At 17, I was dating nurses and selling bootleg whiskey from the trunk of my mother's car at my very posh prep school, in Minnesota. Mother didn't want me to be going out late which put a cramp in my style; so, I arranged to have a few anarchist friends drive me close to the Canadian border for the beginning of my first and last attempt to run away from home.
I was amazed how easy it was to cross the border without anyone knowing. Thinking my mother just may have had a premonition, as she was proven capable in the past, I wanted to avoid her perhaps alerting the border guards so I walked across a farmer's field about half a mile from the Canadian border and in the midst of a woods further on, there was a gold painted post stuck in the ground 'USA' - 'Canada' on each side. I thought it would be cool to cross the border 50 times in the span of a minute 'USA', 'Canada', 'USA', 'Canada', 'USA', 'Canada', 'USA', 'Canada', 'USA', 'Canada', 'USA', 'Canada', 'USA', 'Canada', 'USA', 'Canada', - this was way before anyone could equate this behaviour with Homer Simpson.
I spent my first week in Winnipeg working in a chicken and turkey hatchery, while staying in a loft room for a dollar a day. With the money I made, I travelled to Toronto; then returned to the States via Buffalo, NY, where I began working around in Manpower agencies and staying nights in Missions or the Salvation Army.
After two weeks of this I called Mother and she was very persuasive in convincing me to return, thank goodness, as I was able to continue my education.
Mom found a lover in Positano, Italy; so she & I took the cat and the Elkhound on a ship to Naples. I stayed in Positano with her through the summer; then flew to Paris for an 'academic year abroad' which was a year after Charles de Gaulle had fought off rioting students in May. On my way to school I would occasionally see the C.R.S. marching angrily past and on one occasion a trooper broke formation to poke me in the abdomen with his night stick just for the helluvit. After my year was up, I decided to continue my education formally at the American College of Switzerland in Lesin, Switzerland the following year, 1969.
The Magic Mountain granted me a degree in Business, which I really never made any use of. Couldn't tell you which way a demand curve slopes. The only economic law I remember has put me in good stead all my life with women: 'The Law of Diminishing Returns'. This law states that when you invest more & more resources into something only to get less & less in return, it's time to drop the product line. I love that law.
I bought myself a BMW R60/5 motorcycle, got a Carnet de Passage and headed off to Egypt. My plan was to go up the Nile all the way to South Africa to get me a job with my nifty B.B.A. from the American College. Got as far as Luxor and headed back taking a slight detour to Port Said. It was just after the war and I was the first tourist to enter the area. Was treated like royalty at the border. Interesting place; met real English pirates who explained how they ripped off ships moored at night and stole machinery, etc., left on the docks unsupervised. Saw a fat, ugly, German with an eye patch marry a belly dancer who only spoke Arabic. And, I discovered one could hitch hike the seas just as my father had the skys; only my motorcycle was too large to fit on those private vessels travelling to all parts.
I returned to Naples on the sickest roller coaster of a crossing from Alexandria on a Turkish vessel; sold the bike in the U.K., and started my journey through Asia overland in Istanbul - this was known as the 'Hippie Trail'.
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