HURON – You can call him Charley Boy.
He’s just fine with that because it’s his real name.
Marc Charleyboy.
For those southbound on Highway 37 Thursday afternoon, he was the fellow you saw hunched over and pulling a two-wheeled cart at a pretty good clip northbound between Mitchell and Huron.
It’s something he’s done in 21 western states since 1992.
He’s come 57,000 miles.
Coming along with him is a rather dry sense of humor.
“So, 57,000 miles? Is that on the level?” he was asked as cars and trucks whizzed by.
“Oh no,” he answered. “50,000 of it was hilly.”
Charleyboy has a million stories he has accumulated during his years on the road. It’s when he’s happiest, being outside, free from the confines of houses and hotels. He goes stir crazy in them. A fellow helped him out last weekend so he could weather the blizzard inside in Mitchell, and he hated all three days.
He decries cell phones, technology that prompts passersby to call the authorities to report a suspicious man pulling an obviously heavily loaded cart along the highway.
They call to report him, but nearly all don’t stop to talk to him, to learn he’s just fine, thank you. They’re afraid of him, or think he’s poor. Every time officers arrive, they apologize to him, but say they have to check on him.
“I’ve been stopped 346 times,” Charleyboy said.

Originally from Minot, N.D., he started his solo journey at Bodega Bay in northern California. For Alfred Hitchcock fans, it’s where the famous filmmaker shot “The Birds.”
“Being there, there’s Bodega and Bodega Bay,” he said. “He was rather loose with his interpretation of Bodega Bay. She (actress Tippi Hedren) rode across the bay in four minutes. You don’t do that.”
He walked through the Huron area about a decade ago. Before heading out early Friday morning, he accepted an invitation to stay the night at the home of a new friend from Huron who did stop to talk to him along Highway 37 not far from Woonsocket.
Maybe he’d head toward Redfield, then on to Watertown, he said when asked where he’d head after Huron.
“Does it look like I know where I’m going?” he quipped.
He’s been appreciative of the fact that the land around here is flat, making it easy to pull his cart.
The cart and its contents weigh about 450 pounds. He constructed it with the help of friends.
“People call it a peanut wagon, it’s an ice cream wagon, it’s a buggy,” Charleyboy said. “One of my favorites is it’s a Korean night soil cart,” a name offered by a Korean War veteran.
“If this was a box just sitting on the road without any wheels, you’d have a very difficult time trying to move it,” he said. “But it rolls good.”
How many miles does he walk in a day?
“Between three and 59,” he said. A good tail wind one day pushed him along for nearly 60 miles.
Life outside has shown him the wonders of nature.
“I did see a bald eagle last week,” Charleyboy said. “I saw about 30,000 snow geese go off at once and just blank out the sky.”
He says he’s also seen ghosts.
He once saw a farmer standing in the corner of his field. “He was just calmly looking at me,” he said.
Charleyboy had to look back to check on traffic that had been coming too close to him. He was seriously injured once when a vehicle struck him and his cart.
When he turned to look back at the farmer, he was no longer there.
At 65, he calls himself an old sign painter. But he also says he’s a born-again occultist. “Strange things happen around me,” he said.
He affects computers. He can’t be in the same room with a copy machine.
Online, he’s referred to as Nomad Charlie Boy. Those who have seen him and those who have talked to him post that they are impressed by what he’s doing, by how far he’s walked, how difficult it must be to pull that heavy cart down the road day after day after day.
And his name really is Charleyboy.
“It’s so much fun telling the truth with a grin,” he said. “Nobody believes it, ever.”

Roger Larsen/Plainsman
North Dakota native Marc Charleyboy pauses on the side of Highway 37, south of Huron on Thursday afternoon. Charleyboy has walked 57,000 miles in a continuing trek across the United States.