Once upon a time I toured the US and played golf with whoever was on the front page of the newspaper in each town I visited. Amazingly, I was never arrested. I met clowns, Stevie Wonder impersonators, crocodile wranglers and drunken beauty queens. In El Paso, I hung out with a young Beto O’Rourke, who is now a superstar politician about to ‘trump’ Trump by running for President. (google him – he’s massive, interviewed by Oprah yesterday.) There were so many stories I decided to put them into a book – In Search of Swingers – hope you enjoy it.
Here’s the first chapter.
Intro – In Search of Swingers
SO IT GOES LIKE THIS. I like golf, but mostly I like meeting people. My previous travel books (‘One Man, 23 Beers and a Crazy Bet’ and ‘Bowling Through India’) are proof of that. The former involved street singing around the UK in the middle of winter (door-to-door I might add) and trying to make enough money to fly home. The latter was a case of five grown men gallivanting around the most populous nation on earth and losing cricket matches against nine-year-olds.
The book you are reading has a similar theme, only this time my idea was to tour the U.S. and play golf with whoever happened to feature on the front page of the newspaper in whatever town I happened to be visiting.
As you’ll see, it was a scary, brilliant, eye-opening look at a wonderful country.
Since this trip, new towers have been built in Manhattan and New Orleans is still recovering from the effects of Katrina. But friendships live on and many of the Americans you’ll meet in the following pages are still my friends today. Thank you to anyone who took this crazy adventure seriously.
Justin Brown