Picking up hitchhikers . . . .

[Yaworski]

The thread about helping stranded people brought to mind some hitching stories.

Back in 1976 when I was a freshman at Purdue, I lived off campus my first semester. It was about a mile and a half walk to campus and one cold snowy morning, I was walking to campus when a pick up truck pulled up next to me. The driver was a cute redhead who said, "You want a lift?" Sure! I asked her why she stopped for me and her reply was "You looked cold." After that, if she passed me when I was walking, she'd stop and give me a lift. Sadly, I don't remember her name.

Around 2002, in the dead of winter, I was driving through my small town and spotted a young woman walking to the high school. She was wearing a windbreaker, shorts, and flip flops. She was the daughter of one of my Assistant Scoutmasters so I stopped and asked if she needed a ride. She just jumped in without comment. I asked, "Do have any idea who I am?" She said, "I think that you're some friend of my dad's from Boy Scouts." LOL. I told her dad about the incident and he said, "I have to have a talk with that girl."

Summer of 1979, I was working in a steel mill and was headed home after a 4-12 shift. I see two girls hitchhiking. Young girls. I stopped, offered a ride and put them in the back seat. Turns out that they were 13 and had been to the Triumph concert. It was late and neither girl wanted to call her mother to come and pick them up. I asked, "Do you know why I picked you up?" Nooooo. "So no one else would." Dropped them at one of their houses and never saw either one again. Strange to think that they are 59 now. I wonder if they stayed friends and if they ever talk about the "old guy" who picked them up.

 

[eveled]

Great stories.

 

[Jeepnik]

When in Spain it was common to pick up scruffy looking folks, male and female on the road. Just about all we "college" students. Most were Americans. They'd call us names and worse at home but they sure were happy when an American GI picked them up.

One guy even ended up marrying a girl he met that way. And she was waaay out of his league.

 

[eveled]

Can’t help but think of this classic

 

[Don Lovel]

I picked up a cute little hippie chick outside Fayetteville Arkansas one morning...50yds down the ŕoad I asked "so how many goats do you own or milk?" As I rolled down my window.
Patchouly and goat scent mmmmmm

 

[gunzo]

The opposite I guess, hitch hiking. 1971, a new acquaintance & I walked on Daytona beach for 3 miles to see a band at the pier. While going back to the motel we decided to hitchhike. Two guys about our 16-18 year age in a big sedan stopped & picked us up. They were higher than groceries in Venezuela, & if that wasn't enough, they decided to roll another one. They had a 1 gallon size baggie of weed. A felony at the time as I recall. They started hitting one another & laughing like hyenas, weed flying all over the car. I didn't know what my new friend would say but didn't care & told the guys that my motel had just appeared, even though it was still 2 miles away. My friend agreed. We walked safely for another hour of so.
Fast forward ~15 years, I ran out of gas on the interstate just 2 or 3 exits from my ramp. A small car stopped, just one big guy in the car & so got in. He ask if I'd ever been in prison & I said no. Then he asked if I knew what goes on between men in prison & I replied I'd heard. Then he smiles & asked what I thought about it. I replied that I'd just seen my exit , he let me out, I wiped the beads of sweat of my forehead & I never, ever have hitchhiked since.

 

[Watertender]

There is a local guy here who hitchhikes all the time. He goes up and down the truck routes picking up bottles and cans for the deposit money.
He knows every free or donation dinner in the area and always makes sure to attend. He doesn't leave a donation and never has.
I used to pick him up and take him to wherever he was going......Until the day he crapped his pants in my new truck... It took a month to get the stink out of the cab and occasionally on a damp morning a molecule of his turd will raise itself from the passenger seat to remind me....

 

[Wvfarrier]

As a kid I usually rode my horse the 3 miles to the bus stop and left him in the yard of the fella who lived near the bus stop and then rode him home....all that stopped when a lady in a perfect replica of tge Duke's General Lee stopped beside me one day and said she would give me a ride to and fro if I got tired if riding my horse. Well, being a teenage boy with delusions of grandeur I rode in that car every single day never realizing how dangerous that was. She drove like she was in a constant hurry. Never did get my granduer tho

 

[Joey]

On one of my hitchhiking tours in the mid '70s I got picked up by a girl in a pickup truck with a camper on it. We had a great coupla days..................

 

[GypsmJim]

My story dates back to 1968, and it was relayed to me by a classmate.

My buddy did not have a car and the bus service to the University was not good. He often hitchhiked. He swore that as soon as he got a car he would pick up every hitchhiker he saw.

He did get the car and kept true to his promise. One night he saw a girl with her thumb out and he stopped. As soon as she opened the door 3 guys jumped out of the bushes and jumped in the car too. They had not driven a mile when he got pulled over by a police officer. Seems that the "gang" had just robbed a store. When questioned, the girl said: "He was driving".

He DID get cleared, but you can imagine it left a sour taste in his mouth.

 

[vito]

I think of hitchhiking, either as the hitchhiker or the person picking up the hitchhiker, similar to why we carry a concealed firearm. The chances that we will need that gun are very, very small but the consequences of needing the gun and not having it are catastrophic. The chances that a hitchhiking event will turn deadly are probably very small, but the consequences of being involved in that type situation are catastrophic as well. And add to that the possibility, especially of picking up a female, of her threatening to rip her blouse and scream rape unless you hand over your wallet. Maybe that's just an urban myth but I will not take the chance.

As you might guess, I have never hitchhiked nor picked up a hitchhiker.

 

[Joey]

When you are young and dumb, you consider yourself to be bullet proof. When I was 16, I hitched about 175 miles to my GP right before Thanksgiving. Had my clothes in a duffle, along with a 20 gauge shotgun with about 6" of the barrel sticking out. My cousins and I had a rabbit hunting trip planned. I got picked up by this older man in an old pu, I noticed his fingernails were so long they were curling down like hawk's claws. That was the first warning sign. He started talking about how he had just gotten out of prison, and had a satchel of money behind the seat. Second warning! He said he had robbed a bank and if he got pulled over he wanted me to take the satchel and run. Three strikes, you're out. I saw a closed business with a gravel parking lot ahead, asked him to pull in and let me out. He got mad and started cussing me, calling me gutless, but he let me out. I had just leaned over the bed to get my duffle bag when he spun the tires and turned to get out of the lot. I grabbed my bag as I was being thrown off the truck bed rail. He hit the road and I never saw him again. Only time I was ever scared in all my hitching trips.

 

[crstrode]

On one of my hitchhiking tours in the mid '70s I got picked up by a girl in a pickup truck with a camper on it. We had a great coupla days..................

Pictures; or it didn't happen . . .

 

[Joey]

Pictures; or it didn't happen . . .

I may have been a bit loose, but I wasn't a creep!

 

[stonebuster]

I started hitch hiking in high school to get home from practice(football & track) because my parents both worked. Hitch hiking to my girlfriend's house when I was 16. A couple times when I lived in Iowa I hitch hiked to Connecticut for Christmas. Once it only took four rides, one gave me a ride to Iowa City where a trucker picked me up on his way to Mt. Kisco, NY. Trucker dropped me off around New Jersey. Then a young lady stopped for me and asked "You're not a murderer or something, are you?" I had my college letter jacket on figuring it would help get rides. She drove crazy fast. When I mentioned it she told me she didn't worry about speeding and pointed to the wheelchair in the back seat. She said when she gets stopped she points to the wheelchair & tells the cop she was trying to get to the rest stop because she had to pee. Her boyfriend was a linebacker for Penn State who was going to play in the Sugar bowl that year. She said he was too small to play pro football. A couple years later I saw him playing in the NFL. Then an off duty NJ trooper picked me up on his way to Ct. only a few miles from my family's home which I walked the last few miles. As soon as I got in he told me he didn't worry about hitch hikers and opened his vest to show me his revolver.

 

[bobski]

maybe fun back then, not in todays world.

 

[Joey]

I wouldn't even consider it today....................
I jumped a freight train, rode it from Salt Lake City to Cheyenne, Wyoming. From what I have heard you are taking your life in your own hand to do it today.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Pictures; or it didn't happen . . .

Different “Forum”

 

[ole442]

Only hitchhiked once! In the mid 1960's friend and I were at school that was about 7 miles from our homes! He said we should hitch a ride! We got into a late 1940's Dodge or Plymouth with some older high school kids! They were kinda squirrley and driving on a two lane road they played chicken with a couple cars! We asked to be let out about halfway home! Whew…. Never hitched a ride again!

 

[Johnny-Baseball]

Pictures; or it didn't happen . . .

No doubt it was a flat-bed Ford.

 

[ole442]

 

[Topfueler1]

Never hitch hiked or picked anyone up ever and never will. Especially the way things are now days.

 

[Crockett12]

When I was in my 20's during the early 70's, I lost my driver's license for a month when I had one too many speeding tickets. I worked about 25 miles away and had no way to get there and back except to hitchhike! After being late for work a couple of times because people weren't stopping to pick me up -- I soon learned that if I limped I could get a ride a lot faster!

 

[Hertervillian]

Picked up a hitchhiker a couple winters back.

He was obviously not prepared for the weather, not even half enough dressed. Poor guy was very hypothermic, slurred speech that made little sense, I figured he was drunk or high.

Long story short I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a more grateful person in my life. It took a half hour of the highest heat the truck could make before he stopped shivering and started making sense.

I was about 19 and let a friend talk me out of giving him a ride in a very similar situation. He was found dead the next morning a few miles from where I’d stopped. I’ve always felt I could have been a lot more insistent with him. We were in Boy Scouts together, he had a lousy home life. 40 years on I still feel sadness when I think of David.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

While in the USAF in 1960/61 I hitchhiked a bunch. You got a ride pretty quick if you were in uniform. The worst was hitching from Amarillo AFB to Columbus Ohio in the middle of January.
When I finally got a car, I would pick up GIs whenever I could.
In 1970 I worked outside of Montreal Canada, and I was amazed at how many people hitchhiked to work and young people just seeing the country.

 

[Jeepnik]

Jim, six years later you'd have been lucky if they didn't throw things at you.

 

[RugerForMe]

When in Spain it was common to pick up scruffy looking folks, male and female on the road. Just about all we "college" students. Most were Americans. They'd call us names and worse at home but they sure were happy when an American GI picked them up.

One guy even ended up marrying a girl he met that way. And she was waaay out of his league.

This not about hitchhiking, but we had meeting with a German sister company, I know enough conversational German to be dangerous. To say the least they were very rude talking among themselves. At the end of the meeting, we were all saying our good bys. I stood up and said in German "Schönen Tag noch. Und sichere Reise" which translates to "Have a nice day. And safe travels." Those guys looked like they were going to carp themselves. About 3 days later we got an apology letter from them address to our engineering dept. :)

 

[thinckley]

A few weeks ago, I was driving back to Utah from Montana. Middle of nowhere I see a guy sitting on an on ramp, half-heartedly holding his thumb out. I don't know why, but I stopped.

He was an older guy, semi-retired truck driver, who was trying to get from Washington back to Texas. He'd had his wallet stolen in Seattle by his buddy's crackhead girlfriend and both her and his buddy had been locked up, but wallet was gone. I wound up getting him to SLC and onto the light rail train to get him to a truck stop south of Provo. Nice guy, great conversations, and just had a run of bad luck. I gave him some cash to help him on his way.

I wouldn't normally stop for a hitchhiker, but I am glad I did that day.

 

[AJGUNNER]

When I was 18 I went to work while lots of my buddies went to college. I would drive around 100 miles down I-5 from the Portland area to Eugene (Go Ducks) on most weekends. We did the usual friday pre game drinking function then hit the game on saturday. I would then drive home on sunday. I drove a small Nissan pickup and there used to be lots of people hitchhiking I-5. I picked a clean looking guy up and he tossed his large backpack into the bed of the truck. Once we were rolling he asked if it was ok to put on his sun glasses. I thought this was kind of a strange question. He went on to tell me he never wore sunglasses while hitching because he had learned it made him appear shifty. As the conversation continued he proceeded to tell me that he had hitchhikes coast to coast and everywhere in between numerous times. He went on to say that he had written a book about his travels. Never did remember the name of the book to check it out. Nice guy made the time fly by chatting. I let him out at my exit and continued to my weekend routine. I soon figured out that checking the ride sharing board at the college worked out better. As the old saying went "Gas, grass, or @@@, nobody rides free" :)

 

[john4st]

Back in the mid 80's I hitched to college a couple of times. Iowa to San Diego. So many good memories. I think I learned more from hitch hiking than I did any professor?