In which I make my teenage self very happySeptember 29th, 2008 @ 7:01 am
I tired to be all smart and crap in high school. I really got into art history and visiting museums with my friends. We would go out to JB’s restaurant (one small step up from Denny’s) and sit and talk about books and poems and art.
During this time I also go into visiting used book stores. I loved buying books that had been read and loved previously. There was something extra special about reading a copy of “Gone with the Wind” that was covered in coffee stains and notes in the margins. To me this just felt more like the way a book should be read.
I would visit the used book store and come home with piles of paperback books to fill my time with. I read the classics as well as books I had bought solely based on the cover and the wear and tear. One visit to the bookstore ended with a hardback book I picked up because the description on the book sounded interested to “pretending to be smart” teenage Isabel.
The story traces the travels of six young people who tour Europe and Africa in the 1960’s searching themselves and a meaning for their lives in a world where they have no control in their own affairs.
I fancied myself somewhat of a hippy, so a book about hippies sounded right up my alley. And so I bought “The Drifters” by James A. Michener and started to read it. From the first chapter about Joe, a Vietnam draft dodger, this book captured my attention. It’s actually quite odd that I loved this book as much as I did. There was nothing similar between my life in small town Utah, as a devout Mormon, to the characters in the book that traveled around Europe experimenting with drugs and having random sex.
They were truly hippies and I truly wasn’t.
So the book follows this group of kids from all over the world. They each have their own story and reason for ending up in Torremolinos, Spain. But that’s where they end up, at the Wilted Swan bar in Torremolinos. James A. Michener writes about Torremolinos like it’s some kind of magical place for people who love life. The front of the book had a map of all the locations in the novel. I studied where Torremolinos was in Spain and just assumed it was a mythical location that had been dreamt up for the sake of the novel.
Meanwhile I lived in Utah, where it snowed all the time and the only beaches were ones near salt lakes and chemical filled lakes.
Over the next years I read and reread “The Drifters” any chance I got. I wrote a paper about it for my high school English class as well as one of my college English classes. I tried to talk my friends into reading it and often quoted passages to boyfriends.
As far as I recall I never convinced anyone to read it.
Until about three years ago when I loaned my paperback copy to my BFF May. (My hardback copy has since been lost.) I’m not sure that I really believed she would read it. And if she did read, I wasn’t sure she would like it.
But she did read it. And she did like it. She also asked me how in the heck 17 year old Isabel had gotten her hands on that book? She understood that it really wasn’t the typical book a 17 year old who is stuck lives in Utah would read. I agreed with her and recounted the story of just finding it in a random used bookstore and being drawn to it.
And yet I never got online and looked up anything about the book. It was like this little gem of a secret that was mine alone. I took it with me when we went on vacation so I could read about these kid’s travels while I traveled.
(Mexico 2005. Reading “The Drifters” on the beach.)
And still, I never really thought much about where the book was set.
That is until The King and I were driving to our destination outside of Malaga, Spain and I saw this sign.
I freaked. The King was all “I told you this place existed and that we’d be driving through it!”
I was all “I don’t remember!! HOLY CRAP!”
And then I freaked out a little more.
I sat in the car trying to channel my teenage self. I pictured myself sitting alone in the bedroom of my youth, reading “The Drifters” and dreaming of far away places. Places that I never ever for one second could have dreamed I would one day visit. I wanted teenage Isabel to know that I was there.
I was in Torremolinos.
Days later, on our way back to the airport to fly to Formentera, we took a little detour and drove around Torremolinos. I didn’t see a bar called the Wilted Swan. I didn’t see anyone that looked like Joe or Yigal or Gretchen or Cato.
But I was there. I was in Torremolinos. And that’s all I cared about.
Teenage Isabel was happy.
So tell me, what book local would you like to visit? And why?
Addictions · Back in the Day · Me · Vacations
Becky
said,
September 29, 2008 at 4:26 pm
You my friend were living my dream. While I haven’t yet read Drifters (but have placed a hold for it at the library), I’ve lived my life wishing I could see places I’d read about. But I’ve really visited one.
When I was in Virginia, I went to Florida on spring break. One of the places I drove through on the way was Charlottsville, VA. When I was in 7th grade I LOVED VC Andrews series Flowers in the Attic. I remember driving through Charlottsville and looking for a big old creepy house with a scary old lady who would lock children in an attic for years at a time. I looked for mountains that looked like prison gates as described by the character Cathy in FITA. I didn’t see either. But I thought it was cool I was driving through the location I’d read about so many times. Don’t worry, I’ve gotten better taste in books.
Kind of lame, but oh well. One day I’d like to visit Ireland, site of so many languidly written Maeve Binchy books. But I wish more that I could be transported to the times AND places of the places I read about in books. Being there without the characters would feel a little lonely. Were you a little sad that your “friends” weren’t there, waiting to include you in the story? I would be!!
Kim
said,
September 29, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I’d like to visit Hogwarts Castle.
Oh, wait, did you mean a real place?
I’ve wanted to visit Australia ever since I surreptiously read my mom’s copy of The Thorn Birds when I was 11 or 12. Oh, scandalous!
anne
said,
September 29, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Michener is one of my all-time favs! However, I don’t have this particular book…apparently I’m going to have to pick it up now! My first of his was The Source. Loved it. Then I read Hawaii. Fantastic. He was one of the best.
Amanda
said,
September 29, 2008 at 6:11 pm
That is so cool!! I would love to visit Austria because I loved the Chalet School books as a teenager and also Heidi. To me the mountain rural lifestyle was just too beautiful for words and I hope to go there sometime. Even more exciting is having studied German I might actually have a chance of visiting a really rural area and eventually manage to understand the dialect well enough to cope :o)
Rhi
said,
September 29, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I loved the Anne of Green Gables books (although DUDE, did you hear about LM Montgomery?) and I always enjoyed watching the movies with my Grandma when I was a little girl. So, I think it would be rad to go to Prince Edward Island.
But, only if Gilbert Blythe is there.
May
said,
September 30, 2008 at 1:08 am
I want to know what Rhi is talking about LM Montgomery! What’s the scoop?
I can’t believe that you were never able to convince anyone else to read The Drifters. And substitute Cat Stevens for The Beatles, and we were the same angsty teenager looking for Truth that was not to be found in the Backstreet Boys… (Dude, Cat Stevens is SO DEEP. Dude. “On The Way To Find Out”. My 16 year old self was very impressed…)
Carrie
said,
September 30, 2008 at 1:24 am
That is so cool for the teenage Isabel!
Right now, even though I have been there so many times and attended 2 years of college in Port Angeles, I would love to go back to Forks and breathe (that is definitely arguable if you’ve read the books) the same air as the characters in the Stephenie Meyers books. I am devouring them like crazy and I didn’t even think I’d like them. I’m amazed that she could write so well about a place she hadn’t yet been to. I know - I lived in the area for my first 2 years of college!
Kerri Anne
said,
September 30, 2008 at 3:51 am
I could definitely get behind a trip to Forks, WA to visit the city and surrounding area where the Twilight books were set, because of the book, but because I’ve always wanted to see the edge of Washington’s coast, and I hear it’s insanely beautiful.
I’ve also always wanted to visit Nantucket and the sea-faring New England coast where Melville wrote.
K
said,
September 30, 2008 at 2:31 pm
It’s lame… but my friend and I went up to Trenton, NJ for a Plum Series (Janet Evanovich) book signing. Mostly because we wanted to go on a road trip and partly because the series is set in Trenton and we wanted to see it first hand. We didn’t find any of the establishments that were the inspiration for those in the book but it was still neat… we didn’t really look that hard though because, dude, it’s Trenton, NJ… we didn’t want to get mugged.
durga
said,
September 30, 2008 at 2:47 pm
hahha awesome!
i always love giving and receiving books that have already been read and loved. =)
Fraulein N
said,
September 30, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Oh, little me always dreamed of going to Prince Edward Island! (Even if Gilbert Blythe wasn’t there.)
liz
said,
September 30, 2008 at 10:20 pm
i would love to go to the fictional town of Macondo in “one hundred years of solitude”
Professor Art Nerd
said,
October 1, 2008 at 1:53 am
Did you know that there is a James A Michener Art Museum in scenic Doylestown, PA? Which is only a 45 minute drive from Philadelphia? Which is where I live? (Fraulein N too!) Come visit us, it’s a great museum and I’ll give you a patented Art Nerd tour!
SJ
said,
October 1, 2008 at 3:49 am
The People in Pineapple Place would be my book of choice. And I can’t really tell you why other than I really loved that book as a little girl. It was so magical.
eva
said,
October 1, 2008 at 6:52 am
Welcome back! I also fancied myself a bit of a hippie. An inner hippie, since all I managed to do was sprout hairy armpits for a couple years and smoke some pot. ANYWAY…although I was too old for the Babysitters Club books, I read them anyway. And desperately wanted to go to Connecticut!! And STILL haven’t been! So that’s all it would take to satisfy 13 year old Eva. Now though? I want to hit Bombay because I’m reading “Shantaram” and am totally immersed in Bombay’s smells and sounds and colours.