was contrary to everything he stood for. In many ways, my father was a typical Episcopalian, a believer in Jesus Christ. But he also worshiped another secret deity - respectability. A colonial-style house, a beautiful wife, obedient children—my father enjoyed having it all, but he valued even more that his friends and neighbors knew what he had. He liked being admired. He liked (figuratively speaking) to swim vigorously on his back every day in a dominant environment. Therefore, in his understanding, the idea of ​​going around the world for fun simply did not make sense. It wasn't done that way. In any case, not decent children of decent fathers. Children of other parents could afford this. This was done by beatniks and hipsters.

Perhaps the main reason for my father's obsession with respectability was the fear of chaos within himself. I felt it in my gut, because from time to time this chaos broke out from him. There would be a phone call in the living room on the first floor - without warning, late at night, and when I picked up the phone, I would hear the same reasonable voice: "Come, pick up your old man."

I put on my raincoat—on nights like this it always looked like it was drizzling outside—and drove to the city center where my father's club was located. I remember this club as distinctly as I remember my own bedroom. A hundred years old, with floor-to-ceiling oak bookshelves and head-rested chairs, it looked like the living room of an English country house. In other words, he was eminently respectable.

I always found my father at the same table, in the same chair, always carefully helping him up. "Are you okay, dad?" “Of course it’s okay.” I always took him outside, to the car, and all the way We went home and pretended nothing had happened. He sat quite straight, almost in a regal pose, and we had a conversation about sports, because talking about sports I distracted myself, calmed myself during stress.

My father also liked sports. Sports are always respectable. По этим и дюжине других причин я ожидал, что отец отреагирует на мой зондаж у телевизора, наморщив лоб и быстрым уничижительным высказыванием: «Ха-ха, crazy idea. Not a chance, Buck." (My birth name is Phillip, but my father always called me Buck. Actually, he called me that before I was born. My mother told me that he had a habit of stroking her belly and asking: “How is little Buck doing today?”?”) However, as soon as I stopped talking, as soon as I stopped laying out my plan, my father leaned forward in his vinyl chair and stared at me with an amused look. He said that he always regretted that he did not travel much in his youth. Said the proposed trip might add the finishing touch to my education. He said a lot of other things, but everything he said was more focused on the trip than on the Crazy Idea, but I did not think to correct him. I wasn't going to complain, because in the end he gave me a blessing. And money. “OK,” he said. - Okay, Buck. OK".

I thanked my father and ran out of the corner where he was watching TV before he had a chance to change his mind. It was only later that I realized with a sense of guilt that it was my father's inability to travel that was the hidden, and perhaps the main reason that I wanted to go on a trip. Эта поездка, эта crazy idea оказалась бы верным способом стать другим, чем He. Less respectable.

And perhaps no less respectable. Maybe just less obsessed with respectability.

The rest of the family was not so supportive. When my grandmother got wind of my itinerary, one of the destinations in particular got her excited. "Japan! she cried. Why, Buck? Just a few years ago, the Japs intended to kill us! Have you forgotten? Pearl Harbor! The Japanese tried to conquer the whole world! Some of them are unaware that they lost! They are hiding! They might take you prisoner, Buck. Gouge out your eyes. Everyone knows they do it… Your eyes!”

I loved my mother's mother. We all called her mother Hatfield. And I understood her fear. Japan was almost as far away as Roseburg, the urban farming community in Oregon where she had been born and lived all her life. I spent many summers there with my grandparents the Hatfields. Almost every night we sat on the porch, listening to the croaking of blue-legged lithoria (hefty bullfrogs that make sounds more like a lowing - hence their English name - and not a croak. - Approx. Per.) competes with sounds from a floor standing radio. In the early 1940s, everyone's radio was always tuned in to war news.

And the news has always been bad.

The Japanese, as we have been told many times, have not lost a single war in the last 2,600 years, and there seems to be nothing to indicate that they will lose the current one. We suffered battle after battle, defeat after defeat, until finally, in 1942, Gabriel Hitter, who worked for the Mutual Broadcasting radio network, began his late-night radio message with a high-pitched exclamation: "Good evening everyone - good news today!" The Americans finally won the decisive battle. Hitter was skewered by critics for his shameless cheering, reminiscent of cheerleading dances in a stadium, for refusing any pretense of journalistic objectivity, but the public's hatred of Japan was so strong that most radio listeners hailed Hitter as a folk hero. After that, he invariably began his radio reports with the phrase: "Good news for tonight!"

From my earliest memories: Mom and Dad Hatfield sitting with me on the porch, Dad Hatfield peeling a yellow Gravenstein apple with a pocket knife, cut and give me a piece, he eats the same one, then gives me another, then repeats over and over again until this procedure for cutting an apple suddenly slows down dramatically. On air Hitter. Shh! Quiet! I can still see us all sitting munching on apples and gazing up at the night sky, so absorbed in the thought of Japan that we almost expect to see Japanese Zero fighter jets blast past the constellation Canis Major. No wonder, on my first airplane flight, when I was about five years old, I asked, “Dad, are the Japs going to hit us?”

Though mother hatfield's words got the hair on my head stirred with fear, I began to persuade her not to worry, saying that everything would be fine with me and that I would even bring her a kimono as a gift. My twin sisters, Jean and Joan, who were four years younger than me, didn't seem to care where I went or what I did.

And my mother, as I remember, did not say anything. She rarely spoke at all. But this time there was something different in her silence. Something like approval. Even for pride.

I spent weeks reading, planning, preparing for the trip. I made long runs, thinking over every detail as I ran, and at the same time competing with wild geese flying over me in a tight V-formation. I read somewhere that geese, attached at the end of the wedge and using the turbulence of the upward air flow formed in front of those flying as lift - reverse thrust, expend only 80 percent of the energy compared to the leader and the birds flying in front. Every runner understands this. Runners in front always have a harder time and take more risks than others.

Long before I approached my father, I decided that it would be nice to have a travel companion, and that companion should be my Stanford boxmate Carter. Although he was a star hoop spinner at William Jewell College, Carter did not become the typical student-athlete, dim-witted, and sports-obsessed. He wore thick glasses and read books. Good books. It was easy to talk to him and easy to remain silent, equally important qualities of a friend. Vital for a companion when traveling together.

But Carter laughed in my face. When I put in front of him a list of places I would like to visit - Hawaii, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rangoon, Calcutta, Bombay, Saigon, Kathmandu, Cairo, Istanbul, Athens, Jordan, Jerusalem, Nairobi, Rome, Paris, Vienna, West Berlin, East Berlin, Munich, London,” he doubled over and laughed. I lowered my eyes and began to apologize, after which Carter, still laughing, said: “What a cool idea, Buck!” I took my eyes off the floor. He didn't laugh at me. He laughed with joy, with glee. He was impressed. It really takes courage to put together a route like this, he said. More precisely, iron eggs. He wanted to join the team.

— DO NOT LET MINOR FAILURES DISTURB YOU. - ALMOST ALL FAILURES IN THE WORLD ARE MINOR.

A few дней он получил «добро» от своих родителей, а также кредит от father. Carter never fussed to no avail. I saw a loophole - press forward! That was Carter. For myself, I decided: I could learn a lot from such a guy, traveling with him around the world.

Each of us packed one suitcase and one backpack. Only the essentials, as we agreed with each other. Several pairs of jeans, several T-shirts. Sneakers, desert boots, sunglasses, plus a pair of summer soldier's santan (a 1960s word for light khaki army uniform).

I also packed one good suit. Green, with two buttons, from Brooks Brothers. Просто на тот случай, если моя crazy idea даст плоды.

On September 7, 1962, Carter and I loaded into a beat-up old Chevy and drove