#2 2018-03-26 11:55:58
I stood for some 12 hours in the middle of nowhere California, near Crows Landing if I recall in 1968.
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#3 2018-03-26 12:16:53
SpacePuppy wrote:
I stood for some 12 hours in the middle of nowhere California, near Crows Landing if I recall in 1968.
Was your brain "squirming like a toad"? Just sayin...
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#4 2018-03-26 12:46:05
Thanks for that. Great article, which brings back lots of memories. Hitchhiking is so Zen; you always get a ride as soon as you stop needing one.
PS - 14 hours, outside Gallup, NM. Finally got picked up at 4 am by a guy doing speed, who talked about a hundred words a minute, and needed someone to talk with.
Last edited by Smudge (2018-03-26 12:55:29)
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#5 2018-03-26 13:08:39
I'm too large and aggressive looking to get away with hitchhiking, just one of the downsides. Play the hand you're dealt.
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#6 2018-03-26 13:21:12
Emmeran wrote:
I'm too large and aggressive looking to get away with hitchhiking, just one of the downsides. Play the hand you're dealt.
I'm 6'4" with dark hair and fairly dark skin for a white guy, and I went all over the US and Europe using my thumb. And I never had anything really bad happen either (although I did meet some really strange people). It's like I was saying above -- you get picked up only when your attitude is right, and by "right", I mean completely present. Sometimes it took me a day to settle down enough that I could stop being in a hurry, and I wouldn't get much by way of rides until I did. But as soon as I got into the mode of "where I am at this moment is the perfect place to be, and it doesn't matter if I ever get a ride" I'd get a ride.
It's about the energy you give off.Or that's what I experienced, and what I believe. I liked hitchhiking because it taught me how to let go and be in the moment, and those are not things I was born knowing how to do.
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#7 2018-03-26 13:46:49
Too many years as a Jarhead, I still stand and look like that, I remain a creature of my youthful environment and family biology; it takes people a while to come to grips with the fact that I'm a nice and well mannered person.
Just say'in dude, folks tend to shy away from me at first; I've tried to find a look that is softer but have yet to meet success. Age might help with that but I doubt it.
But on the other side I've already had my share of legendary adventures as well so I don't feel I'm missing out: I've been chased by angry mobs twice, hidden from the police by a prostitute, etc. and etc. I have been blessed with an experience filled life.
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#8 2018-03-26 14:21:41
No, I don't see as it matters at this point either. I doubt either of us has much need to hitchhike any longer. I was just tossing the ball around and sharing my own experiences.
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#9 2018-03-26 20:46:04
I was always the picker upper. I drove an old, slow VW van for many years, had family and jobs all over the East Coast The radio only got AM and took 8 tracks, so anybody willing to break the cycle of Best of Bread and late night hillbilly preachers was a godsend in my book. Do the slow roll out of a truck stop toward the interstate and there was a time you couldn't help but pick up someone going somewhere.
I've had a few bad guests, got stuck up for $8 once, but earned way more than that in stories, shared comestibles and other assorted goods. I never did get paid in ass, but mostly because I wasn't looking for it and most of it that was offered wasn't worth the price of the ride.
But today? Since they closed all the nut houses it's rare I would pick someone up without at least buying them a cup of coffee and getting their read before I would have them in my car.
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#10 2018-03-27 11:58:57
Baywolfe wrote:
SpacePuppy wrote:
I stood for some 12 hours in the middle of nowhere California, near Crows Landing if I recall in 1968.
Was your brain "squirming like a toad"? Just sayin...
Fuck yeah. Finally a CHP took pity on me, and moved me 5 miles up near a better road. Some of the best rides I got from police, except the ones of course running me in. Between Freights and Hitching, I take Hitching. I had some very crazy rides, between the people with guns and booze, to the Jim Jones' acolytes trying to kidnap/recruit us.
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#11 2018-03-27 14:06:53
SpacePuppy wrote:
I had some very crazy rides, between the people with guns [yes] and booze [yes], to the Jim Jones' acolytes [yes] trying to kidnap/recruit us.
The only thing you failed to mention was the occasional aggressive gay who hoped to score, and wouldn't take no for an answer. Otherwise...our experiences match.
Of course, there were also some people who were simply strange beyond belief, and who picked up hitchhikers so that they could have a captive audience which wouldn't back away from them as they spoke.
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#12 2018-03-27 22:47:47
Smudge wrote:
SpacePuppy wrote:
I had some very crazy rides, between the people with guns [yes] and booze [yes], to the Jim Jones' acolytes [yes] trying to kidnap/recruit us.
The only thing you failed to mention was the occasional aggressive gay who hoped to score, and wouldn't take no for an answer. Otherwise...our experiences match.
Of course, there were also some people who were simply strange beyond belief, and who picked up hitchhikers so that they could have a captive audience which wouldn't back away from them as they spoke.
I have a brother-in-law who hitched down to see his sister a couple of times back in the 80's. It used to crack him up that he never got propositioned by gays until he crossed into Texas. I don't know if it's the repression or the water or what.
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#13 2018-03-27 23:04:18
Baywolfe wrote:
Smudge wrote:
SpacePuppy wrote:
I had some very crazy rides, between the people with guns [yes] and booze [yes], to the Jim Jones' acolytes [yes] trying to kidnap/recruit us.
The only thing you failed to mention was the occasional aggressive gay who hoped to score, and wouldn't take no for an answer. Otherwise...our experiences match.
Of course, there were also some people who were simply strange beyond belief, and who picked up hitchhikers so that they could have a captive audience which wouldn't back away from them as they spoke.I have a brother-in-law who hitched down to see his sister a couple of times back in the 80's. It used to crack him up that he never got propositioned by gays until he crossed into Texas. I don't know if it's the repression or the water or what.
Well...I know they call Amarillo the San Francisco of the South.
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#14 2018-03-28 05:56:33
Smudge wrote:
Well...I know they call Amarillo the San Francisco of the South.
It's all those romantic ballads.
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#15 2018-03-28 08:13:24
Smudge wrote:
dark hair and fairly dark skin for a white guy
Sounds almost like a smudge or something.
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#16 2018-03-28 13:09:14
Emmeran wrote:
Smudge wrote:
Well...I know they call Amarillo the San Francisco of the South.
It's all those romantic ballads.
I always think about this song for Amarillo, after I went to see Emmylou Harris in 1979.
Last edited by Baywolfe (2018-03-28 13:09:36)
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#17 2018-03-28 14:59:51
The comment about Amarillo was a joke. I think of Amarillo as a pinnacle of toxic masculinity and unenlightened knuckle dragging stupidity. Of course, Amarillo may not actually be the most macho part of Texas because there is so much competition. 
When I take I-40 cross country, I try to time my bathroom breaks so that I don't have to stop in the panhandle at all, but rather race right through it.
Last edited by Smudge (2018-03-28 15:03:27)
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#18 2018-03-28 17:57:19
Smudge wrote:
The comment about Amarillo was a joke. I think of Amarillo as a pinnacle of toxic masculinity and unenlightened knuckle dragging stupidity. Of course, Amarillo may not actually be the most macho part of Texas because there is so much competition.
https://i.skyrock.net/1595/90441595/pic … WC2kDZ.jpg
When I take I-40 cross country, I try to time my bathroom breaks so that I don't have to stop in the panhandle at all, but rather race right through it.
Oh, Amarillo is alright. It's only got about 200,000 people, shoot, most Dallas suburbs have more than that. The steak house has the "eat a 72 oz steak meal and it's free" promotion going on but they don't make you eat one and the food is really good. Side note, my son when he was 17 has actually eaten the meal for free. It's got one movie theater but it's in the shopping mall so there's something for the kids to do. If you ride out of town you can spot prairie dogs and some crazy person build a white picket fence (I don't know how high) as a collar around one of the mesas that looks really cool. You can go to the Cadillac Ranch and see the Cadillacs buried in the dirt and see flattened ones in the stream bed leading up to the ranch.
In short, Amarillo may be the most genuine Texas town in Texas. You can keep San Antonio it's just a big tourist trap and Houston/Dallas are just huge corporate cities. Austin is nice but it's grown much too large since I lived there in 1992. Corpus Christi is great but doesn't really say "Texas" when you see it. Waco is too crazy and El Paso is too far away from everything else. True story, there is a road sign on I-10 just outside Houston heading west that says, "El Paso 800 Miles". Gotta love it.
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#19 2018-03-28 18:05:47
Sure. No offense intended, and to each their own, but I'd rather eat a bale of barbed wire than visit Texas if it could be avoided.
I know a great many people who love Texas. I'm simply not one of them.
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#20 2018-03-28 19:57:51
So again: Amarillo by morning, up from San Anton....
** and I'm just a Nebraska ranchboy, but I've ridden my share. **
Last edited by Emmeran (2018-03-28 20:00:29)
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#21 2018-03-28 20:14:47
Smudge wrote:
Sure. No offense intended, and to each their own, but I'd rather eat a bale of barbed wire than visit Texas if it could be avoided.
I know a great many people who love Texas. I'm simply not one of them.
I was born and raised in Ohio, don't get the idea that I love Texas. I like the weather, I can golf 10 - 12 months a year. I'm just saying that the town that you think is an armpit, and perhaps rightly so, is probably the most representative of what Texas is or at least used to be.
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