Product Description

On a cold, gray day in 1991, a kid named Eddy Joe Cotton left home with nothing but a warm jacket, some well-worn boots, and a few crumpled dollar bills. His father had just fired him, not for the first time, but for the last. He didn’t see his father again for two years. But this is not the story of a runaway—it is a tale of an unorthodox road to adulthood. By taking to the trains, Eddy Joe Cotton learned the difficulty of life lived on the margins, the fading importance of a once-celebrated American folk hero, and the ultimate meaning of freedom.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1802079 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-27
• Released on: 2003-05-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
After a fight with his father, 19-year-old Zebu Recchia hitchhiked out of Denver, changed his name and didn't turn back. Twenty-three notebooks and a book contract later he rented a room in Las Vegas and wrote a memoir of his six years on the road. Full of Kerouacian philosophizing and Beat lingo, the work chronicles Cotton's first three weeks away from home, beginning with his decision to ride the rails and head to Mexico after meeting "Half Step," a hobo who earned the nickname by falling off a freight train and losing four toes. Along the way Cotton offers tips for aspiring tramps ("If you don't have a blanket you can stuff newspaper in your clothes and it'll act as insulation") and forced descriptions of nature ("The clouds parted and the sun fell like a golden egg out of the sky's mighty asshole"). Sexual encounters read like soft porn. Inspired by the ubiquitous diner waitress, his tamest fantasy involves a woman "[burning] her apron, [quitting] her job, and [lying] across a Sealy Posturepedic like a Mayan goddess." Cotton provides a compact history of the American hobo in his epilogue. "It's what I learned from talking to tramps and from sitting in the Las Vegas public library for three days," he writes; the glossary defines terms like "Bale of straw" ("A blond woman"). Masquerading as a coming-of-age novel/social history, Cotton's adolescent diary is one interminable trip.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The real name of the author of this quirky title is Zebu Beauty Recchia. Perhaps that should be mentioned first because like just about everything else in this gritty journal of the life of a modern hobo, the author doesn't care about what people call him, where he gets his next hot meal, when a "Bat" (i.e., a woman who flits from truck to truck at night, offering a special kind of refreshment to weary travelers) will satisfy his needs at a truck stop, or even whether he writes a coherent book or not. With a hobo, things happen when they happen, and there's not much you can do about it. Cotton's life has been chaotic, aimless, interesting, dangerous, and daring, and this book mirrors all of those qualities. Although I did not wish to join the author on his adventures and I almost always do when reading a travel memoir I admire Cotton's courage to experience the country on his own terms. This unique book is a worthwhile purchase for public libraries. Joseph L. Carlson, Allan Hancock Community Coll., CA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Romance of the road? Not exactly. Even Cotton, ne Zebu Recchia (he didn't think his real name would go over well with his fellow hobos), who has been tramping across the country since he was 18 years old, never goes quite that far. Yet in this peripatetic amalgamation of homespun philosophy and adventures on the rails, he occasionally waxes lyrical about smelling real pine-scented air, seeing the stars, drinking "cowboy" coffee, and eating Mulligan stew in a hobo jungle among a group of "American originals." He's forthright about life as it's lived "in America's armpit"--scrounging food from garbage cans, eluding railroad cops and crazies--but he's obviously in love with it anyway, having found both blessed solitude and community on his journeys. His travel journal is awkward, sometimes erratic and abrupt in the telling, but there's also a good deal of charm in Cotton's intensity and unpretentiousness as he relates his unusual interpretation of the American dream. Stephanie Zvirin
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