Hitchhiking Memories... Could Have Been a Lot Worse

CallMeKate

CallMeKate

Well-known Member
Location
Mid-Atlantic US
My one and only hitchhiking story could have ended up a lot worse than it did. It was 1977 and my boss's brother had gone missing from Camp Lejeune. (So yeah, AWOL.) She wanted to hitch down there from PA and her mama didn't want her to go alone. They took an unsuspecting me out for a fish dinner and her mother begged me in tears to go with her. Naive or just plain dumb me agreed and we started out right then... rainy Saturday night. No plan, little money... ugh!

Got to the base the next day and the brother's commander said "sorry, girls, can't help, we'll call when he returns or we find him." So we had to turn right around. I have no idea why she even thought going there would be a good idea, or what we could have done there!

Anyhow, we were very fortunate to have rides with extremely kind people. One trucker, after a lecture of the century about how dangerous hitching was, bought us a hot breakfast and waited with us at the restaurant until he was sure he could secure a safe ride for us. He did, and that was a Canadian trucker who took us directly to our front doors although it was slightly off his route. I still remember his name. Kind of a good memory that could have had a much different ending.
 

Now that this is on my mind today, I'm sitting here realizing that while 1977 had its problems like any era, I seriously doubt that my story would have ended up so well in 2023 with a girl the same age and everything else equal. Sobering. The entire atmosphere is so different. Or maybe it's not really different and it's just a lot easier to hear the horror stories now with the Internet and instant news. What think?
 
Gaer said:
"What think?" I think your Angels were watching over you! You were so lucky to find that kind truck driver!
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I'd have to agree, @Gaer ... but there's another time I'm even more convinced. In a vehicle with three others and we hadn't known the driver would start drinking. I remember pulling out into the street and screaming that a semi was coming right at us fast. I "knew" it was going hit because it was right on top of us, but it didn't hit and I don't know why. I wasn't drinking myself but I only remember stopping at the driver's aunt and uncle's house while he went to the door and said "we're in trouble." The rest of the night is totally wiped from my memory. It was 44 years ago.
 
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A friend and I were trying to hitchhike from Jackson, Wyoming to Ogden, Utah (~250 miles). It took 2 days before anyone stopped, but we were lucky then, school bus full of hippies headed to Ogden.

Turned out about the same time as we started trying news was breaking of hitchhikers murdering and eating their ride in Yellowstone, just a few miles north of where we were. We had no radio and were ignorant of the news, so apparently was were the hippies who picked us up.

The Heart-Eating Hippie Who Admitted "I Am a Cannibal" When He Was Arrested​

https://gizmodo.com/the-heart-eating-hippie-who-admitted-i-am-a-cannibal-1724667829
 
Alligatorob said:
A friend and I were trying to hitchhike from Jackson, Wyoming to Ogden, Utah (~250 miles). It took 2 days before anyone stopped, but we were lucky then, school bus full of hippies headed to Ogden.

Turned out about the same time as we started trying news was breaking of hitchhikers murdering and eating their ride in Yellowstone, just a few miles north of where we were. We had no radio and were ignorant of the news, so apparently was were the hippies who picked us up.

The Heart-Eating Hippie Who Admitted "I Am a Cannibal" When He Was Arrested​

https://gizmodo.com/the-heart-eating-hippie-who-admitted-i-am-a-cannibal-1724667829
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Eeeeeew! Well I'm really glad you're here with us today to tell THAT story, @Alligatorob ! If I'd heard something like that before my "adventure," I guarantee no amount of fancy fish dinner or a mama's tears could have talked me into going!
 
I hitchhiked across the country when I was young. Hitchhiking to the west coast was the thing to do.

I also hitchhiked on the island(s) in my 50s and 60s, because there was no bus or taxi. Occasionally I've flagged down a ride in other places. Most people were either very kind or neutral. No bad experiences

I already related a couple of stories in other threads. Okay, here are a few more:

On our trip "out west," my friend and I were somewhere on the north shore of Lake Superior. It was getting dark. A tough looking greaser type slowed down and said he was sorry he couldn't offer us a ride because he was just going a couple of miles. He had a Thrush sticker on his car. Remember those?
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A while later, he drove back the other way. He said, "You'll never get a ride now. You'd better come to my place." My friend and I looked at each other but somehow decided to go with him.

He lived in a small trailer. His toilet was rustic and complicated. His friend came over for a while, and they chatted about tough guy stuff. Anyway, he was good to us, and we all went to sleep. In the morning my friend and I went on our way.

(Many years later, I drove by there and wanted to say hi to our host. A young boy told me he'd moved away.)

A bit farther on, a Native man and his sister (a little girl) picked us up in a station wagon. There were lots of boxes in the back. The man kept apologizing, saying something about fishing. Finally we arrived at their village and got out. The people were nice. When we left, I asked my friend what all the apologies had been about. He said all the boxes were full of fish, and the man was apologizing about the smell. I hadn't smelled anything.

In a small town in Saskatchewan, a car with 3 young guys picked us up. We drove around for a while. We saw a cop car, and one of the guys said we were going to get stopped. I asked, "How do you know?" He said, "We just know." Sure enough, the cop pulled them over, hassled them a bit, and then let them go.

Then they said we were going to a house that one of the guys owned. The house had absolutely no furniture, and we sat on the floor. They said we could spend the night there, but we decided to keep hitching. We ended up in another town, where we met a young woman. We spent the night at her place.

Years later, I was living with my boyfriend in a fairly isolated part of West Virginia. He kicked me out, and I started walking. The nearest bus was about 90 miles away. After about 10 miles, a guy stopped. He said he had driven by an hour before and seen me walking. When he came back the other way, he saw me still walking and said to himself, "That lady needs a ride." In true WV fashion, he had a cooler of beer on the seat beside him. He said he wanted to pull off the road and take a photo of a lake or something. I thought it was kind of weird, but he did just take a photo of whatever it was, and then got back onto the road. He kindly drove me all the way to the bus station, which was quite far out of his way.
 
Hitchhiking Memories... Could Have Been a Lot Worse
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I hitchhiked a lot between the age of 15 and 20 or 21. By age 21 I got 'affluent' enough by ceasing drug use and getting more employment so that I could finance my own transportation, this after coming back from the Army/Vietnam.
Anyway, one time I was hitchhiking from Hermosa Beach to Crestline, to visit my high school friends. A long haired hippie type in a VW bus picked me up, and was headed to Crestline also. As I recall one of us had something to smoke, so we shared it. As we were going up Hwy 18 this gutless piece of $h!t VW bus was goin' nowhere, so I had to get out and push this toad while he steered it. o_O
LOL, my hitchhiking days were numbered after this...:p
 
There's an existing thread Here... https://www.seniorforums.com/threads/who-has-hitchhiked.73668/#post-2191533

This is what I wrote on it...


I was about 16 or 17... my friend and I wanted to go hang out at the city airport at night.. it was more fun there because there was entertainment , and amusement machines etc.. there was only the ferry to get us across to the general area of the airport, but in those days there was a good 3 or 4 miles to reach the airport after getting off the Ferry.. nothing else around.. just fields and roads with no street lighting.. .. so we really didn't want to walk in the pitch dark over 3 miles of fields.. so we flagged down a passing car.

He was very pleasant, chatty, asked us where we were going, said that's ok, he'll drop us off...

He didn;t.....he just kept driving in the pitch dark.. all we could see was the lights of the airport as we drove past it and on further and further into the darkness... he'd stopped talking by now, we asked him to stop, he didn't reply.. .. so my friend and I both opened the doors while he was driving, very prepared to jump out... and he screeched to a halt right next to a field.

We were over that fence and running for our lives before he could even discover where we'd gone.. or even see us in the dark.. he was calling out to use to come back and he would drop us at the airport.. but we just kept running to safety..

never hitched again...
 
I also shared this on a previous thread....but will share again.

https://www.seniorforums.com/threads/who-has-hitchhiked.73668/post-2190904

I never have myself.
My matron of honor and her hubby driving in the front seat (with me in the back seat dressed for my lakeside wedding) picked up a hitch hiker. He climbed in back, shut the door, and then....looked over at me. They told him I needed a groom, and he was it! You can imagine what went through his head.....So funny!o_O
And NO, we let him out shortly after up the road before arriving at the lake.
 
This thread bought back many memories. I hitch hiked many times and looking back God kept me here for a reason, to have the life that I have. I never hitch hiked alone but we did end up in some tight spots. After saying that we did meet some wonderful people, one time in Spain we had all our clothing and documents stolen, back then it was not so easy to transfer money. We met a couple of young men and they drove us from Malaga to Amsterdam, bought us food, were very kind. Once there our parents sent money.
 
Alligatorob said:
Good to hear from you, its been a while. That's a lot of hitching.
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Thank you. Yes, it was.
Alligatorob said:
What was Africa like?
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Africa was fantastic! I expected Asia to be at least as good but it wasn't.
deaver said:
did lots of hitchhiking lots of stories even hopped a freight once
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I always wanted to hop a freighter but when I finally got the chance I thought about everything that could go wrong and I chickened out.
 
I’ve never hitchhiked, but in my pre-driving days a few folks who knew me would see me walking, pull over, and offer me a ride. I guess that this could be considered hitching by invitation…

I’ve never picked up hitchhikers, unless I likewise knew them…and the practice was safer then than now!
 


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