A LONG WALK: WALKING ACROSS AMERICA CURED WRITER'S DISILLUSIONMENT

Peter Jenkins grew up in a blue-blazered, penny-loafered, white-bread suburb of New York City in the 1960s and graduated from college in 1973 long-haired and, like many in his generation, disillusioned with his country. Knowing not what to do next or what he was getting into, Jenkins set out walking with his dog, Cooper, to find America.

And it was Americans who cured his disillusionment.

"No matter where you go there are wonderful people everywhere," he says. "It's just a matter of being vulnerable."

About 100 people sat in Academic Auditorium Wednesday night to hear Jenkins recount some of the stories that became his first book, "A Walk Across America," now considered a classic of the genre.

There was the man who cooked up 13 Big Man burgers for Jenkins and Cooper when they appeared at his restaurant frozen at the end of a weary day walking through a Virginia blizzard. Jenkins ate seven burgers, Cooper ate six. The restaurant owner then arranged for them to spend the night on the fire station floor.

"That small bit of kindness was so wonderful to me," Jenkins said.

Then in Murphy, N.C., some black teen-agers invited him to join their basketball game. Three of them invited him to their trailer for breakfast the next morning, and their mother took the nearly penniless Jenkins in for five months.

"That experience more than any other altered my whole experience about life and people," Jenkins said.

He was not met with kindness everywhere. People in tiny Robbinsville, N.C., suspected he was a drug dealer and suggested he could leave town or get hanged. "It's kind of hard to peel out on foot," he mused..

But that was the exception to his experience. And the search for America made it possible for him to find out he was a writer.

"Each one of you has a gift," he told the mostly student audience. "It's real important to find out what that is. That's the thing that will make you happy."

Jenkins also has written a book about the second half of his walk across America, titled "The Walk West," and books about an 18-month boat trip along the Gulf of Mexico and about his climb up Everest.

He will speak again Friday morning at the annual Community Caring Council Conference at the University Center. Other speakers are motivational speaker Ken Davis and humorist Karen Kohlberg.