Crossroads

By John W. Cassell

Subjects: adventure, 1969, youth hostels, hitchhiking, drug culture, coming of age, action, generation gap, travel, alienated youth

Description: The year is 1969… a time when the youth of America is standing up to its elder rulers… when minorities are demanding their fair share of the American pie… a time when an eternal war fought for misbegotten motives and fueled by a continuous stream of some of the most outrageous lies ever fed to a people by its leadership over the previous eight years continues to gut an entire generation… a time when the old values, the old expectations, the old imperatives are knocked flat. Seen through the eyes of 21 year old college senior John Cassell, always out of money and soon to be out of college, it is a saga of coming of age… at a time when the younger generation accepted very little of the old yardsticks and Thou-Shalt-Nots which traditionally helped that process along. Based on a true story, and the stories of others, the book follows the young man into the year 1969 as he struggles with the decisions expected of him by elders and demanded of him by life. The story leads to a factory job in the pine barrens of his native New Jersey, thence overseas, to the stimulating atmosphere of a youthful community of international wanderers in Great Britain, to an Ireland torn by age old divisions, to France, whose gendarmerie remain brooding and vengeful in the wake of the bloody Sorbonne riots of the previous year, to the Spain of Generalíssimo Francisco Franco, and finally to the turbulence of North Africa. For those who remember those days as a young adult, the book should prove a nostalgic experience, for others it is a window on those times through the eyes of an obscure young American coming to appreciate the advantages and trying to overcome the obstacles of his youth. From whatever perspective it is read, however, it is one person’s story of the way it was… the good and the bad, the triumphs and the blunders, in one of the most amazing years of our recent history.