Hitchhikers meet some of the most interesting people. Or at least they did when I was thumbing rides between 1968 and 1972, mostly in the US and Canada, but also in Europe and Africa. I even got picked up by some very nice moms whose own kids were hitchhiking. They felt an obligation to offer lifts to young people since other drivers were picking up their children. I told the moms that it was kind of them to stop for…
I have always had a fascination with trains. It started because my parents never owned a car or ever drove one, so we often travelled on trains and buses and it was a lot more comfortable and fun to ride the trains. I would stare out the window at the scenery flashing by and imagine I was running at super speed beside the train, leaping over fences, dodging other obstacles, creating an exhilarating sense of freedom and agency that my…
Purely by coincidence I happened to be very close to the two biggest North American rock festivals of 1969. Everyone knows about Woodstock, but the other one is often described as the greatest rock festival that nobody remembers. Except for the 110,000 of us who were there. That’s what happens when the organizers make no attempt to film three days of tremendous musical performances. It has no afterlife. When the most famous rock festival of them all followed 12 days…
Sometimes I just can’t make up my mind. That’s when I leave things up to fate. It was late September 1970, and I had been hanging out at my parents’ place in West Orange, New Jersey, for about a month. It was my second visit that year and it was clearly time to move on. But where to? I could hitchhike back to Edmonton and see if I could land a job, but I was also tempted to head north…