I will be in Eugene for National Train Day (Saturday, May 7) at the Amtrak station, 1-5 p.m. Nice venue! You’re all welcome to come by and say hi and/or get a book signed… and outside, watch those lonesome boxcars roll.
Blog Sparling’s new book, Wire To Wire, here: http://scottsparling.net/
Readers of Travelogue From an Unruly Youth will know Scott Sparling as ”Spider Rider” …
The Travelogue Soundtrack; no particular order:
“Travelin’ Shoes” ~ Elvin Bishop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn43E7GXHwY
“Cowboy Song” ~ Thin Lizzy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUI0boPZ8n0
“Fight or Fall” ~ Thin Lizzy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt86dPNz3L0
“Sitting In Limbo” ~ Jimmy Cliff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRoJyaZW6SA
“Travelin’ Man” ~ Bob Seger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSNp4zpi8BM&feature=related
“Tangled Up in Blue” ~ Bob Dylan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM
“Wild One” ~ Thin Lizzy
ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCdQcU9BLWk
“Couldn’t Get it Right” ~ Climax Blues Band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDcbZYQTim4
“Hurry Sundown” ~ The Outlaws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t15l2rE_RYw
“Heard It In a Love Song” ~ Marshall Tucker Band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUL68ZeclcA
“Boxcars” ~ Joe Ely
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXwsW-gxTyc&feature=related
“All Just to Get to You” ~ Joe Ely
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N05JS5Debbc
“I Ain’t Ever Satisfied” ~ Steve Earle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh8BD0quHwk&feature=related
“Double Yellow Line” ~ The Bonniwell Music Machine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxD_YIjxTxA
“Born on the Bayou” ~ CCR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIjUY3pjN8E
“Sweet By and By” ~ Richard Tillinghast
http://www.richardtillinghast.com/music.html
And that list should make for a wonderful soundtrack CD … and be a great road inspiration.
I’m adding new photos here and there throughout the site. Plan to add more, so keep your eyes on alert. Thanks for checking us out.
Pencil it in: I’m heading to Michigan in July.
I have a two-hour book signing set for July 16 in Traverse City at Horizon Books. 2 p.m.-4 p.m. I also plan a reading at one of the coffee shops in Frankfort, and maybe at the Cabbage Shed there too. Other dates and venues to be announced, but at least Traverse City is scheduled. Be there!
Travelogue From an Unruly Youth ~ I don’t read a lot of memoirs, and the ones I do read tend to be by actors or writers I respect. I have a few “normal people with normal problems” memoirs on my TBR pile but have not gotten around to any of them yet (other than Jon Robison’s LOOK ME IN THE EYE, and that was a year or more ago). This memoir came to me as a gift from a family friend. She’d purchased it while on vacation in Portland, read it, and thought I’d like it because I travel so much for work. Her note acknowledged that my form of travel (plane and car, with the occasional passenger train) is very different from Jesse Burkhardt’s back in the 70s (illegally hopping rides on freight trains), but she still thought I’d find it interesting.
I did, although perhaps not for the reason she thought I would.
Yes, I enjoyed the look into an adventure few people get to have. Burkhardt does a great job of describing not just the adrenaline highs of such a trip (watching trains zip by, risking the jumps on and off, not knowing where you’ll be when you wake up) but also the lows (bad weather, trains not moving for hours at a time) and the dangers (being arrested for trespass, being picked up by insane drivers while hitchhiking when the trains aren’t running). His style is conversational through most of these adventures, sort of easy and breezy without being lightweight.
But what I really enjoyed about the book was the chance to look back at a culture that almost certainly cannot exist anymore. The ability to sneak into trainyards and sleep in boxcars or on flatcars overnight, and the willingness of railroad employees to mostly turn a blind eye to such (and in many cases, according to Burkhardt, to actually offer suggestions on which trains to hop on, so long as you do it when no one is looking) surely is a thing of the past in our post-9/11 world. Burkhardt and his friends gain ready access to almost every train yard they attempt during their several-month adventure, only thrice (that I recall) actually encountering town or rail company police who run them off (and one of those times, Burkhardt is on his own and manages to stay hidden and return later). At one point, they are discovered within what should be a sealed boxcar while it is in transit not on a train, but on a cargo vessel on the Great Lakes! These days, if two scroungy looking guys were discovered stowing away aboard a cargo boat, they’d get more than a “stay hidden until we give the all clear, then you can come get some fresh air” from the crew!
TRAVELOGUE is not just a travel book, though. Burkhardt’s free-spirited adventure is also the story of how he lost Marie, the one true love of his life. His longing for Marie crops up on almost every page, and the reader (as well as now-Burkhardt looking back) can see the signs the Burkhardt of the ’70s doesn’t see of the relationship unraveling. Of course, Our Hero’s penchant for lusting after other women is the main cause, and traveling across the country affords him the chance to sleep with two women other than Marie, one of whom Marie knows. These were the most uncomfortable sections of the book for me. Not because I’m squeamish about reading about sex, but because Burkhardt’s writing turns most cliched when he’s describing how beautiful the women are and how good the sex is. More than once, I found myself thinking “oh god here we go again” and looking to see how far I needed to skim to get back to the travel stuff.
Overall the book is interesting and mostly a quick read, but I can only recommend it with the caveat that the relationship portions of the book are the slowest portions, and the sex scenes are best skipped. ~ Anthony R. Cardno
