The greatest ride in my life
Publié le 07/02/2012
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The greatest ride in my life was about to come up, a truck, with a flatboard at the back, with about six or seven boys sprawled out on it, and the drivers, two young blond farmers from Minnesota, were picking up every single soul they found on that road-the most smiling, cheerful couple of handsome bumpkins (1) you could ever wish to see, both wearing cotton shirts and overalls, nothing else; both thick-wristed and earnest, with broad howareyou smiles for anybody and anything that came across their path. I ran up, said "ls there room?". They said, "Sure, hop on, 'sroom for everybody." I wasn't on the flatboard before the truck roared off; I lurched, a rider grabbed me, and I sat down ... I looked at the company. There were two young farmer boys from North Dakota in red basebaU caps, which is the standard North Dakota farmer-boy hat, and they were headed for the ....
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harvests; their old men bad given them leave tobit the road for
a sommer.
There were two young city boys from Columbus,
Ohio, high school football players, chewing
gum, singing in the
breeze, and they said they were hitchhiking around the United
States for the sommer.
"We're going to LA (1)!" they yelled.
"What are you going to do there ?"
"Hell, we don't know.
Who cares ?"
..• 1 was glad when the two Minnesota farmboys who owned the
truck decided to stop
in North Platte and eat; 1 wanted to have
a look
at them.
They came out of the cab and smiled at ali
of us...
They were brothers; they were transporting farm
machinery from Los Angeles to Minnesota and making good
money
at it.
So on their trip to the Coast empty they picked
up everybody on the road.
They'd done this about five times
now; they were having a bell
of a time.
They liked everything.
They never stopped smiling.
1 tried to talk to them-a kind
of dumb attempt on my part to befriend the captains of our
ship-and the only responses 1 got were two sunny smiles and
large white comfed teeth.
JACK KEROUAC,
On the road, 1957.
( 1) LA: Los Angeles.
1.
Commentaire dirigé
1) Wh y do many young Americans hitchhike around the
States?
2) What kind of people are the two brothers? Is their
attitude to hitchhikers common among drivers?
3) Is not mobility a sort of tradition in American his tory?
Justify your opinion by one
or two examples.
4)
State your reasons for or against spending your holidays
on the road?
2.
Version
Traduire depuis
"1 wasn't on the flatboard ...
" jusqu'à "Who
cares?".
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