Hitchhiking - how far have you gone?

I have to admit. I have never done it. And I've never picked up a hitchhiker.

When I was 17 my car was broken down and I thumbed my way home from my girl friend's house. I got picked by a queer and had to jump out of a moving car when he slowed down for a stop sign. I got a little bruised up and walked the rest of the way home. After that my girl friend's mother drove me home until I got my car fixed.

When we were teenagers, we used to pick up hitch hikers, especially sailors, and would ask them to buy us booze in exchange for a ride.

4 of us were returning from a fishing trip in Mexico and a tire blew out on our camper 20 miles from Hermosillo on a dirt road. Our spare had already been used. I got a ride into down and got the tube patched and a boot put into the tire. I then started rolling the tire back down that 20 miles of dirt road. A truck full of farm workers stopped and picked me up. I was passing out the cigarettes freely. I the noticed that they had one girl in the back that they were taking turns fucking. I was offered a shot at it but passed. They turned off the road and I had to continue rolling the tire down to where the camper was.

The guys were lying down, resting, when I got there and one of them said "We are really in a world of shit now. The jack broke". It was dark now and two us managed to thumb another ride into town. They were 2 guys that had been working up at their mine and they spoke decent English. We drove to the home of one of them. He then had his teenage son drive us down to his shop to pick up a hydraulic jack. He drove us back out to where the camper was at and waited while we changed the tire. He refused to take any money.

We then drove into Hermosillo and then headed north towards Tucson. We got about 20 miles and then the tire that I had gotten repaired blew out again. We spent the night sleeping. In the morning 2 of the guys got another ride back into Hermosillo, found a tire store and retuned with 2 new tires and guys to change them.

Never hitchhiked, don't feel like getting stabbed. But about 15 years ago, my then-roommate ran out of gas on the freeway (Phx people: 101 North going west, in that "nothing there" stretch after you pass the Deer Valley shopping center and before you hit Arrowhead Ranch), and this late, probably midnight or later. He thumbed a ride and some random dude picked him up and took him to the gas station, and then back to his car.

Good thing he didn't call me because I was probably shit-faced.


Never asked him, though, if he abided by the unwritten rule of the road... (God bless you, George Carlin)

https://youtu.be/A1vm4mYqbWM

I was stranded in very rural northern Florida at 2:00 stepping in the road to try to flag down a ride. Cop showed up; beat me up a bit; told me to stop and then just left me there. I tried flagging down a Boss 429 Mustang; they were going about 100mph. They slammed on the brakes crossed the median came screeching up and I expected another beating. Nope gave me a ride to their house; made me a sandwich; let me crash on the couch and dropped me at the turnpike the next morning. In this day and age it would be 10 years before they found my remains.

I've had strangers offer me rides. When I was a kid creepy white men would hang around after school trying to get kids to go with them. That and the pugs was our intro to white America.

Took a few interstate hitchhiking trips in my teens. Got a ride in a semi truck once. Another time in the bed of a pickup truck. It all seemed normal and ordinary back then.

I think I'm just too young to have really had much experience with hitchhiking and hitchhikers. I've only seen a couple of hitchhikers. One was an obvious and well known streetwalkers on Airline Drive in Metairie, LA. I didn't want 80% of the diseases known to science, so that was a hard pass. Another was in either Birmingham or Montgomery, AL travelling NB on I-65. It was pouring rain, and it was a tall, very-thin, very pale skin, very dark haired military aged male. So skinny I almost thought it was a chick. I seriously considered stopping to see if it were a chick, but I had a feeling that it would been a very stupid idea and kept going.

I've never hitchhiked, but I was picked up by a good samaritan on Christmas Eve after going off the road in a snowstorm. This was before cell phones were in everyone's pockets. The GS drove me to a gas station so I could call a tow from a pay phone and then back to my truck where a sheriff's officer was waiting. I got lectured a bit about leaving my vehicle in a ditch perpendicular to the road, but nothing beyond that. The GS tried to give me a "have you heard the Good News?" speech, but dropped it pretty quick when I told him I was active member in the local Presbyterian church. The shitty part was that I was driving a drunk drinking buddy home from the bar. His dad actually happened on us just after we got stuck. He took his son home and left me there. Didn't even offer. Just "Hey, Gamma, I'm gonna head home now. Take care." There's just no understanding some people.

When times are tough friends step forward and acquaintances step away.

Naw Desert, it was a club ad ....

The only time I hitched was when doing part the Appalachian Trail. Near the trail lots of people picked up hitchhikers with backpacks to take them into town. this was the 1980's.

On my way to work once in the late 1980's I saw a girls hitching on the side of the road. Turns out she was a stripper but did not say where. Her apartment was about a mile up the road. She was walking home from work since about 5 AM. Asked if I wanted to come in for a while and like an IDIOT I told her I was going to be late for work.

My best story was not quite a hitchhiker. i was driving from college for Christmas about 850 miles. I get my car packed and drove past a women's dorm. There was an Ok looking girl on the curb with a bunch of luggage and a cardboard sign that said "Annapolis". Close enough. What the hell. We crammed all her shit into my car and took off. Nothing eventful on the almost 700 mile drive. Her father was a Navy Captain and taught at the Academy. Her folks were away for the weekend (this was an all day Friday drive) and I was beat. We spent the night in her parents' bed and I left in the morning. I offered to pick her up on the way back, but she had flunked out and was not going back.

Hitch hiking changed with Ed Kemper, Santa Cruz CA.

SJG

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gruppen - Ensemble intercontemporain, for acoustic orchestra, 3 of them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34_SfP7Z…

Never hitchhiked personally but I saw one girl hitchhiking on the side of the road and stopped and asked where she was going. She was declined, and seemed sort of frightened of me. Oh jeez even the most desperate among us are scared off by me but she was probably looking for a fellow woman driver, nothing wrong with that.

I hitchhiked all the time as a teenager, like all my buddies on the Jersey Shore. Stopped when I got a license and a car.
Except I hit hiked in college from Philly to

My uncle used to hitchhike all the time when he was in the Marines in the 50’s. He always appreciated the many rides he got and as he got older he palways reciprocated the deed. Would always pick up people along the road - until he got beaten up and robbed. I think you’d be crazy to do it today

We all used to hitchhike in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, it changed around the mid 70s, and it didn't seem so benign as it did in those earlier times.

Hitchhiked from Philly to State College Pa (Penn State) when I was in college - about 200 miles. I had a cardboard sign that said “Penn State” and a book bag and got picked up right away by a Penn State student - good guy. We smoked one of his joints and he then sold me some pot. Good trip

It still get amazed how much times have changed. My dad enlisted in the Navy during WW II while he was still 17. He turned 18 and graduated from high school a month later. Graduation was on a Friday night and Sunday he was off to basic training.

He had to hitchhike a ride to the nearest city about an hour away. He spent the night at the YMCA and was bussed to basic the next morning.

It still shocks me grandparents didn’t drive him.

@motorhead
Most people didn't drive or even own cars in the 30s and 40s, my paternal grandparents never owned an automobile.

^

That could be. They always seemed to have a car since the late 50’s but during WW2 I could see not having a car.

Interesting thread. I Never did. Too young. 41 now. Dad graduated HS and Hitch hiked to CA from Philly and back. Came home and enlisted to go to NAM.

I just can't imagine something like that ever happening now but think was almost common back then.

My mother ran away from home when she was fourteen in 1948 and lived in Texas. She hitched a ride with a guy. He turned out to be an army guy. He talked my mother into not running away and then drove her back home. I'm happy my mother was lucky enough to run into this soldier and nothing bad happened to her.

As I posted the last time this was asked (in August 2020):

I used to hitchhike *all* the freakin' time during the early 1970s -- more times than I can remember. I don't think I ever did it locally for short hops. It was always long-distance trips, usually 200 miles (like from home to college or vice versa) or 500 miles (like from college to Nashville TN). I didn't have a car (obviously), but there were always places I wanted to go and girls I wanted to see. Hitchhiked with different girlfriends several times and thought nothing of it.

I always had my best luck getting rides when I had a guitar with me. It was a totally different scene back then. Easy to get rides, and very safe, though I did get picked up by drunks now and then. Once my girlfriend and I hitched from Boston to Amherst Mass and got picked up by some guy with space in the back of his open-bed pick-up. At one point, I glanced through the window and saw the jerk was going 100 mph. At least it wasn't raining.

Would I do it today? Gotta be kiddin' me.

I was walking in 100 degree weather. A 95 year old woman pulled over and offered me a ride, it was about a mile. This was about 10 years ago. 🥰

It was very common on Long Island, NY in the late 60s & early 70s. Seemed like there were a bunch of prolific serial killers then and a few preyed on male hitchhikers and that seemed to be the beginning of end of hitchhiking. Not that many girls hitched rides even back then, that was always seen as pretty dangerous. It also seemed like the political polarization of the late 60s & early 70s (the Vietnam era) also reduced trust of strangers. Seemed like there was a new risk that someone wouldn't like your political views or length of a guy's hair, etc. and the ride might get uncomfortable. I hitched a lot but never had any serious problems -- a couple lousy drivers but no accidents and one guy who threatened me but he was just trying to scare me, not actually violent. And that's over probably 400+ rides. I'd pick people up too after I had my own car but stopped when that started to feel dangerous too.

Hitchhiking died out by the time I was in high school in the late 80s. Too damn dangerous. We didn't do it. Enjoy the nostalgia and memories but its been gone for decades.

I remember it as a child in the 70s. You would see these hippie types with signs on freeway on ramps. I didn't really understand it. It was gone by the time I was a teen in the late 80's. I'm sure it was fun but also freaking dangerous.

I pick up da hitched hiking lot lizzardz and dey give me da free lapperz in da shit truck!

I know that I hitch hiked at least a dozen times between the ages of 13 and 21. I also know that I've never travelled more than 500 miles in total, while bumming a ride. It dawned on me yesterday that the longest roundtrip I ever hitch hiked was only 100 miles, as I forgot that I took a bus for the other 100 miles home.

in northern arizona i caught some rides in the mid 70s... usually 50 miles between flagstaff and friends places... probably half a dozen times. once even with some deadheads in a old cadillac.