I don’t have to be…

Rick Shaw was lit in the sunshine at a busy downtown corner in Chico, California, surrounded by college students slashing away on his guitar smiling and hamming it up between his gravely voiced singing, sprinkled with a few spirit inspired staggers for good measure.

The kids scattered when Rick asked for help buying cigarettes. I took him up on his offer and another one he presented… buying him a beer so we could talk. Rick was itching to know how the audience reacted to his harmonica vignette in the “Poor People’s Palooza.”

“People started clapping and several yelled your name.”

Rick puffed up with pride, “Really?” I answered, “Yes Rick, really it was neat as hell.”

Rick sat up straight and said, “watch this.” 

Rick left the bar an hour before I did, returning to the street to look for his guitar case. I saw him as soon as I stepped onto the sidewalk playing away to another small crowd of young people, one of whom was playing air guitar alongside Rick with his longboard. Rick was a happy man doing what he loves best, playing live music for a crowd. God bless you Rick Shaw!

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A youthful Saint Louis twosome travel through Garberville Calfornia.

“We were picked up by a limousine in phoenix that took us all the way to Santa Barbara, our destination. The driver was bringing the vehicle back empty leaving the whole limo to ourselves.” – The neatest thing that has happened to them on their trip thus far.

These two young men hitchhiked from Saint Louis, where they grew up together, to visit friends and family in Santa Barbara. They are now heading north to Washington.

I asked the guitar-less one if he played any instruments. “A bunch,” he said — rattling off a cello, harmonica, guitar and several others. They decided to pack a harmonica and a guitar, with joy and wonder as their guide.

They laughed and said the Guitar helped score rides hitchhiking. Nothing like holding up a guitar blazed with north to grab one’s attention and heart.

They turned sheepish when asked about work, “We would take one of those trimming jobs,” the tall one said. The advice from the wall crowd was to be cautious,”people won’t know you and will try to rip you off. “Go with your gut feel,” said one of them.

Their enthusiasm and joy made me think, yet again, about the reality of craving to travel with no money to do so. They were decent kids out seeing the world, as are so many of the travelers I meet. They possess a will and a strength that hastens hope to all others exercising their right to pursue happiness.

Regrettably Garberville and other towns on the Northern California traveler route dislike, if not despise, travelers coming to their community, catering instead to those with money to spend and automobiles to service. Visiting backpack travelers are encouraged to travel elsewhere by a combination of tactics including hostility, eliminating places to rest, removing bathrooms and withholding water.

It’s a sad and stunningly ineffective way to treat people. Travelers come, and always will, knowing that every town has wonderful people that nourish the beauty of community inclusiveness.