Category Archives: Travel

THE WAY OF SAIL by Peter Nolan Smith

July 25, 2010 – 12:36 pm

Once the world traveled by sail. One side of my ancestors arrived in America on the Mayflower. The trip lasted 66 days. My great-grandaunt Bert circumnavigated the globe in the 1870s. Her father’s clipper ship powered by wind. Steam engines replaced sail by the beginning of the 20th Century. Proud schooners and brigantines retired from [...]

By Peter | Also posted in NEW YORK, Nature, Traditions, semi-fiction | Comments (0)

THE BOUQUET OF RUINS by Peter Nolan Smith

July 21, 2010 – 7:52 pm

Dec 1982 Bsirs was in decline. Hamburg’s long white nights of the summer solstice had given way to the fiercely short days of winter. Rain, darkness, cold. High school students stayed home weeknights. The northern city’s intelligentsia avoided the sleek nightclub on Eppendorfer Weg. Painters gave way to pimps and models were replaced by off-duty [...]

By Peter | Also posted in Sex, europe, evil | Comments (0)

The Death of the Road

July 18, 2010 – 11:14 am

My summer holiday plans fell apart one by one. The Nantucket house had too many guests, my friend in Millbrook had accepted an invitation to the Rockefeller’s’ Adirondack estate, and my sister was leaving Maine for a conference in Boston. All the flights to Thailand were out of my budget. Sunday evening came with a [...]

By Peter | Also posted in Traditions, america | Comments (0)

THE SUMMER OF LUST By Peter Nolan Smith

July 17, 2010 – 10:09 pm

May 1974 My friend Andy Kornfeld, a blonde co-ed from BU, and I were cross-countrying in a drive-away station wagon. Boston-Sterling, Colorado-Thompson Canyon-the Id Lounge in Roosevelt Utah before hitting the Stateline of Nevada around noon. Several small casinos lined the two-lane highway. It was my birthday. Age 22. “I’m feeling lucky.” I veered off [...]

By Peter | Also posted in Sex, america, hitchhiking | Comments (0)

Thai Troublemaker

July 14, 2010 – 7:50 pm

The Preah Vihar temple crowns the rugged cliffs of the Dângręk Mountains. The border between French Indochina and Siam had been the divide between two watersheds. No one posted boundary markers until France surrendered the control possession to their former underlings. Thailand was four times the size of Cambodia, but Cambodia thanks to the arguments [...]

By Peter | Also posted in Asia, Thailand | Comments (0)