Thumbing Around: Robert W. Norris Writes - Page 3
© Robert W. Norris
For the next week John explored the streets: Greenwich Village, Yankee Stadium, the Empire State Building, the United Nations, Rockefeller Center, Madison Square Garden. He watched double features in afternoon movie theaters for a dollar, then ate at ethnic delicatessens. The entire world seemed to pass him by as he paced the streets--the midget paraplegics, the hipster pimps, the hollow-eyed beggars, the decrepit winos, the Central Park artists, the sophisticated men and women in their business attire.
Finally, he was on Icelandic Air Lines flight 181 on his way to Luxembourg. He was leaving behind the country of his birth, the country he no longer felt a part of, venturing forth with no itinerary, just the hand of fate to guide him. It was as if some divine source were dragging him toward an unknown destination. It was blind obedience to a gut feeling, not unlike his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War.
Editor's Comments
It's nice to find hitching described for the Japanese, a land where thumbing is culturally non-existant, and equally nice to see it described in language available to a broad range of English students. It's also an interesting and very rare phenomenon to see an autobiographic account written in the third person! Took me a little getting used to.
If you'd like to read the whole book, Robert has kindly made it available on-line at:
http://www2.gol.com/users/norris/roadsdo...
