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Black and White: Two Contemporary American Thumbers

© Bernd Wechner

It was a busy month and the publishing houses seem to be doing thumbers a favour this year. Two books landed on my desk again, and both contemporary American hitching tales! In a day and age, where most everyone's convinced that hitch-hiking in America is dead, for the wacky lunatics, homeless and social drop outs, two decent, not-so-young Americans, one black, one white, have hit the road to prove them all wrong – or perhaps, to convince themselves they're all wrong? Whatever the reason, they both scored, and they're in your bookshops right now!

Aaron Hamilton , a retired teacher living in California wanting to visit his brother in North Carolina balked at the price of a bus ticket and gave hitching a thought. He'd only had one serious hitching experience 43 years earlier, and got frost-bite on that trip, but it did impress him. "Hitchhiking has always been the most intriguing, fascinating, hazardous, embarrassing, disappointing, and, at the same time, most gratifying experiences" that he knows! Besides, he's a faithful Christian, and not blind to America's decline into paranoia, so by laying his fate into the hands of strangers he hopes to provide an opportunity for sharing and trusting, and to demonstrate the power and joy of such. He planned to write a book, and share that message – it became From Here to There Hitchhiking (Vantage Press, New York).

Tim Brookes, a practising teacher living in Vermont found his own mid-life crisis echoed in the country around him. The America he loved was ailing. The mood was down, and he found himself reminiscing, of that first cross country trip, by thumb, in 1973. He formulated a plan: "Go back on the road. Compare it to my previous trip. Find out what America was really like now.". Besides, the idea of catching up with some of the people he met then grabbed him. To his surprise, everyone he knew thought him mad, even his wife. Their vehement objections only galvanized his resolve, so he sold the idea to the National Geographic, they paired him up with a phographer and now we have "A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow" – An American Hitchhiking Odyssey (National Geographic Society, Washington D.C.).

Hamilton left in October 1996, and took six days to cross from west to east. It is hard, very hard at times, and he reminds himself constantly of his mission, to sustain himself. But it's not as most would expect because of his colour, it's mostly sheer inexperience! It's a charming if at times mundanely prosaic text, as this gentle old man faces the reality of the road with touching naïveté.