A Walk Across America - Chapters 23-24

As painful as it was to leave Homer's Mountain and Smokey Hollow, I bet leaving the Farm without Cooper was the hardest thing Peter has ever done.  He must really be a strong person to be able to do this.  Now he will be walking alone.  Peter did not want to walk across Alabama because he had heard horrible things about the state.  He was really afraid.  Once he was in Alabama a truck with a family in it pulled over and asked him if he wanted to join them for dinner.  While at their house he saw Governor Wallace on TV and decided he would walk to Montgomery to visit with him.  He looked up someone he had met that lived in Sheffield, Alabama and they invited him to stay with them.  The father was a doctor and wouldn't let Peter leave because he had a bad cough.  He had walking pneumonia.  I am amazed at how Peter keeps pushing himself.  Peter learned about Southern hospitality.  He was totally amazed by Alabama.  It wasn't anything like people had told him.  He learned alot about the Civil War and also that Alabama's favorite subject is football. 
Peter was in Shelby County in a phone booth talking to his family when someone drove up and took his backpack.  There were four drunnk men in a truck and they threatened  Peter.  He was very afraid and I would have been too.  When he told him he worked for a magazine and was walking across America they seemed to believe him and even offered him a beer.  They finally let him go but Peter hid in the woods off the road and they kept driving by looking for him.  I wouldn't have slept all night either.  The next day when Peter was walking the man drove up and apologized to him.