Since every person I’ve interviewed has led a life unique to them, they have something to say about the world that I couldn’t get from anyone else. That gives them a value that transcends any job or social rank they might have. I began to see that you could divide up the world in many different ways, and some of those ways actually put a homeless man from Wyoming at the top. He might not have known it, but I do, and the point of much of my work has been to communicate that…
As I got older I traveled less for its own sake and more for journalism assignments. I found myself covering wars in West Africa and Afghanistan and the Balkans — situations that were far more dangerous than the aimless trips of my youth. However, those early trips undoubtedly affected me more than I’d realized at the time. They may not have taught me the specific skills of my new trade, but it was in places like Spain and Mexico where I first learned how to comport myself in the world.
Many years later I confronted the daunting task of walking into a fishermen’s bar in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and asking the bartender — a woman named Ethel Shatford — about the death of her son. A local boat, the Andrea Gail, had gone down in a massive storm in 1991, and the book I wrote about her was eventually published as The Perfect Storm. The Crow?s Nest was the sort of bar where everyone turns to look at a stranger as soon as he walks in. I ignored the stars, took a seat the bar, and ordered a beer from Ethel.
I had no idea how to begin, but I had help. They were all still with me, I realized — the man in Wyoming , the insulted Mexican vaqueros and the rest — they were still there, guiding and informing me, whispering their lessons in my ear. And in one way or another they all had something to tell me about how I should approach Ethel Shatford.
Just tell her, I finally thought. Tell her she knows something about the world that a lot of other people might need to hear.
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