"A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow": An American Hitchhiking Odyssey
by Tim Brookes
Overview
From the Publisher
In 1973, Brookes, then a British student, spent three months hitchhiking across America, dazzled by a girl from Iowa he had met at Oxford. In 1998, Brookes, now a writer, teacher, and longtime Vermonter, decides to re-create that experience and hitchhike to the same places again. He's not crazy: he periodically takes trains or buses and carries a cell phone in his daughter's sock. He tracks a few of the people and most of the places he encountered the first time, but this is no self-referential wallowing. He's not interested in reliving the past but in illuminating the present, and he carries both a cheerful lack of anxiety and a disarming lack of pretense. In crisp, short chapters, he recounts conversations with the folks who pick him up and his responses to the places he goes: a gospel church in San Francisco; a previous wife in Seattle; a desolate reservation in South Dakota. He finds kindness and gratitude, and he clearly has those within himself as well.
My thoughts
I started out loving this book and ended up feeling betrayed! The book is billed as An American Hitchhiking Odyssey. That is what I thought I was going to read. It was my understanding that the author was going to try to repeat his 1973 hitchhiking experience across America to see what had changed. Sounds great, right?
It would be, except that he cheats! He takes buses, he rents cars, he travels in the vehicle of his photographer -- and yes, he occasionally hitchhikes! Personally I think either the guy hitchhikes all the way or he describes his book in a different manner.
That said, it is enjoyable reading. My favorite parts are getting to meet the people who pick him up and following along with the adventures he has a result of his friendships. If he'd have stuck to those stories instead of taking other modes of transportation and then complaining about how he'd rather be hitching, I'd have given the book a three-star rating.
One observation I'd like to make is that the book is good, clean fun. A hitchhiking book could easily turn raunchy, and yet Tim Brooks gives it a lot of class. That's worth mentioning, and I compliment the author on having the skill to write a book, keep it clean, and still hold the interest of the reader. Way to go, Mr. Brookes.
Favorite Passage
After 20 minutes of watching hawks circle on the updraft from the cliffs, I got picked up by a tall, lean surfer in a wetsuit driving a venerable faded blue VW bus, who was going a few miles up to Salmon Creek.
Five minutes later I got a ride almost all the way to Seattle.
His name was Jay, and he was driving a new Nissan Pathfinder that was, as they say, loaded. Digital thermometer and compass. GPS that told him the heading and distance to any destination he punched in. He was, by all appearances, an American success story: He had retired at 36, had bought himself a boat and a motor home and the Pathfinder and the GPS, had taken up scuba diving, and now he was just tooling around, doing whatever he pleased.
In late 1990, he said, five friends and he, with no money, founded Wizards of the Coast. "We didn't even have a business plan, just six people in the basement of a house." The company designed and sold games, role-playing games. They were, in a sense, professional fantasists. In July 1993, their game Magic: The Gathering was released. "We hocked ourselves to the eyeballs to do Magic. By July '97 sales in 52 countries were well over $100 million a year. We had 500 employees, four overseas offices, the product was being made in ten languages, and the rulebook was being printed in 30 languages. There are Magic leagues, and a professional tour," not to mention one and a half million a year in prize money for seniors and scholarship money for under-18s.
I was immediately a little defensive. It's hard to be a financial failure in America, especially if you're sitting next to someone rich; and although I was eight years older than Jay, I instinctively felt somehow his junior, and started asking him groveling questions about his philosophy of life, as if I were writing for a money magazine.
