BLOGGER LOSES MENTOR: KING OF WANDERLUST, ANTHONY BOURDAIN, DEAD AT 61

Anthony Bourdain

"I guess you know Anthony Bourdain died?" asked Diego Lee Rot, when I stopped by to see him and Jack this morning.

I did not know, even though I considered Bourdain influential in my life, Bourdain, the articulate wordsmith of Anthony Bourdain; Parts Unknown on CNN, bestselling author, celebrated chef, former dishwasher and drug addict.

"They say it was suicide," Diego commented.

My son knows I have a similar travel gene.  Nena and I saw everything we wanted to see in the U.S.  using my allotted six weeks of vacation annually for travel the last 15 years of employment.  

Nena was not comfortable leaving the country, although I talked her and Diego into a tour of Mexico's silver cities in the early 90's.  Nena argued vociferously with a cop in Zacatecas who wanted to ticket Diego with the officer eventually relenting.

When I left my home and my family

I was no more than a boy

In the company of strangers

In the quiet of the railway station

Running scared,

Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters

Where the ragged people go

Looking for the places

Only they would know

Paul Simon

"The Boxer"

While Bourdain dealt with royalty and poverty, working class and the famous, I usually sought the poorer quarters.

At 14, "I left my home and my family" temporarily, taking a bus to Los Angeles, ending up at a flea bag hotel on Figueroa Street for 80 cents per night.  After witnessing my first knifing from my hotel window, I headed off to Hollywood & Vine, knocked on the back door of a Chinese restaurant that served me a huge bowl of rice with soy sauce for ten cents.(Years later, I realized they thought I was homeless.)

The evening desk clerk kept challenging me to a wrestling match, claiming he could put me in a "sleeper hold" in 30 seconds.  I awakened to a lobby echoing intense laughter as I was given smelling salts and helped up off the floor. (Bourdain, a martial artist, typically got on the mat with locals he met in his travels, usually holding his own.)

The day I turned 16, I got my drivers license and headed for downtown Seattle, First Avenue, where drunk Eskimos wandered the streets proving the urban legend that they came from Alaska, drank one bottle of Rainier Beer and never stopped drinking.(As a kid, it never occurred to me that beer was readily available in Alaska and whatever the descendants of indigenous people drank once in Seattle, they'd likely drunk before.)

Anyway, Anthony, you had a skill beyond cooking, writing and narrating.  You made people comfortable, folks of all ethnicities, cultures, languages.  I'm hoping to emulate some of that with my planned trip to Southeast Asia this fall and to Havana, as a Friend of the Cuban People, next spring.

RIP, my brother!