On the Road in 1980

You’d be surprised how easy it still is to hitchhike across America, and how many good people you’ll meet.

A friend of mine persuaded me to try it a few years back. I was skeptical. I’d heard the cautionary tales, figured the narrative that we’ve become a low-trust society was basically correct, and definitely didn’t expect people to invite two strange men into their car. And yet that is exactly what happened, 3 or 4 times a day, for a week and a thousand miles.

Not everyone was a shining beacon of light, but some genuinely were, and the cross section of humanity was a continual surprise. (The article captures this well.) There was a bagpiper, a young ex-marine, a woman who may have been stealing ming vases, a social worker and her sister who took us on a tour of the Snake River, and an air traffic controller on the way to his mother’s funeral. He only mentioned that about 4 hours in. A common thread was that people were in a “real” place in life. We were too — hitchhiking asks you to be vulnerable. You might stand by an on-ramp for the better part of a day while a stream of cars passes you and passes judgment on you. You learn to let go of things you can’t control.

I had to end my trip in Salt Lake City, a place I didn’t know much about and had never thought of visiting. I loved it so much I left NYC and moved here. It’s been 8 years now. Funny to think it all started with a hitchhike! You never know what’s out on the road.

In the mid-1990s I hitched across the UK.

Not once, but constantly for 2.5 years.

I was homeless, rough sleeping, and instead of choosing hostels I chose to travel the UK - this was a survival tactic, hostels were not nice or safe places. I would hitch from one city to another, and my sign would simply say "North" or "South".

I had the greatest chance of being picked up at the slip road exiting a service station. So sometimes if I woke in a city I would walk 10-15 miles to get to the first service station on a motorway out of town. This is easy around London or in the midlands, but really hard in the South West.

The people I met... oh wow. It was almost exclusively solo male drivers who picked people up. They were doing long road journeys and wanted company and to stay awake and engaged. To not fall asleep at the wheel.

Your role as a hitcher... to be a graceful, clean, respectful passenger and to bring conversation and to know when to be quiet.

The people though. I once was picked up by one of the Birmingham Six https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Six , on another occasion by a man who was dying and using his remaining months talking to people by picking them up hitching. There were saviours who would go out of their way in deep winter to get me somewhere safe. There were others who were themselves a danger and the propositions I received were... out there. I only once felt the need to do a runner at the first opportunity.

Mostly though, people were incredibly kind, considerate, cool.

And universally, everyone that picked me up said that the reason they did so was that they had once hitched and felt a need to continue to offer that kindness now that they had the means to pick someone up and give them a lift.

Back in the 1970s I hitched across the US about 3 times, over various routes, and all of Heren’s story rings true to me, especially the huge variety of drivers willing to offer rides. About a third to a half of the people who picked me up remarked, in almost the same words, “I used to hitch when I was younger, but it feels too dangerous now” [<1980]. It was troubling to find, more recently, that my youthful sense of immortality had faded, leaving me saying the same words to younger people.

I hitchhiked quite often in Europe around the turn of the century. Something that was unheard of in my suburban middle American youth. It seemed like the most normal thing in the world in Central Europe/The Baltics especially with travelers in orderly queues respecting who arrived first etc. Mostly it was great and someone would pick you up in short order and the resultant conversations were interesting. Occasionally you'd get dropped in a bad spot or an unlucky time and you'd wait a while. Only once did I give up and take a train after 24 hours of nothing and sleeping overnight on a park bench in the rain. I'd love to have the health and freedom of those days again.

I experienced everything from dirt poor people in rusting apart cars who were willing to share everything they had with you, to people in obscenely expensive suits and luxury rides who were unbothered by your road grime. A particularly memorable trip was in a high end Mercedes at terrifying speeds from Genoa, Italy through southern France, and having/getting to wander around Monaco for a few hours in while the driver tended to some business there on the way. The cheapest thing I could find to drink was a 10 Euro lemonade at a cafe as I watched private helicopters come and go from a seaside heliport. Definitely too rich a place for me, but one I never though I would see.

The concept of hitchhiking is such an anachronism now that I had to suspend disbelief as I watched “once upon a time I Hollywood” that I spent most of the time reconciling being the hitchhiker and the driver and why either side would feel like this is a rational option.