American Nomads Page #4

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Talent show, Saturday night,

Slab City.

Yeah, we got the talent show there.

All right?

That's freakin' chillin', man.

Sweet!

'Slab city is a mish-mash, a messy

experiment in American anarchy

'that forms every winter

and dissolves every summer

'when this desert turns into a

furnace and everyone heads north.

'It's not a place

I want to spend the winter,

'but I find it strangely reassuring

that such a place is able to exist.'

Sun's rising, came to me

and said head off.

You don't want a bunch of

dead people following you around.

You see, I'm gone. Cool,

that means they're not in my head.

BAGPIPES SKIRL:

'After six hours at the talent

show, I head back to my campsite

'and fall into a conversation

with the guy camped next to me.

'His name is Ted Koons.

'He is a full-time nomad who dropped

out of the mainstream

'and now roams America

and Latin America in his jeep.

'Like me, it was mainly curiosity

that brought him to Slab City. '

Well, like a lot of American kids,

when I was in my late teens

and early 20s,

I had a lot of ambition disease.

So I went to work

in that corporate game

and went to New York City

and went to work on Wall Street.

The truth is, I don't tell people

"Wall Street" any more,

I use the term institutional finance.

Because that doesn't sound

nearly as disgusting as Wall Street.

Ain't that true?

So I kind of hide behind that,

but I spent about 12 years

in that business.

And like many of my colleagues,

I knew the end would come someday,

so I was banking away the cash,

like a caveman hiding as much meat as

possible before the winter sets in.

I knew the winter

would set in sooner or later,

so, when my friends were buying

Porsches, I was taking the subway.

And managed to save up enough money

to buy nice things,

and be free, and not be depending

on anyone or anything.

So from Wall Street to the slabs.

The slabs. Yeah, that's quite a path.

Rather zig-zaggy.

You know, you leave Wall Street

and it's kind of like

leaving a beautiful woman.

You kind of think you'd like to get

back into that, if you can,

because that's some pretty

good stuff, right?

HE LAUGHS:

But the fact is,

I never belonged there

in the first place,

and I was always a pretender.

Secretly, I'm an Idaho redneck.

But I actually got through that game

and since then,

the last three years, I've wandered

around, I haven't spent much time anywhere.

I've done all kinds of silly jobs,

purely for fun, mostly.

The income is nice,

not to spend the money I saved.

But during that time, I've lived in five or

six states and visited 10 or 15 countries.

So, you just rolled into Slab City

today? First impressions?

I'm impressed.

A lot of guys living in trailers,

it's kind of a weird idea,

and there's certainly

a lot of ugly people!

# Wild thing

# You make my heart sing... #

When you see these people

living in dilapidated trailers,

some people might see that as a sign

of some sort of sad experience,

but I see it as a sign of

an open expression of freedom.

When you live in a trailer,

you're not paying property taxes,

and you can move on

any time you want.

That is the idea of freedom that

so many people don't truly grasp.

It's this freedom of the Wild West.

RAUCOUS CHEERING

'The freedom of the Wild West.

'All those nomadic horsemen

used to roam around here.

'Cowboys and Indians.

'Fur-trappers and frontiersmen.

'Those pioneering families who kept packing

up everything into a wagon and moving on.

'It wasn't that long ago, and it

left behind a powerful legacy. '

You don't meet many families

out on the road,

but I ran into this couple,

Derek and Amy.

They're out on the road with

their kids, living in a school bus.

I'm eager to hear what it's like.

So, this is your home on wheels?

Our home on wheels.

It's a decommissioned school bus.

And how long have you had it?

We've only had it for four months

now. We had a motorhome before.

We're in the middle of converting.

This is a work in progress? Yes.

Very much a work in progress.

We basically got a motorhome instead

of having a big wedding. So...

But yeah,

we just travelled for a long time,

he was young enough where he didn't

have to start school for a few years,

and just recently

traded in for the bus.

And how will the education work?

He's getting so much

of an education, being out here,

and he's learning the basics,

so far.

Learning so much about the outside

and outdoors and plants

and animals, the same kind of stuff you would

be doing reading a book, except it's first hand.

Do you find that a lot of people

have wrong ideas

and misconceptions about

being a family on the road?

Yes, definitely.

Depending on where you go,

they vary, from good ones,

where people are,

"Wow, that's awesome,

"we're so intrigued

that you guys are doing this,

"it's such an inspiring thing."

And then, you go other places,

and people are more closed-minded

and they think it's weird,

that there is no way to give

a child a well-balanced education

when you're doing this.

There's no way.

And not even just that,

but how could you do it?

How could you possibly be happy?

Living on a bus.

That's the main one, usually.

Wondering, you know,

thinking he's missing out,

because he doesn't get movies

and doing all the stuff that we did

when we were living in a house.

Do you ever think back

to covered wagons, and...?

Yes! The whole drive out here,

it just seems so... Whoever told you

that you had to stay in

the same place your whole life?

Why were we taught, since we were

young, that we go to school,

we settle down, we get a job,

we have a family, and we stay put?

What might you want to do

when you grow up?

I want to...

Be a truck driver?

Want to be a policeman.

'Derek and Amy seem

so happy and fulfilled

'as a family on the road.

You don't see that much.

'I remember a truck driver who drove

around with his wife and kid in a truck.

'He wasn't a dropout

or a dream chaser.

'He had to keep moving

to make a living.

'That's a whole other category

of nomads. The working nomads.

'Fruit pickers

and itinerant carpenters.

'Circus and fairground people.

'The ones I know best

are rodeo cowboys,

'and they travel harder

than anybody.

'Rodeo is a kind of

travelling carnival.

'And right now, they're setting up an event

in the small gambling town of Laughlin, Nevada,

'a day's drive north of Slab City.

'The cowboys are

in a tent behind the arena.

'They're taping themselves up,

'so their arm muscles don't

get ripped in two when they ride.

'It's a life of constant travel and

serious amounts of physical pain.

'Getting on the back of an angry horse or an

enraged bull is a terrible thing to do to your body.

'Serious injuries are commonplace,

and cowboys do get killed

'occasionally, right there

in the arena, like gladiators.

'Tommy McFarlane rides

the bucking broncos.

'He's one of the toughest

and one of the best.

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