By twilight I reached Hamilton, the birthplace of J. C. Penney. I walked into the town expecting to find someplace to stay but there was no hotel. I passed by the J. C. Penney Memorial Library and Museum but it was closed for the evening. I bought food at a grocery store called HY-KLAS and camped in a small, overgrown park near the museum.

The next day I walked just shy of twenty-five miles to the town of Chillicothe—the home of sliced bread. They won’t let you forget it. It’s posted everywhere, from their newspaper’s masthead to their city sign: Welcome to Chillicothe, The Home of Sliced Bread. Their school mascot is probably a toaster.

I walked all the way into the historic downtown because I saw a sign advertising the Strand Hotel, a big redbrick building that unfortunately had been converted into apartments. Across the street was a beauty salon called Curl Up & Dye.

I walked back toward 36, where I had passed a hotel. I ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant called El Toro, then stayed at the Grand River Inn, where a large, white dog of questionable temperament roamed the lobby. It cost fifty dollars. The hotel, not the dog.

The next morning I felt a little dizzy again, but still managed an early start. After twenty miles I turned north off the freeway to the town of Laclede, the hometown of General John “Black Jack” Pershing.

General Pershing had a rather colorful military career, culminating in the highest rank ever offered a U.S. military leader: General of the Armies of the United States, a rank that Congress created especially for him after distinguished service in World War I. No other American soldier ever held such a rank, until 1976, when President Gerald Ford posthumously promoted General George Washington to it.

In addition to his rank, Pershing garnered another unique distinction: he had both a missile and a tank named after him.

Laclede was quiet and picturesque, with streets lined with large elm trees, tidy neighborhoods, and many historic houses and churches. There were no hotels in the town so I continued on to the next, Brookfield, where I stayed at the Travel Inn Motel, advertised as “Veteran Owned and Operated.” My room was only thirty-five dollars for the night and had a kitchenette. There was a plethora of Christian literature in the motel’s lobby. I picked up a brochure entitled “Why Do We Die?” which I perused on my bed before going to sleep.

The next morning I ate breakfast at the Simply Country Café, then turned south on Main Street to get back to the highway. There was a narrow paved road that paralleled 36 for a few miles and I stayed on that until I reached the turnoff for Marceline—the boyhood home of Walt Disney. I walked three miles from the Marceline exit to reach the small town.