Home is Where the Bus Is
Home is Where the Bus Is,[1] published in September 2001, is a memoir written by Anne Beckwith Johnson about the “ultimate round-world” bus trip. In 1960, during the height of the Cold War the author and her husband, Vernon O. Johnson packed their eight children, age 2–17, in an aging bus and left the comforts of a large home in Santa Barbara on an extended camping trip around the world with the hope that direct contact with a friendly and outgoing American family could break barriers and do more for understanding between the USA and the USSR than power politics.
Reviewer Comments[edit]
“A charming read, full of warm humor and humanity, very rich and enlightening. It’s the sort of book you put down but don’t forget. The discoveries of this remarkable (and may I say not at all times enviable) journey become part of the reader’s experience as well.” --Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of Pay It Forward (novel)
"I cringed at Anne Johnson’s every misadventure, every thrown rod, every garage stop—and rejoiced at the many delights and relationships she and her wonderful family encountered while circumnavigating the world in their bus. The insights, the humor, the travails, and the triumphs made it a total joy to read and savor.” Barnaby Conrad, author of Matador.
Synopsis[edit]
It was difficult to travel behind the Iron Curtain under the best of circumstances during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Yet Vernon chose to do it the hard way: camping in his converted Santa Barbara city bus, which broke down at regular intervals (from fan belts to transmissions to axels, all difficult to obtain for a 1947 Ford bus in Europe in 1960!). He believed that his children were key to diplomatic relations, and they learned to take the unexpected as normal.
They traveled over 30,000 miles in 20 months by bus, boats, trains, automobiles, and a cargo plane in Siberia. The cargo plane was a somewhat secretive flight between Irkutsk and Khabarovsk as a break in their Trans-Siberian Journey, which nearly didn’t happen. They were told repeatedly for a whole year from April 1960 until April 1961, during the European portion of their travels, that they would be unable to cross Siberia. This was a small challenge for Vernon, an optimistic visionary with diplomatic verve. The Trans-Siberian Railway had been closed to tourists for over 40 years; since 1917. But Vernon had met Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev once in Santa Barbara in 1959 at a train stop wherein the Premier told Vernon he had “nice eyes” and a second time at the American Embassy in Moscow (July 4, 1961). Vernon used those contacts to break down the barrier to travel across Siberia.
Anita Ekberg, star of the newly released La Dolce Vita led them on a two-week romp around Rome with her boyfriend and Italian actor, Franco Silva. They stayed in a brothel in Verona, Italy for three weeks when they were waiting for the bus to arrive; no one else would rent to a family with eight children. During a Bastille Day parade in Paris, their two-year-old disappeared into the crowd while the family looked frantically for the lost child. They spent a winter in Sweden, where both parents wound up in emergency surgery. They met Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, where the food was scarce and the people were friendly. Japan was a bureaucratic nightmare and a personal triumph. Finally they sailed into the San Francisco harbor and were greeted by the press as returning heroes and ambassadors for international goodwill.[2][3][4]
Throughout their travels, the bus balked, the kids got sick, and they nearly ran out of money several times. Their epic journey was followed by journalists in every country they visited. Crowds gathered to see Americans, uncommon in Russia and Siberia at the time. But Vernon Johnson’s belief that “There’s no such thing as a problem,” and his family’s two-year odyssey proved how wrong he could be—and how right.
References[edit]
- ↑ Home is Where The Bus Is, 2001, John Daniel & Co., 244 p.
- ↑ ”Around the World With 8 Children—A Great Adventure”. (November 9, 1961) The San Francisco Chronicle, A1 Headline
- ↑ “Adventurer, Family in S.F.—Password: We Know Khrushchev. (November 9, 1961) San Francisco Examiner, A1.
- ↑ "Jolly Santa Barbaran Captivates Khruschev" (November 10, 1961) Associated Press, San Francisco.
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