Abrams on the Hippie Trail: A Wander Through the Prose (The Long of It)

since Bombay and I was looking forward to hearing some news from home. It was quite a disappointment when as soon as I handed over my passport the post restante official told me that there was no mail for me. I asked him how he knew without first looking in the A box. He replied that there was nothing at all in the A box, nor for that matter in the S (for Steven) box. I leaned over the counter to have a look and saw that there was hardly any mail at all in any of the boxes in the foreign mail section except for one box, which seemed to be overloaded. I asked what box that was and was told it was the M box. Nearly all the mail was for people with a surname beginning M, which I found hard to believe. I persuaded him to let me look through some of the M mail, only to find that anything addressed to Mr. Mrs. Miss Mme. Mlle, etc had been put in M box. That meant that more than 90% of the letters were totally wrongly allocated. I pointed this error out to him and fortunately he accepted my explanation. We spent the next half-hour or more sorting out the foreign mail into the correct boxes. Apart from all the mail in the M box, there was also another box full under the counter. Lo and behold, when we had finished there were three letters for me, which made all the effort worthwhile.And while Abrams was far fonder of sobriety than debauchery, he wasn’t always on the moral high ground:

Prohibition was in force in a lot of Indian states, and Madras was one such "dry" state. In most of these states it was possible for foreigners to register as alcoholics and receive a permit to buy up to two bottles of liquor per day from specially licensed shops. The Government of India Tourist Office issued the liquor permits, which was my next call. In exchange for one passport photograph I was declared an alcoholic and received my permit. I had been given the address of a shop near the YMCA where the owner would pay to use my permit, which is where I went to straight from the tourist office. The shop owner took me to the liquor shop and bought two bottles of whiskey on my permit, for
The copyright of the article Abrams on the Hippie Trail: A Wander Through the Prose (The Long of It) in Hitchhiking is owned by Bernd Wechner. Permission to republish Abrams on the Hippie Trail: A Wander Through the Prose (The Long of It) in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic