Hitchhikers… have you ever picked one up? (1 Viewer)

[arrow1]

Back in the day my dad always picked up this guy who didn't have a car and would walk everywhere. He was mentally challenged but a good dude, Teddy, always happy and smiling. Had about three teeth. I hated it because he was a big fella and dad drove a truck with a bench seat. Teddy didn't exercise regular personal hygiene so I'd end my day smelling like Teddy. Ah good times...

Side note and sign of the times, when I was in 8th-9th grade, late 70's, I'd hitchhike to my friends house 3 miles away all the time. Wouldn't think of doing it now.

I would have hopped in the truck bed

 

[Beef Ravioli]

if this thread keeps going, i'll end up having to tell my story of hitching from Susanville CA to Holland, MI without sleep (and 29¢ in my pocket). it's consensus Top 5.

I’m going to keep the thread going @wikkidpissah so I can hear about you hitching from Susanville, CA to Holland, MI w/o sleep and .29 cents in your pocket. 

 

[wikkidpissah]

I’m going to keep the thread going @wikkidpissah so I can hear about you hitching from Susanville, CA to Holland, MI w/o sleep and .29 cents in your pocket. 

sry, dood - i forgot all about this. here we go -

a li'l background - ran away from home a month into my jr yr of high school and criscrossed/circled the country a dozen times by thumb over the next yr and a half, with Monterrey CA (homeless heaven) as my base. it's too complicated to explain here, but i got back halfway thru my sr yr and tried to go back to school but wouldnt return to my family home. some people worked very hard on my behalf and negotiated a deal for me where if i busted my ### and went to summer school, i could technically graduate w my class and not have to deal with the equivalency ####. in summer school, one of the teachers saw sumn in me and said he wanted me to apply for a job as an aide in this new program - one of the very first mainstream classes for seriously handicapped kids - .that was starting sometime in the next school year (they were having trouble getting it approved). i applied, they liked me but couldnt guarantee me a job til they got final approval for the program.

well, i had just spent 8 months busting my hump and high school feels reeeeally stoopit once you been in communes, hobo camps, Black Panther breakfast kitchens etc, plus my friends were all going off to colleges and i was getting the wanderlust bad. one friend was going to forestry school in NoCal and offered me a ride west - i was splittin'. the teacher who'd helped me said check in with him to see if this job ever came thru.

drove out to Susanville CA, hung a while, then hitched down to the Haight then Monterrey and dug some ol pals and hangs. called my pal in Susanville and he said someone had been calling him from where my HS sweetheart was going to college in Michigan, so i tried calling her with no result, so i went back up to Susanville. turns out this girl had been in a pretty bad bicycle accident and had been in the hospital for days. i had to go to her.

didnt have much money left, didnt have time to have some sent, so i took what dough i had and bought cigarettes, bread, peanut butter and honey so i didnt have to worry about meal stops, leaving me 29 cents, and off i went.

got a ride to Reno in the back of a pickup truck with some migrant workers. Reno was heaven to Mexicans with more'n 12 cents in their pocket cuz the only color Reno ever cared about was green, so it was a happy bunch. one of my new bros decided to be helpful when they dropped me off and threw my rucksack to me, but i wasnt looking and my rig hit the ground at the perfect angle to smash the jars of peanut butter and honey, which rendered most of my gear sticky and useless.

to compound things, i went against my best instincts and took a ride i knew better than to take. the way from Reno to Vegas is to take I-80 about 30 miles east to Fernley NV then take US395 south. every experienced hitcher knew to ask any rides if they were going to Vegas and decline the lift if they were cuz Fernley was known far & wide as HITCHHIKER'S HELL. i had learned the lesson as a noob when i was stuck there overnite. the raillings of the overpass was littered with carved & scrawled hitcher graffiti about how long they'd been stuck there. my own carvings taunted me as well as that of the unluckiest victim of HITCHHIKER'S HELL - "i was here Aug 2,3,4 & 5 of 1969".

i was relieved to only be stuck for four hours until i heard where my ride was going. most of the time, a Nevada west-east ride was good for Salt Lake at least, but this guy was only going to Winnemucca. in those days, each county of NV was charged with paving the as-yet-incomplete I-80 and Humboldt County had not held up their end (mostly cuz, as a state road connecting pieces of an interstate (and one that did not have a speed limit - yeah, that's right - to boot) meant lotsa speeding ticket and other grift revenue for those fatass fuzz. that also meant they could jack up hitchers (the pervue of State Police on interstate routes and ramps) and, shonuff, ten minutes after i got dropped off they were on me, patting me down and jerking me 'round and telling me i'd go str8 to pokey if they saw my thumb out on the remaining 8 miles of state road. so i walked for a coupla hours, i was pretty tired and it was getting dark and it turned out that while they hadnt built any road, they HAD gotten a federal grant to build a rest area and as i approached i saw plenty of people (RVs and such - free and unrestricted in those days) already dug in for the night, so i figured to get some shuteye and get a dawn ride out w some campers.

the rest area had some picnic tables with tin umbrellas, and some clouds were rolling in, so i pitched my bag on one of em. just nodding off when i become informed that the feds had sprung for a sprinkler system by the fact that they all went off at once and all seemed to pointed at me. i got soaked to the bone before i extricated myself and everything i had to dry myself off with was covered with honey & peanut butter. spun myself dizzy trying to airdry my sleeping bag well enough to use it - mid-Sept nights in the desert are cold enough to need it - and when it was, i walked down a slope until i was sure to be out of sprinkler range and pitched my bag on the first level ground i reached on this moonless night. just surrendering to Morpheus when the ground started shaking like the earth was about to open up. turns out i had settled in the bed of the railroad tracks and i lie trembling in fear & Richters as a 150-car freight train made its way about 5 ft from my left elbow. the dust cloud made mud of my moist bag so, when i stopped vibrating, i rolled it up best i could and waited out the dawn to trouble up a decent ride out of there. more, next time -

 

[The Z Machine]

That's a commuting option in the DC area. We call it slugging. There are certain locations that people wait for cars to come pick them up so they can use HOV. 

Aka casual carpool.