One Night in an American Picture
sack we'd awakened in him a nostalgic longing for the road again. He describes the beauty of hitching, the flowing sense of time and space, waiting for rides on starlit nights in the Arizona desert with thunder storms on the horizon ... as only a fellow lost soul, thumbing spirit could really understand. I have to confess, I felt akin. I rarely have someone so elegantly describe, what I feel of thumbing, and he too rarely has someone to mirror it so.
He just hasn't the time to hitch anymore! He has a van with a fortune of equipment in back with which he tours the States presenting the slide show. He's on the road alone now, barely finds any hitchers on the road anymore, and most of those are criminals, or smelly bums and deadheads (Grateful Dead groupies). But they're the best kind he reminisces, the most interesting and most needy. Still, he's lonely.
I told him of a businessman who picked me up around 2 a.m. one summer night, as I slept with my head in my lap at the exit of some motorway services headed for Berlin. He'd backed up up off the motorway, having spotted me there while racing by, unhindered by any competing traffic. As we spoke of hitching, he said much the same, of his lack of time, of his longing for the road, that sense of freedom, unhurriedness, unplannedness. I think by the time we'd got to Berlin, I'd convinced him to take a holiday again and thumb the time away.
So too, I like to think that maybe Jacob will make some time again, for the road.
Daniel, his son of 19 years, in the Danish Guinness Book of Records as a 2 year old who'd hitched 16,000 km, was full of questions. Two years running now he'd inter-railed Europe with his girlfriend and recounted tales of attempted rapes and sleepless nights on Gypsy plagued trains ... I'm sure he was thinking too, that they may well be safer on the road ... how ironic.
Well, I too was short on time, and was back in Geneva the next day again (ironically, as Jacob jested, not by thumb!), but I cherished the encounter, and hope Jacob did too, and might remember who I am next time. He has a most amazing history, a most amazing heart, and the picture show to tell it ...
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