I’ve been re-reading Robert Palmer’s excellent Deep blues as one of the texts for my FYS course on American roots music and just came across (again) one of my favorite lines from the book:
I thought, oh, man, this cat is just jivin’, he ain’t goin’ to Chicago. I thought goin’ to Chicago was like goin’ out of the world.
This is Muddy Waters talking about his reaction to Robert Nighthawk’s suggestion that Muddy come with him to Chicago in the 30′s and record together.
It’s interesting how much things have changed, as today most Americans wouldn’t find the idea of travelling 600 miles nearly so daunting. (Of course the huge improvements in roads and cars has a lot to do with this.) But things haven’t completely changed. I’m often amazed by how many of our students have never been to Canada when you could darn near throw a rock to it from here. And while 30-40% of our students do some sort of international experience while they’re here, others are pretty freaked out by the idea of travelling to another country. One recent grad caught all sorts of grief from his grandmother because he had the audacity to spend a summer in SoCal on a research internship at USC, and then go to Oregon for grad school. Weird.
My family has a long history of international travel and tends towards being study abroad junkies. My grandfather spent a year studying in Switzerland in the 1920′s, which included a sojourn with some buddies to North Africa wandering the Sahara in an Opel. My mom spent a summer in Vienna in the early 1950′s (while the Allies were still sharing it with the Soviets!) as one of the first Americans to go abroad with the AFS.
WeatherGirl‘s family, on the other hand, had to work up to it a bit. Her paternal grandparents grew up literally next door to each other in Manchester (UK), and when they moved to a different part of the city 12 miles away the neighborhood had a going away party! Then her dad got all radical and married a woman from the south of England. Then she got all radical and married me and moved to the U.S.
We figure Sub-Evil Boy has to marry a martian to keep up the trend.
