it was thick and heavy and had kept him warm on many a cold night. "What'll you have?" the woman asked when she returned. "I'll have a cup of hot chocolate and two eggs over easy," he said slowly and thoughtfully. He had paused because he knew that after breakfast and a small tip for the woman he would be flat broke.

As he waited for his food his mind wandered back over the last few weeks. He remembered how he had felt the first day he set out on this journey. For years he had dreamed of hitch-hiking across the country. Finally on his eighteenth birthday, a year after high school graduation, he had left. His mother had been dead set against the idea for as long as he could remember but his step-father had thought that it would be a great adventure for him. It was his mother that had convinced him to at least finish school before going and then had further suggested that he work awhile to save up some money. He started working at a gas station just to satisfy her but soon came to realize that he would need money to travel on. In his daydreams he had never been concerned with money. He simply found a job whenever his funds ran low.

Such is the stuff that daydreams are made of! He certainly knew differently now. Here he was in the middle of his trip and he was broke. He had tried to find work along the way but the small town folks didn't seem to be crazy about hiring a stranger. Besides, most of them seemed to have kids of their own around to do the chores.

His real problems had begun when he lost part of his gear crossing a river. He had been in a hurry to get going one morning and hadn't tied a portion of his backpack tightly. As he was jumping from rock to get across a deep, fast running river his cooking utensils fell off. Weighted down by a small cookstove the bundle quickly sank from sight and was no doubt a half-mile downstream before he could think twice about how to save it.

Up until that time he had not eaten in rest-

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aurants. He would buy groceries in the towns he passed through and cook them himself. He had no idea what it cost to eat out but became educated very quickly. In each town he tried to find a stove to replace the one he'd lost. Since most of this area was governed by laws against open fires. he thought that he would be able to get a new stove anywhere but most of the shopkeepers laughed at him. "This is cattle country. People here live in the outdoors most of the day and have no use for camping equipment like you city folks use when you 'rough it'," they told him grinning from ear to ear. So he ate in coffee house after coffee house.

He had stopped asking for work after he was shunned many times. After awhile he realized that he was a long-hair in the country and it made sense that they wouldn't hire him from their viewpoint. But he knew that he was a good worker and there was no way he was going to get a hair cut just to please them. It bothered him when they stared at him but he was learning to ignore it.

The woman clattered the plates down in front of him and broke the spell of the daydream. "Stares or not," he thought, "I'm hungry." He savored each bite of the meal, well aware that this might be the last thing he had to eat for a long time. Then he slowly drank the sweet hot chocolate. Grateful to be in a warm place he wanted to give himself as much time as possible to dry out. nally he plunked his money down on the counter and got up to leave. The woman handed him his coat, which was almost completely dried out, and thanked him for the tip. "Thanks for drying my coat," he replied. "That's okay, boy. But I hope you've got enough sense to get out of the rain this time," she joked. Terry hoisted his backpack and stepped out into the overcast weather.

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