Three days after our psychedelic nocturnal journey to America, my family arrived at our final destination: Iowa. The transition was a rude awakening, from a fantastic dream straight into a bad nightmare. We’d traded Austria’s alpine vistas for New York’s towering skyscrapers and wide freeways, and then watched the modern world evaporate in the blazing sun, replaced by endless corn fields and arrow-straight gravel roads.

My first glimpse of America: looking down on a freeway at night, with glow-worm toy cars and a perfect cloverleaf. It was just like the picture of GM’s World of Tomorrow exhibit at the 1939 New York World Fair that I’d seen in an old book. We were circling to final approach at New York International airport, having left Austria (and micro-cars) behind forever.

My first memories are of the womb. The enveloping warmth, the soothing sounds that correlated to alien activity. I remember the sensations of being propelled: forward, stop, turning, forward again, the gentle g-forces rolling me delicately from side to side, ensconced in my snug compartment on all sides, conscious of the rounded form that surrounded me. My first ride was a VW.