In the 1980s, around Japan for the summer. I had previously lived in Kyushu so I hitchhiked between Tokyo and there several times that summer. One family even invited me to stay the night. A businessman rented a cheap room for me in Tokyo and I stayed there for several weeks.
Hitched once. In my 20’s I went to a huge bush party with some friends in rural Québec about an hour and half from where I lived. Friends said they were leaving, I stayed. Made some new friends at the party and stayed at their place overnight. Next day, no one they was heading into the city. They pointed towards the direction of the highway, and off I went. I walked for about three hours before someone picked me up.
Finally someone stopped, a young guy with his infant in a car seat up front. Asked me if I had any dope, and said “If I did it would be all yours” Gave me lift back to the city, I felt safe since he had his child with him.
I frequently got rides from strangers while walking on base when I was in the Air Force. People who wouldn’t give rides to strangers off base would pull over if they saw someone walking on base and offer a ride. I normally wouldn’t have accepted a ride from a stranger but it felt safe on base.
Let me guess, you’re a guy?
Pre-covid I would pick up hitch hikers if they were women alone. They always without exception have been really messed up. Homeless, or desperately poor, strung out, something. You have to be real desperate to hitch when you’re female, and that is why I stop for them.
Tons in the late 1970’s / early 1980’s when in HS then college. I’d routinely hitch the few miles up a road in suburban Philly to get to Penn State/ Ogontz. It was safe, IMHO. I was ( at the time ) 6’2 ", 150 with longish hair. And male. And I looked for the PSU parking sticker on the front bumper.
Aside from that, I did hitch some. The wildest hitch I ever did was to burn a day off at a summer camp where I was working ( nominally Kunkeltown PA ) about 57 miles + / - to see my girlfriend at the summer camp where SHE was working.
Took 6 hours. It was brutally hot, I made the mistake of wearing a yellow T-shirt with an enormous Jewish star on it. Hey, it was a Jewish youth camp ! Got honked at a lot. A lot of flipped fingers out the window, etc. But I got rides. The last one- a good 15-20 miles of it- was from a woman. As we chatted, I eventually asked her if she worried about picking up a guy.
She reached down next to her seat and handed me her license to carry a firearm. And smiled. I said I get it, and handed it back. And we went back to chatting…
I do not believe I’ve hitched since about 1983.
I did pick up a young woman whose car had died on an elevated exit ramp off of I-95 near the PA/ DEL border. It had clearly died and slowly rolled crooked into the guardrail. She was fine, just shook up. I offered to take her right to her house. She was freaked, but took the ride.
Spent a LOT of time talking about her boyfriend. I handed her my cell phone and told her to go ahead and call him and explain that she was stranded and getting a ride from me. I pulled up in front of the house, guy standing at the door, she got out and bolted. Kind of weird. I don’t really give off a threatening vibe in any way and made a point to mention my wife, etc etc.
Now? I wouldn’t pick anyone up for any reason.
Maybe I should mention that I’m female.
In 1979 I was visiting my buddy who lives near Fresno. Because I’d never done it before, I decided I’d hitchhike home to Wichita. Driving straight through is about a 24 hour drive; I made it home in about 40 hours, primarily because my last ride was from western New Mexico all the way to Wichita.
That was my first and last hitchhiking experience.
A large majority of my hitch hiking experiences in the 1970s and 1980s were fine. However, I did experience some creepy rides.
On my cross-country trip in 1973, I and my girlfriend were picked up (I think somewhere in Pennsylvania) by a large scar-faced man and his blowsy platinum-blonde wife. The wife got in the back seat while I and my girlfriend rode in front (back in the days of bench seats). After a bit it appeared that the wife was having some kind of emotional breakdown, and she began ranting about wanting to get out of the car. The husband managed to calm her down and make her lay down in the back seat. But after I while, while we were on a windy bit in the mountains, I noticed she was sneakily trying to open the back door. I reached back to hold the door closed while telling her husband what she was trying to do. He pulled over, and explained she was on lithium. We declined to go any further with them.
Somewhere in Appalachia we got a ride from a guy who had open cans of gasoline in the back of his station wagon.
Somewhere in the midwest we got a ride with a little skinny guy in a sports car. After we had been going a few minutes and he had chatted with us, he took a handgun from between the front seats and put it under his seat, saying “I guess I won’t be needing this.”
We got another ride from a guy who told us he was a traveling butcher. He apparently had a whole kit in the trunk and got temporary jobs in different towns. He had a couple of little wires coming out of the sides of his forehead. He said he had cracked his skull sometime back and it was wired together until it healed.
Our longest ride was with a long-distance trucker from Nebraska to Utah, a huge old bald guy with a handlebar moustache. He said he picked us up to have someone to talk to, which he did all through the night while popping reds to stay awake. At one point I and my girlfriend both fell asleep and when I woke he was still chattering to himself.
In Idaho we were picked up by a guy in a business suit. He made me uncomfortable by the way he was looking at my girlfriend in the back seat in the rear-view mirror, who in keeping with the times was braless.
My nicest experience was in New Zealand, where I was picked up by a 70 year old woman who said she never picked up hitch hikers. She ended up inviting me to stay at her house and fed me dinner. The next day her husband drove me to the ferry terminal. She ended up corresponding with my mother for years. When I moved back to New Zealand six years later I was sometimes invited over to their house, including for Christmas brunch.
My strangest ride in Australia was when I was picked up by three drunken aborigines at night in southwest Australia. The driver was a very big woman who laughed uproariously all the time. At one point, the guy in the back seat solemnly informed me, “Do you know who we are? We are the Australian Aborigines! We are the boomerang people!”
Yeah I guess this remains a question from this discussion. Seems like the majority of stories here ended positively, with a few iffy interactions. I am not sure I would pick up someone up, but it depends on the circumstances. If I were driving thru the mountains in the summer going for a day hike with a buddy and saw someone with a backpack needing a ride down to a town (to get supplies), yeah I would probably offer them a lift. In town it gets a little more questionable, but would depend on the situation - someone standing outside a broken-down car on the side of the highway, probably, or at least stop to offer assistance. Depends on the person and the situation, I guess. Maybe as an older person we have more to lose or are less trusting now? I dunno.
Someone mentioned handing their cell phone to a stranger you are helping so they can call someone - I did this once not too long ago. I encountered a pair of young teens on the side of our local bike trail - one was evidently running while the other was on a bike that had a flat tire. I stopped to help them as they had no phone and no way to repair the bike, and were a mile or two from the nearest road. I asked if they needed help and they accepted, and I did the same thing by handing my phone to the runner, who called her father to let him know she was stuck and getting help from a stranger. I patched the tube and sent them on their way. Maybe that story should be in the Karma Bank thread.
I hitchhiked a lot during my half-summer in Europe back in the '80s. Quite cool and easy to do. I later found out that at that time, a serial killer was preying on hitchhiking young ladies in West Germany. But one lady even picked me up after dark in Switzerland out of sympathy for her own kid, who was also hitchhiking around Europe.
As for in the US, no, not such a good idea. The last time I gave someone a ride was technically not me giving the ride since it was a buddy who was driving, and it was his car. But driving between towns one day, we picked up a hitchhiker, another young guy like us. But he started telling us about just having gotten out of jail and other skeevy stuff. My friend and I looked at each other and swore never again.
If there is ever another thread here asking What was so great about the good old days, just ask people if they pick up strangers.
In thr 50’s, I picked up black hitch-hikers in the deep south, and black drivers picked me up. Blacks and whites trusted each other then more than whites nowadays trust each other.
In the 90’s I hitchhiked from Oregon to Colorado and back, from Oregon to Alaska and back and from Maryland to Oregon, as well as shorter trips in Oregon.
There were a few sketchy rides but for the most part the people who picked me up were quite nice. I had some good times too.
When I was a teenager, I picked up a drunk who was hitching to the liquor store. He was pretty lame and out of it but not scary.
I never see hitchhikers anymore. I am sure they are out there as usual but I simply have not come across any. I would probably pick one up again if the circumstances were right and if they appeared to be harmless. I realize that that is not a wise thing to do. However, I remember how grateful I felt when someone would pick me up. I would like to pay some of that back, now that I can.
As a youth in the 60s, I hitch hiked a lot. Later, I worked between two branch offices of the company that were about 250 miles apart and commuted three days a week. I would often pick up hitch hikers on that stretch of I-80
Taken: While on vacation on Maui, the rental car broke down on the road coming back from the Nakalele Point blowhole. No cell coverage in that area. A woman in a passing Jeep gave me a ride to the nearest hotel, which I think was the Ritz-Carlton, and I was able to use their pay phone to call the rental car company.
Given: While waiting at a northbound light coming home from Christmas shopping, a woman in her mid to late 30s (I was in my late 20s), came out of the parking lot of an area with a lot of restaurants and walked across the 4 southbound lanes, stood on the median, leaned down to my window and asked for a ride. She looked distraught so I said yes and unlocked the passenger-side door. She hopped in before the light turned green.
She had been on a bad date and wanted a ride back near her home. She asked to be taken to a supermarket about 3 miles away. I took her there and let her vent the whole way - “Just because he paid for dinner I’m expected to fuck him? I’m not a whore. I don’t care if my family thinks he’s nice. Men suck… I don’t mean you, you’re ok.”
I used to do that fairly regularly myself, either as a rider or a driver. I do remember one fellow who I made a point of noting, as his driving style was ON-off-ON-off-ON-off the gas pedal the entire time. He nearly got to see what I’d eaten for breakfast. I avoided him after that. And one story that made the Post: a passenger glanced up, saw that the car he was riding in seemed to be heading for a Jersey barrier - so he grabbed the wheel and saved their lives. The driver came to, said something like “huh? must have lost consciousness!” and resumed driving!
A few years ago I had popped into a drugstore near home and a woman there asked if I could give her a ride to her house a few blocks away. I thought about it, and decided to help her out. I declined to give her any money when she asked just as we got to her house.
And another time we (whole family) were near a bus stop and a woman asked if such-and-such bus might be en route. We wound up driving her to her home a few miles away - it wasn’t terribly far.
Both of these were older women, who appeared to be somewhat disabled.
The most recent time was when a woman was waiting at the commuter train station a couple miles away from here - at midnight on a Sunday night. My husband and I had just gotten back on the bus from NYC, my son had come to pick us up, and this woman said something about waiting for a bus. I thought at first she’d come on the NYC bus with us but I don’t think so. We couldn’t find any evidence of any county bus arriving soon - though we did know they ran that late on Sundays - and I wasn’t comfortable leaving a woman alone down there, so we found out where she needed to go and took her near there. That turned out to be slightly uncomfortable as she started asking us about what church we attended, etc.
I only had one bad experience, a woman launched in to Gingrich style Clinton bashing (he was president at the time). I used my go to magic words for these kinds of situations: “yeah, I don’t care what your political opinions are,” and we rode in silence, never to see each other again.
Usually, people kept it light and neutral, or just looked out the window.
I picked up a dad and 2 small children walking on a freeway from a broken down car.
Several years later (before having a cell phone), I got picked up and drove to a service station after having a broken down car.
Karma and I are even I think.
I did a lot of hitch hiking in the 80’s during my student years in the UK. I was away at university and I used to hitch hike home for the weekend. I then started visiting friends at universities around the UK, sleeping on floors and house parties. I found that hitch hiking required a certain technique. You do need to know the rules of the road, look at a map and work out where would be a good place to pick up another ride and where to avoid, lest you get stranded and have to endure ‘the long wait’. I used to carry a map and some cardboard to make a sign for my destination. My geography and knowledge of the major traffic routes grew considerable. So did my social skills. Drivers tended to be just working guys in a truck or a car with a long boring journey ahead of them. So I became good at making conversation and I had a few stories to tell. So did the drivers, who had certainly seen more of life. Chatting with someone when they are driving is quite different from a normal conversation. There is no eye contact, they have to look at the road. Also, you are strangers and will probably never cross paths again. This can make the conversation very relaxed and the time passes quite easily. The dynamic was that I was a guest of the driver, providing some company on what would be a tedious journey. I was also a young guy and the drivers were generally mature. Some were pretty keen to share their worldly wisdom and opinions. I would always be interested and asked questions. I learned to be careful to keep the conversation light and sociable and how to change the subject if I found it heading towards contention. I don’t think I ever felt unsafe.
I had a friend who would only hitch hike when there was absolutely no alternative. I persuaded him to come on a couple of trips and afterwards he remarked that it was easy for me because I was not shy and liked to talk with strangers. Hitch hiking is not for anyone who is a shy or reserved. Or, indeed, cannot tolerate the randomness. Getting stuck in the middle of nowhere at night when it begins to rain is no fun at all. I went on to hitch-hike around Europe. I practiced my bad French and worse German and somehow strung the words together. I learned that having a flag on my backpack to show I was an English speaker, really helped. Lots of people want to practice their English.
Hitch hiking did go into a remarkable decline in the UK in the 1980s. I can say exactly why this was. After waiting a couple of hours for a ride with no luck. When you see a passenger coach with a big sign on it saying the fare to your destination is the price of a cup of coffee…Well, it makes you feel a bit dumb and you ask yourself why you are doing this. Hitchhiking was a response to a poor public transport. As cheap long distance bus services developed, so there became less and less hitchhikers to be seen on the roads in the UK. It still remains popular in Europe, especially in Poland.
When I got a car, I naturally felt I should return the generosity I had received by a stopping for hitch-hikers. However, I was rather disappointed by some of the characters who a I gave rides to. I really was not guys like me going home to see his folks. Some were little more than pathetic beggars, so I learned to avoid those. Others seemed to have issues of one sort or another and were not the best company.
These days I still ride with strangers. I use websites that match up drivers with passengers to share the cost. www.blablacar.com works for me. It is particularly good for traveling between London and Paris and other big cities. Very cheap, very last minute and very social.
Taking a short cross-town trip in the late 70’s, the radio mentioned that some Saudi Prince had just spent a million dollars on gold washbasin taps in his yacht (back then $1,000,000 was still a lot of money). The guy who had picked me up remarked that he didn’t care, when he won the lotto he’d be happy. I’d been brought up with the idea that wealth was the legitimate result of hard work, saving, and inheritance from people who’d worked hard and saved. But I realized that if this guy won the lotto, he’d still have less than the Saudi Prince was spending on the taps on his yacht, and I thought, for the first time in my life, that perhaps excessive wealth didn’t have any particular moral justification.
I wouldn’t remember that ride for any other reason. It was before I owned a car, so late teens. I know where I was when I had that revelation, but not where I came from or where I was going to - hitching wasn’t something I did much of, but it wasn’t special enough to justify a particular memory.
In the mid 70’s, my stepfather and I {with me being around 10 or 12 yo} were on the way to my grandmother’s house on the north side of Chicago. As we got close to the house, there was a semi bedraggled man with his thumb out. To my amazement, my stepfather picked up the hitch hiker. The guy had a screw or two loose and ranted on and on about how women were the devil etc.etc. He even loudly proclaimed that his last girlfriend was a w-h-o-r-e {he spelled it out to protect my virgin ears I guess}. My stepfather kept asking him questions and the guy kept talking ! Quite an experience for a young kid like me. My stepfather told me to never tell my Mom and I never did !