad found plenty of free lead just lying by the side of the road in the form of discarded wheel weights (used in the balancing of tires.)   Dad’s pocket change was always mixed with gray lead wheel weights.

                      

 

Dad would have to walk about four miles from home in Pompano Beach just to get to the starting point of his planned route, US Route 1. Within a block, the backpack he’d bought at K-Mart snapped a shoulder strap.  He kneeled in the road to rig up the strap, and then he went on, because a few folks were waiting to see him on this big day.  And Dad knew that, even though he was strong, carrying everything on his back for hours and hours, day after day, would take some getting used to.  The only way he figured to do that was to keep going.  

                               

His first stop was at the local office of his US Congressman, Clay Shaw.  Congressman Shaw had been one of a few officials who responded to Dad’s letters asking for help with his many legal appeals of the Post Office’s decision to fire him. After his visit with the congressman, Dad also wanted to stop to have a cup of coffee with his old friend Jack Delaney. Jack was a retired postal supervisor, one of the folks in the Post Office who sympathized with the carrier, and friend he called “Mac,” in his troubles with the supervisor who had replaced him.

Later, Louie Difazio , a friend who owned a deli across from the Pompano Post Office, would have a sandwich ready for McNulty at his shop.  Louie had tacked a large map of the east coast of the U.S. on the wall of the Roma Deli, where he would plot the progress of his buddy as he walked toward Washington.   Each time Louie received a postcard from the road, he would update McNulty’s progress on the map for all his local fans to see.

                                        

Across the road from Louie’s place, at the Pompano Post Office, Dad stopped in to see the new acting postmaster, Mrs. Worrell, who wished him well and made him promise to keep in touch.  She, unlike the former postmaster, was on Dad’s side in his five-year-long struggle to get his job back, but explained that, because of the actions of the previous postmaster, her hands were tied.

Dad had planned ahead for how he would keep in touch with friends and family as he walked.  In his backpack was a pile of pre-printed postcards, with postage affixed, declaring on the front, “John J McNulty / On the Road.  Walking to prove I am not “disabled” for work as a letter carrier.  I was fired (without a physical) by USPS after 11 years’ service at Pompano Beach, FL.  I am not eligible for “disability benefits.”   He would fill in the date, location, mileage, weather, and road conditions in the appropriate spaces on the back, address them, and drop these cards into the mail.  This is an example of one of those cards, sent from farther up the road. 

He relied on the Postal Service to receive money from the fund he had accumulated for this trip. We don’t know exactly how much he budgeted, but I assume it wasn’t much, as he had been working at any low-wage job he could find since he had been fired from the Postal Service.  He accepted contributions of $5 and $10 from friends, and borrowed $700 from his sister and mother, which he later paid back. In preparation, he converted all his cash into traveler’s checks, which he left with Thom. He only carried a couple of hundred dollars in checks at a time, and when he needed more, he would estimate where he would be in a few days, and call Thom to let him know where to mail a letter, in care of General Delivery.  Thom recalls, “One time, an Express Mail envelope went to the wrong Post Office in a town. The Postmaster there said, ‘It either got lost, or something happened to it,’  which, of course, didn’t help.  Dad was used to this kind of response, which didn’t make any sense, let alone fix the problem, from his long dealings with some postal supervisors. The other Post Office was across town, and I don't believe they ever brought it to him.”

In those days before cell phones, Dad sometimes had trouble connecting with people when he made calls from pay phones along the road.  He would call collect, hoping to find someone at home (and later pay us to the penny for the charges on our phone bills.)  But Dad’s pocket notebook indicated many times when calls went unanswered. Thom was the only one of us who had an answering machine at the time, but telephone operators would only put through calls when a real person answered.  So Thom re-recorded his outgoing message to say “Hello……………………………..yes.”  The pause allowed just enough time for the operator to say, “I have a collect call from John McNulty.  Will you accept the charges?” Thom says it worked like a charm, and he never missed another update from Dad by phone. 

  

                 

When Dad reached mile 12, in Boca Raton, he called Thom, who drove up to meet him for another cup of coffee as the afternoon turned to evening.

That first day was a long one. With all the delays, Dad didn’t stop to rest until after midnight.  He had covered 20 miles in 12 hours, though, before he decided to get some sleep at a motel north of Delray Beach. (During the entire journey, he would spend only 17 of the 80 nights indoors.  The rest of the time he slept cheaply and creatively.) 

From a letter he sent me from the road:

“Day 1- Sept 3, Friday- Weather was very hot (and so was the road.)  Walked through Delray at midnight.  Stopped at a cheap rundown motel north of Delray to rest up and shower. Paid $20 and had to fight my way in the door past the roaches. Asked for another room, took hot shower and went right to bed. Was barely asleep when I was awakened. Got up and saw a shadow at the bathroom window. As I was watching, the glass was pushed in and a hand reached inside. I had nothing better than a letter opener-type of knife made from an old file. I scraped “its” arm and he took off.  Tried to get the manager, but couldn’t wake him, so called police. They arrived in a few minutes, roused the manager, who came outside wearing a LONG-SLEEVED SHIRT.  It was over 80 degrees. I left that place at once and had soup and coffee with the Boynton Beach police officers. They would not let me pay, as they were interested in my reason for walking.”

I would imagine the next line of that letter could have been something like: “Stopped at the next motel, to hell with the cost,” but that was hardly what Dad did.

“ 3 am- Continued walking  through the night to Lantana.”

Those 15 miles would take him another five hours to cover.  Dad knew, he told us later, that it must have been the motel manager who tried to break into his room that first night.  It would not be his last attempted mugging.

 After almost 24 hours of continuous walking in the heat, carrying 50 pounds on is back, highlighted by a midnight wrangle with a would-be burglar, Dad stopped in Lantana at 8 am Saturday, at the aptly-named Barefoot Mailman Motel, where he rested for a day, describing his feet as “badly blistered. ”