Anti-Hero's Welcome

As a chill autumn wind whipped across northern Iowa last week, a gaunt, solitary figure hiked steadily through the cornfields, waving to speeding semitrailers, swatting at snarling dogs with his walking stick, singing and talking to himself. The man was David Kunst, 35, who left his home town of Waseca, Minn., 4 1/2 years ago with an unusual objective: to walk round the world (with the help of airplanes, of course, to carry him across the oceans). Though no match for the rawboned Kunst, who was averaging 40 miles a day, TIME Correspondent Richard Woodbury puffed along for a while as the walker came into the homestretch. Woodbury's report:

"Boring country," sniffed the blunt-spoken Kunst as he trudged north on State Highway 169 a bare 100 miles from Waseca. "Been through it before." He was mowing his way through the final week of his 13-country, 15,000-mile odyssey.

Until 1970 David Kunst was known as a good provider for his wife Jan and three small children; he headed a county survey crew and at night worked as a projectionist at the local theater. But he was also a restless young man who loved drag racing and hated the complacency he found around him. "A few years ago something snapped," he said. "I made up my mind that I would do something that would be a little different. I was tired of Waseca, tired of my job and a lot of little people who didn't want to think. So I just walked out of town." And walked and walked--right through 21 pairs of shoes.

When he set out with his brother John and a mule donated by the Waseca Chamber of Commerce, some of the townspeople dismissed the caravan as "two asses and a mule." Kunst's wife recalled: "I kept expecting him to call from La Crosse and say 'Come over and pick us up.' " The first night the Kunsts made it 14 miles to Owatonna, then collapsed with sore feet in a city park. But gradually they toughened up and, equally important, became adept at hustling meals and lodging; they were presented with everything from cough drops by the Smith Brothers to two cases of C-rations by an Air Force colonel in Ankara. In Manhattan, they stayed for a week as guests of a Holiday Inn but caused some consternation when they brought their mule right into the lobby. The mule was promptly led off to be tethered, but he relieved himself before he got out the door.

Bandit Attack. Though the Kunsts were often greeted royally (by Princess Grace of Monaco, among others), they also had misadventures. Mistaken for smugglers in the Spanish countryside one night, they were prodded awake by guards with Sten guns. The mayor of a French village chased them out of his house when they came to call, and they were stoned by anti-Americans in Iran and Turkey.

The tragedy of the journey occurred when the brothers reached Afghanistan two years ago. Walking near Kabul, the pair were attacked by bandits who had read in a local newspaper that they were collecting money for UNICEF along the way. Actually, they had been collecting only pledges (now totaling $10,000, Kunst claims), not cash, and had only a few dollars.

John Kunst, then 25, was shot dead; David, with a bullet hole in one lung, flew home to Waseca to recuperate for three months. When he returned to Afghanistan to resume the journey, his companion was his other brother Peter, now 29. Refused per mission to cross China, the Kunsts trudged to Calcutta, then detoured to Australia.

The people of Waseca (pop. 6,700) had been preparing to hail David as a conquering hero. But when Kunst reached Nebraska last month, he began denouncing them to newsmen for their "hypocrisy, pettiness, self-righteousness and narrow-mindedness." The townsfolk have also been offended by his announcements that he often enjoyed female companionship along the way and has no intention of resuming his marriage or living in Waseca again. "I'm a social deviate, a radical, even a little crazy," he said recently. "I don't fit into anybody's pattern and I never will."

At week's end the mayor, the local Congressman and Senator Hubert Humphrey, who donated $250 to the trip, all stayed away from the welcome-home ceremonies. Nonetheless, more than 5,000 Wasecans were on hand as Kunst, clutching his blue rucksack, strode up to his starting point, the Waseca Cinema on State Street. There he swigged champagne, toasted the U.S. as "the best damn country I've ever been in," and ended his improbable odyssey.

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