| Luckily for me, I had an iron-clad stomach. And really, how else could it have worked? I mean, if I went into a restaurant hustling for a meal, I would have to eat what I was offered, wouldn't I? Whatever it was, whatever was floating around in it - fish eyes, bones, innards - it never bothered me. Drinking the water wasn't much of a problem either. Water was not my beverage of choice.
As I made my way through Mexico, I slept in police stations and fire stations, in caves, on benches, in barns, or in the beds of abandoned trucks. I slept in an old mine once, and in more alleys than I could count.
I carried a sleeping bag with me, a little Canadian down mummy bag that became one of the few necessities in my life. When it got cool, especially up in the higher regions, I'd bundle
down into the bag with a bottle of raicilla and let the dreamless void take me over.
 So, that was how I traveled - from Laredo to Monterrey to Mexico City to Acapulco to Puerto Angel. I picked up the Pan-American Highway, such as it was, though mostly unfinished dirt and gravel. I got down to Tapachula, which was so close to Guatemala that I decided to cross over, continuing farther into the unknown.
Years later, when I began to sculpt my Street Life Series, I created Traveler, in part, to commemorate that lifestyle. I met dozens of vagabundos like myself, men who couldn't help but wander through town after town, always searching, always restless. I suppose, if I had never learned to sculpt, I would still be out there on the open road, one foot in front of the other, one town on the horizon, a new adventure to be found. |
