Stories From My Hitchhiking Trip Through the South When I Was 17

In the spring of 1972, as a longhaired 17-year old, I left my home in Ossining, New York, to hitchhike south. Spending some of the time with my traveling companion, Ray Gildea of Columbus, Mississippi, I traveled throughout the South, hitting Mississippi, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis and Macon, Georgia. For me it was an incredible experience, to see the places where the great music of the South –rock ‘n’ roll, country, R&B – came from, to experience a region just a few years into integration, and to meet a lot of good folks. In a second trip a few months later, I went back to Mississippi and New Orleans, and added Muscle Shoals, Alabama and then spent a week backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. I came away from these trips with increased self-confidence, a much better understanding of our country, and a lifetime’s worth of stories. These are the stories from those trips.