Hobostripper/Amazing Woman

I have found an amazingly gutsy woman’s blog: An itinerant stripper who lives in a van with her dog and shares tips on how to stay alive, how to save money when showering in a laundromat as a teen and how to score meat off customers… and she knows how to spin a rattlin’ good yarn.

I’m awestruck by her independence and intelligence, so if I go on, I will sound like I’ve fallen in love. Instead, I’ll just share a paragraph from North to Alaska that had me laughing out loud:

This is what I remember of my dad’s story, from years and years ago when he told me. He was dodging the draft, or the possibility of the draft, or he had been before he started for Alaska. These details run together, you know. He had been living with a woman in a tree in California. Between them they only had one pair of pants, and they lived on fruit that they took from the orchards or other things they could take from the trash. When they needed money they would sell some of the stolen fruit in town, but because there was only one pair of pants only one of them could go. For whatever reason, that situation ended and my dad took the pair of pants and hitchiked up through Canada. He built a raft and was floating down the Yukon river, when his raft fell apart right in front of a village and this old man named Tommy fished him outta the river and gave him a beer. Tommy showed him how to live and trap and make homebrew, and he settled down there.

Read her blog. She has a lot of interesting, witty, profound and wise things to say.

And hey? If you’re ever in or near Northern California, I would drive out to meet you and you can stop for a shower and a meal at my apartment any time you want.

[h/t: Octogalore]