Hitchhiking
Charles Francis

In 1948 I hitchhiked from Los Angeles to Detroit. I was 21 at the time and a discharged Navy veteran. The year before, I had accompanied my parents and younger brother and sister when they relocated from Detroit to Los Angeles but made few friends during my sojourn in the Golden State. The Californians I met seemed suspicious and aloof. I felt homesick and lonely for my old buddies in Michigan. I yearned for something familiar. Having little money, hitchhiking seemed the only way for me to get back to the mid-west.

My first ride took me to Barstow, California. I walked to the city limit and then spent most of the day waiting for a car to pass. Finally, I saw a beat-up white sedan, with “Hell Drivers” in big, red letters on the doors, come down the road. I stuck out my thumb and the jalopy came to a stop. I got in. The inside of the car was worse than the exterior. It was missing the headliner and carpeting and the seats were covered with canvas. The driver, a feisty little Italian-American named Angelo, said he was going to St. Louis. He was a stunt driver in an automobile daredevil circus and he was on his way home to attend his baby sister’s wedding. This was a big affair in the small Italian community where he came from, just outside St. Louis.

When we got to Albuquerque, Angelo decided he was tired and needed a night of rest. I had no money for a hotel but Angelo said he would pay for my room in a small, inexpensive hotel downtown. After we had cleaned up a bit, it was still early so we went out for a beer. We spotted a likely looking roadhouse down on the riverbank. The sign outside said there would be live music and dancing. Angelo was sure we could find some feminine companionship for the evening in this place. It was still early and there were only one or two couples dancing, but there were two attractive, unescorted women in the booth across from ours. We immediately went over and asked them to dance. They accepted and we were soon taking turns buying rounds, dancing and getting acquainted with these two sociable gals.

Unbeknown to us, two blue-collar dudes had been sizing these girls up and were just ready to move in on them when we beat them to it. These guys kept giving us hostile stares and suddenly one threw a beer bottle that crashed against the wall over our table and showered us with broken glass. Angelo leaped up and charged , but before he could do much damage, the bouncers were into it with the two trouble makers and the whole place was soon a writhing mass of grappling bodies and flying beer bottles. Angelo grabbed the girl he had been dancing with and told me to go with her friend. My girl said she had a car in the back lot and the two of us piled in. She asked me to drive and I, feeling very macho, jumped behind the wheel, started the engine, put it in gear and took off. Unfortunately, I put it in reverse and backed over the bank and half way into the creek. We finally got it out of the water and she directed me to her house.

My lady-friend was a recent divorcee with a nice 3-bedroom house and a seven-year-old son. After dismissing the baby-sitter, she asked me to spend the night with her, which I was happy to do. I wanted to let Angelo know this change of plan but my companion assured me that Angelo would be busy with her girlfriend—and he would undoubtedly figure out that I was doing likewise. And busy I was, until almost daylight.

When I woke up, the sun was high in the sky. My lady-friend was still comatose, although I vaguely recalled her getting up briefly to get her little boy off to school. She seemed likely to stay unconscious for the remainder of the day. My first thought was to get downtown and insure that my ride to St. Louis would not depart without me. But when I got to our hotel, the clerk informed me that Angelo had already left. Angry and dejected, I walked to the edge of town and stuck out my thumb.

I caught a few rides and in a couple of days of sporadic progress, I was on the far side of Oklahoma City, waiting for the early eastbound traffic. The first car I saw that morning was the dilapidated, white “Hell Drivers” sedan. Angelo pulled over and opened the door. He had spent the night in Okie City, he said, and was delighted to see me. The first thing I wanted to know was why he had left Albuquerque without me. He told me that his girl had given him my girl’s phone number and he had phoned early that morning. My girlfriend told him that she was a dispatcher for Navaho Freight Lines and could arrange for them to hire me. She said I had agreed to stay there with her and drive for Navaho. Of course, this was all news to me. Angelo and I agreed that females were indeed strange.

When we were about fifty miles west of St. Louis, Angelo pulled over. “This is it,” he piped, “My sister lives a few miles up this side road.”

“Christ, Angelo. It will soon be dark and I’ll never get anyone to stop for me way out here. Can’t you take me on to some place where it would be easier to catch a ride?”

“Sorry pal, I’ve already missed half of the wedding party and I don’t want to miss a minute more. You’ll catch a ride.” And with that, he was off.

I started walking down the highway. When I heard the sound of an approaching car, I stopped and gave it the thumb, but cars kept passing at open-road speed. I realized that it was hopeless and I determined to keep walking in the gathering dusk until I came to a place where cars would have to slow down. I stopped at a wide curve and tried a couple of cars but they were not slowing down, so I turned and continued walking. There was a wide gravel-surfaced shoulder on this curve and I was well off the pavement when I heard a car coming very fast behind me. I didn’t bother to turn around and thumb him, I just kept walking. Suddenly I heard the sound of gravel hitting wheel-wells immediately behind me: I instinctively leaped sideways. This saved my life, for some homicidal maniac came so close that he clipped my cheap suitcase, knocking it out of my hand and strewing its contents down the shoulder of the road. He didn’t slow down, just fish-tailed and kept on going. I gathered my belongings, tied my ruined suitcase together with a necktie and walked on to an approach to a narrow bridge, where I managed to catch a ride into St. Louis. I checked into the Y.M.C.A. but I didn’t get much sleep that night. I kept trying to imagine what kind of weird creature that murderous driver who had tried to run me down could be.

I took a city bus across the Mississippi River to East St. Louis the next morning and soon caught a ride with dour-faced man, who told me he was an evangelical preacher. He asked if I had accepted Christ as my personal savior, to which I mumbled something noncommittal. He asked me the same question again, this time more emphatically. I told him that I was not interested in religion and preferred not to discuss the subject. He pulled off the road and stopped. “Get out,” he commanded. I got out and retrieved my broken suitcase from his back seat. He came quickly around the car, grabbed me and spun me around. His grabbed my throat and forced me to my knees. His eyes looked deranged and he screamed into my face, “You will accept the Lord right here and now or I will end your miserable, sinful life.” He was incredibly strong but I managed to knock him backwards and took off running. I didn’t stop for a quarter mile and when I looked back down the road there was no sign of him.

I retrieved my broken suitcase and walked on for the remainder of the day. There were few cars on this road and they were moving fast. About nine in the evening, I finally came to a town. The main street was only a few blocks long but they did have a small, seedy hotel.

“No rooms,” the night clerk announced, “everything is rented.”

“It’s getting cold out there tonight, could I pay you to sleep here on the couch in the lobby?” I was totally exhausted and desperate.

“Nope, the owners won’t allow it. You’re going to have to move on or I’ll call the sheriff.”

“You have a sheriff? Where is he?”

“Down the next block, on the other side of the street.”

“Thanks... for nothing.”

“You’re welcome.”

The snide, sarcastic bastard.

The sheriff, I discovered, was no Good Samaritan. When I told him I was freezing outside and would be glad to pay to sleep in a cell, he explained that the town was not in the business of providing lodging to tramps. I asked would he arrest me if I broke his window. He explained that I would have to give the town my labor for quite a while to pay for it—and also pay for my board during the incarceration, which would come to a considerable amount. He said I would be wise to get the hell out of his office before I made him angry.

There was a lone traffic signal at the crossroads in the town and I sat down on the curb and pulled my coat about me. I was cold and miserable but so exhausted that I fell sound asleep. The next thing I knew, I was being shaken by someone, who was asking if I was hungry. I opened my eyes and discovered I was sitting in a car at a truck stop somewhere. It was still night. Looking through the windshield, I could see a red neon sign, "CAFE". “Where am I?” I was totally disoriented.

“I saw you huddled on that curb, back in Illinois. We’re in Indiana now. I was worried you might freeze. Figured you were hitching somewhere. Didn’t know where but guessed anywhere would be better than there. I’m stopping for some breakfast. Like something to eat? My treat.” There was a grinning, middle-aged man holding open his car door for me.

In spite of some unpleasant specimens I had encountered on this trip, maybe there were decent human beings after all. Only a few perhaps, but wasn’t bumping into one pure joy?