It took me awhile to time to scramble into the cab of the eighteen wheeler. I was lucky—I had snagged a ride that would take me all the way from London to Swansea, where I’d get the ferry for Ireland. What a view upon the open road. I hadn’t ever thought about the view from a truck. I hadn’t ever thought about a lot of things, it turned out.
When I decided to thumb through Ireland, I got busy putting all the fear-laced warnings about hitch-hiking out of my head. I hadn’t contemplated the also-fearful-and-more-likely reality that I’d be expected to converse with perfect strangers for hours. Before I could get too nervous, the view, the comfort and the repetition of the road helped open up my travel-mind and loosen my ear and shy-tongue.
In Swansea I filled my few days easily. I traipsed the castle, shopped for old watches, and sat still for a lengthy rant on the crown and the dole from an articulate resident squatter. The next day I played in the surf, getting horribly muddy in my new travel sandals. It didn’t occur to me to give them more than a cursory wipe and leave them outside. My elderly hostess scrubbed them to a clean and broken–in state, to my embarrassment. Over my cold beans, cold toast, cold egg and fabulous marmalade the next morning, she informed me that she and her husband strongly disapproved of my travel plans—the ferry to Ireland. “Why just last week several of our Welsh boys were killed”—soldiers serving in Northern Ireland. I knew tensions were high, but I was shocked at the hostility for the land and people across the small channel of water. I listened politely, promised not to go to Northern Ireland and set out for the ferry terminal.
We sailed overnight. I woke early stretched out in the ferry’s public lounge with the TV blaring the state funeral for Éamon de Valera, the former prime minister and partial architect of modern Ireland, whom I had never heard of. My heart sank a bit as I glimpsed something of my ignorance. Why was I traveling to Ireland? I certainly didn’t know anything much about the place. I wasn’t seeking my heritage, as so many Americans do. I read John Osborne and Brendan Behan. I loved the language. I liked the Guinness and the whiskey. So now I walked into a country somewhat in mourning, with it’s inconsistencies and controversies freshly stirred, as if that weren’t always the case in the mid-70s.
Customs gave me pause, unexpectedly. They searched me ever so thoroughly, not for the guns and bombs the London police had been checking for in my purse in theatre lobbies, but rather, for condoms. Clean on all fronts, I entered the City of Cork, thumb aloft.
My first ride, gave me the bit of political history I needed. I understood parts of each of his sentences about the devotion and infamy of de Valera. Mostly, I secured a little grounding in the dialect and the ways of the road. Those hours of ear-training were essential and the luncheon pint a nice surprise.
This middle aged man who stopped for me in his tiny well-worn car with no radio would be typical of my rides over the week. Our gab was entertainment for a long drive. In this green and friendly place a long drive was any distance between towns.
One driver left me in a pub while he made a business call in a small town. He came back for me and toured me all over the county. We wandered around small stone huts, stone circles and stone fences. A truck driver on holiday and his passenger, a young runaway, took me to the cliffs of Moher, where we crawled along our bellies to the edge. I was probably just an oddity in the day’s drive for these folks. They became a part of my trip, my travel ethic and my thirty plus years of memory.
No driver ever asked my name and I was too green in the art of conversation to properly introduce myself. But before I quite sat down in any car the driver asked my religion—Catholic or Protestant. I was taken aback at first. The ride didn’t seem to be conditioned on a particular answer. After the second time, I came to relax. I wouldn’t be scorned as a Jew. Quite the contrary, my exotic pedigree gave the driver license to deliver his views most candidly.
I didn’t realize how odd it was to spend the day with someone still nameless until, awaiting the next lift, I had rejoined the ubiquitous sheep at the side of the road . Although we hadn’t gotten to names, each driver spoke fearlessly about all the important things, especially politics, religion and sex. I followed suit, of course. It was all talk, for the most part. And there were wonderful twists of gab that roamed through history, family, the crystalline logic against reuniting with the Northern counties and the inexorable heart that craved it, all delivered with a kind-hearted glum sense of fate, wear and tear, as befitted the year and the dismal economy.
I barely touched Ireland but I learned maybe her greatest lesson, talking to people. My meanderings along her fuschia-lined roads trained my ears and my traveler’s quest for serendipity. I still love Osbourne, Behan, the whiskey and stout.