Trip in time and place--the best kind

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

by Laurie Lee

Best travel book I've read in a long time. A year or so long time, anyway.  He really gets it--you know?  Some travelers don't, and their books are a bore.  But Laurie Lee knew how to travel!

So it starts out in 1934 with Mr. Lee stepping out his door in Stroud, ready to walk to London via the scenic route.  He stops in London, working for a while as a manual laborer, then heads to Spain--for no apparent reason other than he knew a sentence in Spanish.  Literally--A sentence.

But he can play the violin and has tough feet, so he sets out to tramp around Spain. Not all is well in pre-Franco Spain; if life had been prosperous and generally happy, the country might have undergone an easy transition from a monarchy to a republic and Franco wouldn't have been able to seize power. There's not a lot of politics in the book, but there are a lot of villages where food is scarce and jobs nonexistent. People who don't have a future and can't imagine one--people easily fooled by a big-talking bully who agrees with their nonsensical theories about "what's wrong" and promises to make it all come right.  Does that remind you of someone?

It's surprising Mr. Lee didn't get taken for a spy. But he appears to be a likeable tramp and certainly doesn't have any money. He's just a bum on the road who can fiddle like crazy. And write a darn good memoir.