Somewhere Else by Mark Anthony Given

MAYBE  EVER'BODY  in  the  whole  damn  world  is  scared  of  each  other. All  great  and  precious  things  are  lonely.  And  now  that  you  don't have  to  be  perfect,  you  can  be  good.  There  ain't  no  sin  and there  ain't  no  virtue.  -John Steinbeck 

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        I  HITCHIKED  ACCROSS the United States for the first time in the winter of 1977 after I swiped a check out of my mother's checkbook and wrote it out for $150, bought a train ticket to Austin, Texas, I was 19 years old. There's no way in the world she would call the cops on me.  I sent a postcard from Chicago apologizing with some artful prose.  I walked up to a group of Mexicans leaning up against the train station in Austin and asked them which way was it to Interstate 10 and they all pointed in five different directions.  Oddly enough I think that it is the origin of my wanderlust because for the next 30 years everywhere I went, I wanted to be somewhere else.  

BEFORE  I GOT  TO  TEXAS  I  had never even heard of a "Taco," or a "Burrito," and every time I ordered a draft beer they would take a frozen mug out the freezer.  It was heady times.  Right before I ran out of money I hit Interstate 10 heading to the Grand Canyon for some reason or another, seams particularly odd at this point, but that's what I did.  From "Somewhere Else," by Mark Anthony Given, his new memoire.