Review: Junkyard Kid: Born in a Warehouse, Traveled the World, by Danny Langdon (Ethiopia, 1962-64)

Title: Junkyard Kid: Born in a Warehouse, Traveled the World

Author: Danny Langdon (RPCV Ethiopia, 1962-64)

Published: Aug 7, 2024 (Performance International)

Review by Catherine Onyemeluk (Nigeria, 1962-64)

Junkyard Kid: Born in a Warehouse, Traveled the World recounts the life experiences of Danny Langdon from his earliest chapter to the final one. Starting with the warehouse of furs, pelts and hides where he was born in Twin Falls, Id. he describes his family and childhood, marked by his father’s illness and death when he was 7.

While his father lay dying, his mother took on the two roles of both mother and father. She took over the warehouse business, doing the accounting, selling the furs, working with scrap iron. The many loving references to his mother throughout the book are some of the most meaningful experiences of Langdon’s book.

Reflecting on his childhood in the warehouse, Langdon summarizes his reactions: Everything is a lesson learned. Take risks. Enjoy others-especially your siblings-and their accomplishments. Do things for others in your community. Use humor.

From the day he left the warehouse behind at age 18, through his visits to more than 90 countries, he writes about the wisdom he brings home from the people he meets, with particular affection for Morocco and Guinea, where his son is a Peace Corps Volunteer. He describes the village he visits as “barely qualified for a name on a map.”

Langdon ends his memoir by writing his own obituary, a unique way of exercising control of his story, and leaves the reader with his thoughts about his place in the universe.

If you feel lucky to be alive and well, and you enjoy traveling as Danny does, you would enjoy this book.

Catherine Onyemeluk served as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1962 to 1964 in Nigeria, as a German teacher. During her second year of service, she fell in love with a Nigerian man and married him in 1964. She lived through the Biafra War, supporting the Biafra side and returning to Nigeria at the end of the war.

In 1978 she was a founder of Nigerwives, an organization of foreign wives of Nigerian men, which is still going strong today. She led a clothing company, Trinity House of Fashion, from 1981 to 1986. In that year, she came back to the U.S. for a master’s degree from the Yale School of Management. She still returns to Nigeria on a regular basis, staying with her younger son Sam or her older son Chinaku.

Her husband died in 2020, just before COVID started.