Move Over Marco Polo

After graduating from Arizona State College in 1953, Dick Jacobs was working as a graduate assistant towards a path in teaching and coaching. Hoping to fulfill a dream of hitchhiking around the world, he instead gathered a few belongings in a small suitcase, took his life savings of three hundred dollars, said goodbye to his buddies, stepped off the curb onto College Avenue in Tempe, Arizona, and stuck out his thumb. Surviving loneliness, hunger, disease, and life-threatening confrontations, Dick experienced more highs and lows in sixteen months than most people do in a lifetime. Deep friendships were built across five continents, giving him the courage and desire to go on when it seemed nearly impossible. He loved much, laughed a lot, cried in pain and gave thanks many times over. From New Orleans to Rangoon, he performed as an acrobat, worked as a deckhand, was cared for by interesting women from all walks of life, slept in hay fields across Italy, France and Switzerland, traveled by caravan through India and Pakistan with a group of vagabond immigrants, and nearly froze to death in the high mountains of Turkey skirting the Russian frontier. He escaped being mugged in Jamaica, shot by a soldier in Turkey and dying from jaundice in India. He was befriended by prostitutes and military commanders, journalists and sailors, a Sheik in the Negev desert of Israel and citizens of every country he journeyed through. Mindful that he represented his country, he strove to present himself as an educated, clean-shaven, tolerant and compassionate American seeking to understand and learn the customs and traditions of a foreign land and its people. Throughout his trip, he experienced deep loneliness, questioning his reason for the journey, and how to use what he learned to find his purpose in life. Sheer determination, guts, courage, stubbornness and even stupidity were his constant sidekicks. In his quest to complete a journey, he found definition for his entire life as a true traveler.