100 years on the run

Just finished Two Lane Blacktop and realized I love stories about drifters. I've already written 2 scripts with drifters as main characters. So i think i might have found my writers trademark. Might as well do another one. The basic premise of this story is of a guy born in 1890 and dies in 1990.

It starts out with a man being born on some farm in the west. This man grows up being secluded from the rest of the world while his father preaches to him about all the badness surrounding them. When he turns 12 he sets out on night to escape his fathers preaching and to see the world. But his first experience traumatizes him as he kills an outlaw and saves an old man. He goes on the run with the oldman and together they explore the west until the old man dies and the old west dies. Depressed in the turn of the century(1910) he goes to war and ends up going awal while in europe and travels around avoiding officials until he catches a ship back to america after realizing there is nothing in europe for him.

When he gets back to america he tries to start a new life by having a family. He gets a job in a factory, meets a girl and makes a best friend. But shortly after marrying her and knocking her up his friend takes his own life after the depression hits. The drifter then realizes that he cannot deal with having attachment with anyone so he flees on horseback to find himself in the desert. He ends up meeting the family of the man he killed a long time ago and he apologizes to them. Then in the late 30's he rides on horseback to all 4 corners of the state. but he starts to go mad when he starts to realize all the prophecies that his father preached so long ago are starting to come true and his money is starting to run out. So he goes to a bank and tries to rob it, but he gets caught and kills a police officer. He goes to jail for 20 years. While in jail he tells all of his regrets to his other inmates and they all feel inspired by his tales. During his tenure he regains sense of community and finally starts to have friends again, meeting another old western chap who robbed the same bank as him 20 years prior. But they send him to the chair and our drifter begins to understand that he must accept that friends and family will die, so once he is released he seeks out his family. His wife has remarried and is unsympathetic to his cause, but she tells him to find there son, who set off on an adventure similar to his, maybe with his new found sensibility he can change his sons life before it goes down the drain.

He sets out on the road, travelling until the late 60's before finding his son within the hippie clan. He then goes on the road with his son until they get in a car accident and his son is killed and he is disabled. Again depressed and down, the drifter stays in a hospital for awhile where a young female nurse gains interest in him. Through the 70's he writes books about his tales and one of them was made into a movie while he stayed nestled in the forest living comfortably away from society, the nurse visits him, but he wards her off knowing that he can't afford another let down. She reads one of his books and finds that it lacks realistic characters, yet the story is rich. She leaves him alone until the late 80's where he realizes his days are coming to an end, so he goes on the road one last time to explore all of the places he has been over the days, and visiting the graves of his friends and family lost. He dies at the same place he was born.

This seems like it would be an incredibly long epic... Maybe a novel idea. I'll set out on it someday.