"Travel takes you to places in yourself you might not otherwise visit . . ."
In this delightful and intriguing collection of essays, Trevor W. Harrison, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge and a well-known contributor to public media, tells sometimes light-hearted and sometimes poignant tales of his life between his late teens and early thirties, a time when, like many other young people of the era, he travelled the world, beginning with hitchhiking or driving across western Canada and the United States in the early 1970s and travelling to Europe and Asia in the mid970s and early 1980s.
From working on the railway in a small town to playing a Hittite soldier in a Biblical movie, from life among the hippies on a famous Greek beach to life in a houseboat on India's Lake Dal, from bullfights in Barcelona to the towering Himalayas, Harrison invites readers to travel with him, to meet the people, see the places, and experience the events he encountered as a young man.
The stories we tell of our lives, Harrison says, are "the offspring of a pleasurable intercourse between fiction and non-fiction, gestated over time." There is nothing more innately human than the telling of tales.
Enjoy these while you, too, are still this side of the Elysian Fields.
Preface
These stories do not an autobiography make. I generally like biographies, though not those okayed by the subject, but dislike most autobiographies for being self-serving and often boring. No one wants to be a prisoner condemned to listen to Uncle Bob repeat stories that lacked interest the first time around. The blessing of print and digital books is that readers can set them aside, something not easily done with Bob.
This collection of stories is culled from a briefcase-literally and figuratively-of memories. The connecting thread of each story is often travel. Each is presented more or less temporally, beginning with hitchhiking or driving across western Canada and the United States in the early 1970s and later travels in Europe and Asia in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. The stories are meant to stand on their own. Beyond travel, however, the centrepieces of each tale are the people, places, and events I encountered as a young man.
Though some of the stories we tell are outright fabrications, most are conveyed in good faith to others and, especially, to ourselves. They are approximations and interpretations; most often, justifications. Storytelling begins early on-"Johnny hit me; I didn't do anything"-and continues until our last breath. Over time, our stories go through a kind of sorting house where the best ones are kept; some details foregrounded, others moved off-stage, a few shovelled into a cranial dumpster. Stories organize the bric-a-brac of our lives. They provide a falsely coherent meaning to things that may or may not have happened in a time and place that no longer exists. They impose an imaginary world of pretend linearity. Our stories are the offspring of a pleasurable intercourse between fiction and non-fiction, gestated over time.
The stories compiled here are from my "single" life, from my late teens and early twenties, ending a decade later. Most are based on notes taken at the time, only occasionally augmented by memory or Internet sources. With the exception of my family members and Dave, who features in "My Movie Career" and "Arab Work," the names of others and some locales have been changed.
Few things in life actually make for a good story-to anyone, that is, except Uncle Bob. My loyalty, first and foremost, is to the reader, so read and enjoy, and if you find this Bob-ish, move on.
Preface
Nineteen: An Introduction
My Railway Career
In Praise of Dumbass Jobs
California Dreaming
Gran Canaria
Incident in a Small Village
Barcelona, Con-Men, and Bulls
Paradise Lost
Near Death by Rabbit
The New Orleans Blues
My Movie Career
"Arab Work"
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