Billy Connolly's Route 66_ The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip - Billy Connolly [2]
‘Frankenstein, wasn’t it?’ he interrupted.
For a moment I didn’t know what to say. Then I caught on. ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Mary Shelley.’
‘Her husband was a poet, wasn’t he? Shelley … ’
‘Yeah, Percy Bysshe Shelley.’
Climbing on to the grave, the wino sat cross-legged on top of it and swigged from his can.
‘Do you like Shelley?’ I asked. ‘Or have you just chosen to sit there?’
‘I studied him at school.’
It was soon obvious that this was a bright guy who had fallen on hard times. We rabbited away about Shelley and Shakespeare – if you give people a chance, they shine – and then he told me he came from the Midlands.
‘The Black Country?’
‘Nearer Birmingham … You haven’t got a cigarette on you, do you?’
‘I don’t. I don’t smoke cigarettes.’
I liked this man. He was very straightforward. So I offered to get him some. ‘What do you smoke?’
‘Just ten. Ten cigarettes,’ he said.
So I walked off to a nearby shop and bought him a packet. When I got back we had a long chat. He was pleased with the fags and I was tickled to have made contact with such a lovely, open man. It was another of those wee unexpected moments that I’ll always remember.
Something similar happened in 2009 when, during the making of Journey to the Edge of the World – my voyage through the North West Passage, deep within the Arctic Circle – I met Brian Pearson, the local undertaker, cinema owner and bed-and-breakfast proprietor. A former dishwasher, lord mayor and taxi driver, Brian was a complicated man who reminded me of plenty of people I’d known as a kid. He was well read, self-educated, but had a kind of grumpiness because he could see things turning to shit all around him. And his mood wasn’t helped by the fact that nobody tended to listen to him. Sat behind the wheel of his hearse, he drove me around the streets of his small town, relating stories about what really went on in his community. I spend a lot of time on my own – even when I’m with people I often feel like I’m alone because I think differently to most of them – so I’m always thrilled when I manage to connect with another human being. That afternoon, I felt a real connection with Brian, an interesting and interested man.
So when I was preparing to spend six weeks travelling across the heartland of America, from Chicago to Santa Monica, I told myself that if I had one encounter that equalled the tramp at Mary Shelley’s graveside or Brian Pearson, then the trip would have been more than worthwhile. Less than a week into my journey, I’d met Mervin, and everything I’d hoped for had come true.
My journey along Route 66 began long before the first wheel turned on tarmac beneath me. About a year after making Journey to the Edge of the World, various television companies approached me with a load of ideas about where I could go next. None of their suggestions appealed, but then I mentioned to one of the producers at Maverick Television that I had always wanted to travel along Route 66. They leapt at it – after all, Route 66 is the most famous road in the world. Everyone’s heard of it. My interest in it goes back to when I first heard Chuck Berry belting out one of the best rock’n’roll records of all time: ‘(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66’. Ever since, I’ve wanted to travel the length of Route 66 – just for my own enjoyment, without a film crew in tow, as a holiday. It’s the grooviest road in the world.
Of course, many other roads have been made famous by songs. There’s the road to the Isles and the road back home.