Gibson Dave Gibson

Travel Required Gibson Dave Gibson

In the summer of 1969, a very anxious, semi-adventurous, mostly naïve 16-year old boy convinced his parents to let him join a wheat harvest crew. The journey covered six states, 90-days, and 2,000 miles through the wheat fields, farming towns, and gravel roads of the mid-west and beyond. In that summer, the rest of America experienced the last episode of Star Trek, President Nixon's drawdown of American troops in Vietnam, Senator Kennedy's Chappaquiddick incident, the moon landing of Apollo 11, the conviction of Muhammad Ali for draft evasion, the Manson murders, the Miracle Mets, Woodstock, and Hurricane Camille. While these towering events were emblazing themselves in the American history books, Dave Gibson, oblivious to them all, was experiencing the most formative summer of his life. It was a summer of truck wrecks, snakes, dust, and diesel fumes. It was a summer of deception, fierce heat, fires, and small-time brushes with the law, of first kisses, first beers, and filthy showers. It was three months of non-stop effort, ne'er do wells, domineering farmers, ragged waitresses, and crazies. It was a front row seat on a deteriorating marriage, a friendship going south, a hand nearly coming off, and a boy growing up.