Photo: Country Road Hitchhiker by Seth Doyle, Wikimedia
Sally and Peter Blommer set out to hitchhike around the world a month after their November 1969 wedding. Wanderlust, plain and simple, motivated them to chase their hippie dream. What makes the publishing of this document more relevant today, fifty-five years later, is our ability to compare the world of 1970 with the world of 2025. Written from notes from a diary and narrated by Sally, what’s not said is often as important as what is. Remember, these observations were made just a decade after outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower made his infamous declaration warning against the “military-industrial complex.” Until late in Sally and Peter’s delightful escapade full of improvising and serendipitous encounters, there was no presence of the US military. Then they reached Thailand, the favorite R&R escape of US GIs occupying Vietnam, where they numbed their minds with drugs while partaking in sexual slavery. It was here that two different cultures clashed most starkly. Sally overheard a Bangkok father, presumably driven by poverty, say, “My daughter is so pretty that it’s possible she might become a whore someday.”
From the start of their journey, Sally jotted down Zen-like koans such as, “Luck outweighs rationally informed decisions.” But it was Peter who offered up the book’s most astute observation while passing through India—”The spicier the food, the more vivid the dreams, the more colorful the religion.”
With remarkable fortitude, the couple bore the stings and arrows of life on the road. Most normal folk would bail at the first infestation of head lice or “La Tourista” but not these two pioneers, who continued to “sally” forth, overcoming one obstacle after another. In Germany, they even managed to complete the cliche of making lemonade out of lemons in the form of a VW hatchback they purchased before setting out for the Eastern European leg of their iconic trip. Effortlessly, Sally and Peter epitomized Mr. Natural’s famous philosophy. They just “[kept] on truckin’.”
So, what to make of this time capsule replete with lots of stargazing at points around the globe and barely a mention of the two menacing tyrannies of corporate capitalism versus creeping communism? Is this diary of two itinerants as meaningful as that of Samuel Pepys? No, but it does inform about how seat-of-the-pants traveling used to be fun. It recalls a time when people, when left to themselves without government interference, helped each other along the way to navigate a planet worth preserving. Compare Sally and Peter’s 1970 document with Empire Files’ Abby Martin’s 2025 documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy of a weary and exhausted world overwhelmed with over sixty million refugees when crossing borders is anything but casual.
Human Generated
Thumbs Out! is published by Henschel Haus Publishing, Inc. Milwaukee.
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