Books:

Discovered! 505
Odd Enterprises

Hidden Dollars

How to Make
Money at Home

Small Business
of Your Own

You Can Own
a Business

The result of her decision has been a pay-after-you-go hobby that has her friends green with envy and provides so many stimulating—and merry—experiences that even Miss Keene, with her gift of rapid-fire conversation, can hardly find time to tell all of them. Last year she spent more than a month traveling and talked about her trips to organizations throughout Indiana—sororities, church groups, business and professional clubs. To all she meets, she is simply—"Amy."

In her friendly, informal manner, Miss Keene is more than willing to draw up a chair in her hotel apartment and talk about the "secrets of her trade." For she firmly believes that others—ordinary people like the housewife down the street or the teacher on summer vacation can travel, too, to the far corners of the world, then come back home and rejuvenate their bank accounts by doing what travelers have always liked to do—talk about their adventures. If you can speak entertainingly, she says, with an armload of facts to give authority to your speech, you will have little trouble finding an audience.

Miss Keene has trekked across the United States, into its cities and byways many times. Each year, for instance, she goes to New York for "oxygen purposes"—riding annually on an Eighth Avenue bus, paying her yearly respects to the Statue of Liberty, window shopping, enjoying the sights and sounds of a city she loves. Before she resigned her job as an English teacher in an Indianapolis high school she had already made two trips to Europe. Since her resignation she has taken four extensive trips—two to Mexico, touring the country by bus both times, a cruise to Alaska, and a 4,500-mile cruise of the Caribbean last summer. Last winter she lectured many times on her Caribbean cruise, but she will also talk on all of her past experiences, fitting her travelogues into club calendars and seasonal programs.

MISS KEENE'S rules for becoming a "self-perpetuating" travel-lecturer narrow down to the following:

1. Read about the places on your itinerary in your local library before you go.
2. Enter new countries or localities in a receptive frame of mind.
3. Travel as economically as possible.
4. Be willing to speak on your travels whenever you have the chance.
5. Try to make your speech interesting.

Miss Keene reads everything she can find about the places she intends to visit—history, fiction, pamphlets on local customs and life. She even intercepts friends who have visited there before her, plying them with questions. From all this information she acquires a thorough knowledge of the places she will see before she boards her first bus or train. She believes that by preparing ahead she is able to gather more pertinent, meaningful facts on her journey; and gains more both intellectually and emotionally from her trip.

Miss Keene believes the intelligent traveler should be willing to accept customs that are different from his with sympathy and understanding, instead of criticism. The common complaint that Americans criticize too much, and try to understand too little, is a valid one, she says. By constant criticism they not only antagonize others but miss much that is beautiful ana significant.

THE WOULD-BE "home-town" travel lecturer cannot stay at the most expensive hotels, eat in the finest restaurants, or ride first class if he intends to make his travels pay for themselves, Miss Keene warns. She prefers bus, coach train, and tourist boat accommodations to more expensive means of transportation, with bus trips ranking first—for "there are always occasions for meeting interesting people." Adept at the art of conversing casually (without inviting unpleasantries) she believes she learns more from listening to fellow travelers than she sometimes does in visiting standard tourist attractions.

Miss Keene seldom travels at night. When dusk comes, she stops at a hotel or a Y.W.C.A., then starts out again in the morning refreshed and eager to see the territory that lies before her. She recommends Y.W.C.A.'s and Y.M.C.A.'s to the budget-minded traveler, for they are not only inexpensive, but always clean and comfortable.

She does not like to travel alone, usually inviting a congenial person, with like interests, to accompany her.

Amy Keene is an ardent coffee drinker, so she often packs a jar of instant coffee in her suitcase, then brews her own morning cup in her hotel room simply by adding hot water. A package of rolls purchased at a near-by grocery the night before rounds out her meal, and performs wonders for her budget.

She advises eating in cafeterias whenever possible. With the food actually before you, you can see what you are ordering, she explains, and you can spend as little or as much as you wish, to the penny or peso.

MISS KEENE takes only two traveling bags on her cross-continent trips and cruises. One—usually a trunk—is large, and empty. The other is small, and packed with a minimum amount of clothing. She places the small bag inside the large one, then as she travels she gradually fills the large suitcase—or trunk—with souvenirs of her journey

Her "souvenirs" are not the usual trinkets which the average tourist buys, worthless bric-a-brac which line the shelves of shops throughout the world. Miss Keene buys only objects which are truly native to the region she visits, or articles which actually depict the life of its people. From her pre-trip research she knows where the main industries of particular regions are located, and it is in these places that she looks for souvenirs. Before one of her European trips, for example, she had read that Florence was the center of the Italian leather making industry. So she bought Italian leather goods only in Florence, buying them more economically than elsewhere in Italy, buying them in near assurance that they were authentic examples of Italian leather art.

A Mexican silver bracelet, purchased in Taxco, Mexico, where the Mexican silver industry is located, not only affords her a genuine example of Mexican silver-work but shows the everyday life of the people of that country, with fifty-two little charms in the form of native animals, Mexican cooking utensils, clothing, all sorts of daily-use articles.

Although Miss Keene returns home from her trips with a suitcase full of objects, she seldom pays more than 25 cents for any one item. Tiny, colorful figurines which she bought in Mexico cost only 3 to 5 cents a piece. A few months later, she delighted friends at a luncheon by giving them away as favors.

The charms on her silver bracelet cost only 20 cents each, or one peso.

She warns that tourists are often cheated, in every locality—that you must look carefully to see that purchases are genuine. By knowing the industries and customs of a country before going there, you can more readily spot flaws and deceptions.

For the woman traveler, Miss Keene has a word of advice on clothing economies. She suggests taking nylon clothes on long trips. Light and comfortable, not easily mussed or damaged, they can be washed out at night—in a hotel room in Trinidad or a pension in France—then hung up to dry for morning wear. Miss Keene always packs a small clothesline in her suitcase.

Her only other clothing suggestions are an all-purpose suit for the woman traveler, and a topcoat. Such basic wear insures comfortable clothes for any climate.

MISS KEENE compiles pages of diary-style notes on her trips, with her travelogues in mind, describing all that she sees, going into meticulous detail when she stumbles upon unusual or colorful information. When she returns home and begins preparing a travelogue her task is simple. Spreading her neatly written notes before her, she prepares an outline of her speech, a concise, brief outline, with only the beginning and ending paragraphs written word for word.

Amy Keene usually begins her speeches identically, by explaining why she chose to visit the particular region under discussion. In her Caribbean travelogue, for instance, she will say, "I picked an off-the-beaten path Caribbean cruise that included the island of St. Kitt's, because its unusual name had long appealed to me . . . The island of Martinique beckoned to me because it was the home of the Empress Josephine, and is full of romance and history."

Then she continues her speech in chronological fashion (using her Caribbean travelogue as an example of a typical speech), taking her audience along with her from the pier in New York to the Caribbean, around twelve of its most beautiful islands—then back again to New York. She not only recounts the "mechanics" of her journey, such as docking at the various harbors and traveling into island interiors, but when she speaks of a particular place she usually spins a tale from its history. She loves to tell of Alexander Hamilton's boyhood on Nevis Island, and of George Washington's trip to Barbados, and his near-decision to spend the remainder of his life there.

WHEREVER SHE goes, Miss Keene supplements her previous reading with on-the-spot historical research, questioning all whom she meets, poring over musty records in libraries and government offices, unearthing facts that even the natives do not know. On Martinique for example, she spent several hours in a library trying to discover why the only living survivor of the eruption of Mt. Pelee had been in jail at the time of the disaster. She learned that the calypso singers of Trinidad are true ballad singers, singing extemporaneously about their lives and customs, gathering once a year for a song festival.

These are the facts, combined with colorful descriptions of people whom she encounters, word pictures of harbors, mountains, and picturesque towns, that provide color—and audience appeal—to her speeches.

Amy Keene likes to conclude her travelogues with a humorous anecdote or philosophical remark such as her admonition "Never forget, you may always meet a relative!" Then she tells—in merry fashion—of finding the name of an ancestor on the wall of a little Anglican church in the British West Indies. Later she met relatives, descendants of the same man, who lived only three doors from the church. "You never know," she sighs. "You never know."

Just before Miss Keene leaves her apartment to speak, she picks up her outline from her desk and scans it hastily, reading the beginning and the ending with particular care. Then when she talks she has to refer to her outline only occasionally, speaking informally, and directly to her audience.

Each time she lectures, Miss Keene wears or exhibits some article that is native to the country or region she has visited. When she speaks about Holland, for example, she wears a little Dutch cap. When she is lecturing on the Caribbean she often wears a headdress tied for her by a Caribe Indian woman, or scarves which Caribbean peoples use as dresses. Her Alaska travelogue calls for tiny wooden totem poles and the story behind this ancient Indian tradition. She seldom takes photographs on her trips, but she collects commercial photographs and travel posters for display purposes. When she lectures on the Western states she often exhibits a group of remarkable color photographs given to her by filling station operators in the Western states. Amy Keene likes pictures—her apartment is full of them. But she only brings back paintings and photographs that have a personal meaning for her, usually of places which she has actually visited.

A LIFE-LONG resident of Indianapolis, long active in various women's groups, Miss Keene was already well-known locally before she began to give travelogues. Friends first asked her to speak before small groups, then word-of-mouth advertising—from one club woman to another—provided her with speaking engagements in rapid succession. She has never had to solicit dates herself. Now that she is no longer teaching she can accept dates at anytime during the week. With more than eighty speeches scheduled between September, 1951, and June, 1952, Miss Keene is speaking most often to Indiana chapters of the International Travel-Study Club, an organization of 2,900 travel-curious women in Indiana, Illinois, Texas, and Puerto Rico. Parent-Teacher bookings take second place on her calendar.

Miss Keene suggests listing your name with a licensed speaker's bureau or a theatrical agency as a possible method of obtaining speaking engagements, particularly if you are a newcomer to the community or have not been active in local affairs. Few cities have speaker's bureaus—agencies which handle dates for speakers alone—but almost all medium and large size communities have theatrical agencies, listed under Theatrical Agencies, Entertainment, or similar titles in the classified sections of telephone directories. Most of these will accept lecturers as regular clients.

When you register your name with a booking agency, it contacts organizations which it thinks will be interested in your services, then arranges time, date, and place of all lectures. One Indianapolis theatrical agent states she is besieged with requests from local civic and social groups for speakers. They usually make two stipulations, she says. They want entertaining speakers, and they want speakers who ask a reasonable fee.

The average theatrical agent, except those who manage the affairs of Hollywood celebrities or other expensive entertainers, is eager to discover new clients, and will accept inexperienced speakers. An agent usually deducts ten per cent of your earnings as his fee. If he spends a great deal of time with you, however, working to improve the content of your speeches, your delivery, or appearance, as many agents do, he is justified in asking for fifteen per cent of your lecture income.

Would-be speakers may also advertise in local papers. Community papers are often valuable advertising mediums for such work. Small advertisements in "Situation Wanted" or "Personals" columns often bring surprising results, and seldom cost more than a dollar. If you live in a rural area, you might even write to the presidents or program chairmen of local organizations, introducing yourself and describing your services and fee. Names of these persons can be obtained from society columns and club notices.

MISS KEENE'S travelogue rates fluctuate according to the size of the group to which she is to speak, its ability to pay, and the availability of the meeting place. She points out that some travel lecturers are able to ask as much as $250 a lecture—others, with reputations like Burton Holmes and Lowell Thomas, ask even higher fees. The average local travel lecturer, however, with limited experience and demand can only ask $15 to $25, occasionally $50, according to Miss Keene. She warns that beginning speakers will sometimes be offered as little as $3 to $5, particularly in small towns. "Don't turn these dates down," she advises. "The more often you speak, the faster your reputation will grow. Soon you will be able to obtain higher pay."

Amy Keene has had no training in public speaking, and needs none. Speaking informally, including as many unusual facts as time allows, she has little trouble in holding attention. Public speaking courses are often invaluable, however, to the beginning speaker. Y.W.C.A.'s and university extension units even some city schools, frequently offer such courses at low rates.

Miss Keene states that she is usually able to pay completely for an extensive trip within a year after its completion, sometimes sooner. For the man or woman who dreams of traveling, but does not act, she points out the following facts:

Round-trip bus fare from New York to Los Angeles is only $82. Satisfactory lodging can be had almost anywhere in the United States for as little as $2 or $2.50 a night. Many people travel on an individual food budget of only $2.50 a day. Based on these figures, a three-week trip across the continent could be made for as little as $200 excluding souvenirs, and entertainment expenditures such as movie tours, or "extra special" dinners. Miss Keene believes that in three weeks a person could accumulate enough material, through close and careful observation, to speak informally to home-town groups.

AMY KEENE would not trade her travel experiences for a life-time of ordinary events. These are the tales that enliven her lectures, the events and places that will live longest in her memory:

She remembers the man who preached a sermon at 2:30 o'clock in the morning on a trans-continental train, on one of her rare trips at night. As the train sped through the oilfields of Texas with derricks standing out against the moonlit sky—he preached salvation until he had awakened everyone in the car, except his wife, who slept peacefully in the seat beside him throughout the oration.

Miss Keene remembers the family who offered her shelter in a tropical rain storm in the British West Indies and Heather, their charming ten-year-old daughter. She remembers the soldier in Alaska who greeted her so exuberantly when he found she was a fellow Hoosier, and the native woman on Antigua Island who grasped her on the shoulder in church one Sunday, whispering warmly, "Welcome sister, welcome sister."

She thinks often, too, of places like lovely St. Lucia Island, another Caribbean island . . . of the beauty of Salt Lake City and the kindness of its people.