About the Author

Johnny Anderson was born in a cement jungle in the south eastern part of the U.K. Raised in one of the older tenant houses that was built around the latter part of the nineteenth (or early part of the twentieth) century, the building held more than old plaster, bricks and mortar. Entities from a time long gone lingered within its walls and were playmates of Johnny’s for the first few years of his life.  Raised as an only child with parents who’d separated only a few years after marriage, Johnny’s reality was divided by two very different worlds. On one hand you had a life which was pretty mundane while attending school and living with his mom during the week. Yet on the other came the weekends where kids from a whole neighborhood would come out to play. Johnny’s father would take as many of them as he could squeeze into his old compact car to parks and other places of leisure where he’d interact with them and play games.  

This difference in upbringing, set the foundation for a personality that was patient, reserved, understanding yet balanced, which was needed years later for the thousands of miles that Johnny hitchhiked around the earth.  School was a mixture of a hundred friends along with the freedom that it entailed, but it was also some of the darkest times to be remembered. Chalk board erasers flung across the classroom by the very people who were put there to teach. Wooden paddles used to inflict pain on young boys’ asses because they were the last to get dressed after a swimming lesson. Flexible rulers swung full force only to land on the raw knuckles of those who’d chosen to talk during class. Witnessing and being part of this mindless torture was nothing but uncalled-for- insanity and it sparked a deep hatred from within towards those who’d awarded such bullshit over the years. Johnny was one of the many who felt this way! Britain’s teaching institutions back then are something that needs to be continually questioned and compared to, with that of Communist Russia.  

Before Johnny was ten he was hanging out with and was protected by the local Teddy Boys in town. Those   well groomed greaser’s with their long draped jackets and the drain pipe trousers that ended at the colored creeper shoes we’re quite a common sight during Johnny’s upbringing. This fashion had been around since the 50’s and those boys were tough. Yet ironically enough with all that influence this was not to be Johnny’s chosen path. Shortly after turning thirteen, Johnny Rotten and the safety pin era had already been calling his name for quite some time.  What with the torture chamber; which was what schooling had been in many ways to Johnny and his generation, mixed in with the mass unemployment that was part of England during the 1980’s, Johnny left school at the age of fifteen. He’d legally had enough! And it wasn’t too long after this, that he became a statistic! One in ten was a term that was given to those who were on the dole back then. It was time to move out, or be thrown out and to roam the streets of Southend-on-sea, Essex, as a punk rocker.  

Finding a bedsit (which one-roomed living quarters are known as in Britain), Johnny moved into a two storey house and this was his digs for the next 18 months. Very quickly he immersed himself into the punk rock scene which was a pretty strong movement in that part of England at the time.  During this time period a few bands were formed and Johnny was the rhythm guitarist in one and a singer in the other. Also many shows were frequented and bands like The Exploited, The Damned and The U.K. Subs were seen.  Moving to another room in a different house just a few blocks away, which wasn’t big enough to swing a cat in; marked in some ways, the final days for the filthy clothes, unkempt hair and the 14 hole, Dr. Marten boots! It was now the latter part of 1985. Within a couple of months of moving into this madhouse things started to change and for the punks of Southend, it marked the end of an era.  For Johnny the tartan bondage leg wear with the bum flap hanging under his ass was replaced by a pair of jeans and the dirty spiked dyed hair was simply left to grow out. 

Hiding away in a room, almost in a reclusive fashion; in yet another house for a few months, gave Johnny a lot of time to sit back and dwell on his life. After a spell of   living with his father and two moves after that it was time to say farewell to Mighty Blighty for good. It was mid July and four years had passed since he’d walked out of the gates of his high school for the very last time.  As the weathered ferry chugged away and left the glowing cliffs of Dover, this young man looked back onto the rock in the middle of the ocean, which had sustained the first twenty years of his life. Unbeknownst to Johnny at the time, this day marked the beginning of one of the largest feats in hitchhiking history.  

In the ten years that followed, Johnny hitchhiked over 64,000 miles. The ground that he covered ranged from a few small countries in Europe to the expanses of Canada, Australia and (forty-two of) the United States. But it wasn’t the miles and the klicks under his belt that gave him the drive to put the blue ink onto paper and compile this tale. The reason why he spent two decades in doing just that; was the simple fact that in all the years that he was on the road, he’d left Mother England, knowing hardly anyone. Even his first residence in Holland ended up being a complete disaster when he got there.  

So with the above in mind, never once while hitchhiking did Johnny ever ask to stay at someone’s home or hint that he was homeless and was, for almost a decade while he was on the road. Yet in all those years of hitchhiking he never once paid to stay in and have the luxury of being in a hotel or a motel. Aside the handful of times that he paid to stay at a backpackers in Australia and one night at a youth hostel in Germany, this wandering soul slept rough just eight times in all those years. Nearly all of his accommodation came from the very people who picked him up hitchhiking. That’s a remarkable triumph unto itself! This is a very unique story and one that had to be told.