In 1974 I hitchhiked from New York to Oregon with my girlfriend. I cut my hair and shaved off my beard for the occasion. Eight days and about 40 rides.
I don’t know which ride was the scariest -
The guy in a beat up jalopy who was chain-smoking with open cans of gas in the back seat.
The middle aged couple where the woman, who was on lithium (as her husband later told us), tried to jump out of the car when she got into an argument with her husband.
The straight-looking guy who, after we had been in the car for about 15 minutes, told us we “looked OK” and proceeded to put away the Bowie knife he had hidden next to his seat just in case he got some bad vibes from us.
The guy with a fractured skull (you could see the ends of the wires sticking out from his temples where they had wired his skull together) who was a free-lance butcher, and was on his way to Alaska, the only one of the “fifty-two states” that he hadn’t been to, because he heard there was work there.
The enormous 60-year-old trucker, with a huge beard and a bald head, who took us 15 hours from Nebraska to Utah, popping reds the whole way and talking non-stop.
The creepy traveling salesman in Utah who keep leering at my girlfriend in the back seat.
In a more innocent time (all right: 1957), Papa Doug found that a Navy Midshipman’s dress blues were a surefire car-stopper. I don’t know how many free rides between home and college that got him before the commander of his NROTC unit took him aside and said that was not a regulation use of the uniform.
On a more serious note. Perhaps I have a vehicle but it has broken down. I need to get into town to get a part were my friend works. You are under the opinion that I should alter my entire personal apperance and present myself as someone I am not to trick your candyass into giving me a ride.
If that is your price of doing a good deed and helping out someone that needs it, screw. Keep you pansy-ass ride and I’ll hope some real people come along and offer to help.
Also, in every case of a serial killer I have seen, none match the description you object to but many have looked like the image you would prefer to pick up. Ted Bundy and his ilk come to mind.
I spent about half the time in my teens (from late 1971 to about 1978*) hitching around the U.S. and Canada. I fully support the OP.
I’ll also mention that when my appearance (more or less) matched what the OP is looking for, I tended to get much less potentially dangerous rides. I’ll also also mention that after I was in my 20s and had grown my beard, it took much longer to get from point A to point B. I started taking the bus at that point.
I’ve made fairly frequent road trips from Denver to Dayton, Ohio or Pittsfield, Mass in the last few years. Hitchhikers ain’t what they used to be. Bums, mostly, not vagrants.
My first hitchhiking trip was actually in Sicily in 1969, from Catania to Messina.
My father used to tell the tale of hitchhiking home to Fort Worth from college in Austin back in about 1940, until the time he got picked up by the stereotypical dude with the oversized cowboy hat and fancy boots in a Caddy convertible (top down, natch) with longhorns on the hood. Also the honeymoon couple that proceeded to start the honeymoon early in the back seat, and the driver with a fifth of Jack Daniels between his knees, except when he waved it around in between drinking from it, of course.
After that, he took the bus. Sometimes the hitchhiker is safer than the driver.
If my car broke down, Nic2004, and I needed to get a ride to get a part? The smartest way, it seems to me, would be to stay with the car so people would see why I needed a ride. Then they’d judge me on my vehicle rather than my dress and grooming, presumably.
My thought exactly. A hitcher is generally in a lower position of power. They are in a position of need - they need a ride - and their pool of possibilites is small (those who stop). It seems less likely that someone would hitch as a predatory activity (though certainly it is possible), considering they do not have much power to choose their victims. Easy victims (small women, the weak, the unarmed) are unlikely to stop at all. Those who do stop are either super nice people, well-armed, crazy, or need fresh meat for their dogs.
In your driveway? Late at night and after walking home, starting out the next morning. Not all breakdowns are on the interstate.
FWIW, I don’t hitchhike myself but I did many years ago when things were much different. I wouldn’t recommend hitching or picking up a hitch. My point is you shouldn’t feel more safe because of the appearance because many of the best people I’ve ever met meet the description in the OP and many serial killers look more like an office worker than a biker. Don’t be too quick to pre-judge.
In my experience, the biker-type will stop to help someone broken down on the side of the road while many of the OP’s preferred types drive by without turning their head.
YMMV
On an aside, I didn’t notice that the OP was Airman Doors, USAF until after my posts. I am more than a little surprised by this as I tend to agree and admire him from most of his posts but this one seems our of character. I suspect many of the types in the OP may be former servicemen/Vets and typically are the blue collar types that would be most prone to pick him up if he were down.
I could not agree more. I saw hitchhikers the other day and they were hippie looking types. No way would I have picked them up. If only they’d looked more like theseguys I might’ve considered it.
Last I saw (about 4 years ago), Navy leave chits and special request chits had an all-caps notation at the bottom stating: “HITCHHIKING IS PROHIBITED.”
It was clear that you could get in trouble for trying to hitchhike. I’m not sure about picking up hitchhikers.
When my dad got back stateside from Korea, his mother’s house burned down and he hitchiked all the way from San Diego to Albany, GA. Only took him something like three or four days. Fresh faced clean cut redheaded kid with a Navy uniform. Piece of cake. Of course, this was also in the 50’s. He says one of the guys somewhere in Texas was so drunk he just let my dad drive.
I once saw a hitchhiker walking along the road a little past an on-ramp. I was going slower than highway speed up the ramp, and had some time to observe him before I went past.
As each car passed him without slowing down, he would give it the finger, shake his fist, and curse and scream threats at it!
Then he’d turn around and smile broadly and stick his thumb out for the next car.
Which, of course, had just witnessed his rage-filled antics a moment ago.
It too would pass without slowing, and he would snarl and gesture threateningly.
Then he’d turn and smile for the next car…
Now THAT’s not gonna get you rides, regardless of hair length.
This occurred to me too, but I don’t think it alters the main point that people are less likely to pick up individuals who are scary-looking, out of a totally appropriate sense of self-preservation. And big biker dudes look scary to a lot of folks. So though it seems unrealistic to me to expect someone to toddle over to the truck stop to clean up before putting out their thumb, OTOH, “If you want a ride, don’t look like Charles Manson” seems like pretty good advice.
This thread reminds me of the old Far Side cartoon. There’s two women driving along, approaching a hitchhiker who’s this evil-looking guy with an eye-patch and a hook, holding a sign that says “ANYWHERE”. The passenger is saying to the driver, “Come on, Marge! Where’s your sense of adventure?”
