Staff photo by JOHN CONRAD

Walking in a light rain up East Ninth Street, Rudy Stolfer from Washington, Pa., continuing on his pilgrimage across America

Rudy Stolfer bearing a coffin on a cart and a unique point of view, Tuesday passed through Texarkana during his one-man march across America. Beginning in Pennsylvania, Stolfer, 48, started his march for world peace with five people and a dog named Horton. Bad weather left the march with only two people as the others returned home. Horton returned with her owner to Florida after cold weather settled in Virginia.

When a Lincoln Town Car ran over his only remaining cohort in Alabama crushing their coffin in the process, Stolfer elected to continue alone. "The car crashed into the cart and broke both of my friend's legs," Stolfer said. "He spent over three weeks in a hospital in Birmingham. Then his family flew him back to California." Stolfer met some people who helped him build a new coffin before he continued on his trip.

The idea for the coffin originated when Stolfer joined a march to deliver a coffin to the drug czar in protest of the war on drugs. Now he uses a coffin as a symbol of the world dying from a series of social ailments.

"A lot of people who have protested before me." he said, Yeah, we did that, and nobody listened,"' Stolfer said as he stood on a curb on East Ninth Street. "I say, if that's the way you feel why don't you shoot yourself? Why are you having children if you don't have any faith?"

The trip spanning five months thus far is to continue until he reaches the West Coast. There is no timetable for the march's end. Stolfer said he will have to return to Ashley County in Arkansas on May 5 after being arrested for allegedly carrying drug paraphernalia. "I met a little man with a big gun after 24 hours in Arkansas," Stolfer said. "Because of that, I spent Easter weekend in jail." After paying $100 to get his coffin out of impoundment, Stolfer headed toward Texarkana, sleeping on the side of the road and asking people for food or money to help him along the way.

"I am not homeless," Stolfer said. "America is my home. But I am houseless." He said he uses the coffin to hold his bedroll and a few supplies, but does not sleep in it because it is too small.

He said his march will cause world peace by stirring faith in the people he meets.

"I'm also doing this for me more than anybody else so I can place this life in perspective before I wig out and start jumping in front of cars in traffic and become somebody who belongs in a padded cell," " Stolfer said. .