The First Day of an Unusual Journey: Hitchhiking to Alberta
Posted: Sunday, January 08, 2012
by Jack H. Schick
I was eighteen. Back then, that meant I was old enough to be drafted and sent to Viet Nam, but I wasn’t old enough to vote yet. That bothered me a little. I said I wanted to go down to D.C. and protest with the rest of the hippies, but my dad wouldn’t let me. He wasn’t so much against the protesting as he was against me getting hurt. When, on TV they showed police clubbing kids, putting them in chain-link enclosures then shooting tear gas at them, he ‘laid down the law,’ as far as me heading down there to join in went, anyway.
A couple years earlier I’d met a girl (we’ll call her Christine), at Yellowstone Park. I was out there on a western tour with my Boy Scout Explorer Post. I fell instantly in love, the way 16-year-olds are apt to do. Christine and I became pen pals. I vowed I’d see her again sometime and planned to follow through. Hitchhiking was a pretty popular ‘sport’ back in those days. I had quite a bit of experience ‘riding my thumb,’ so when I wasn’t allowed to go down to Washington and had a few weeks before my summer job began, I decided to head out to Alberta. It was only about 2,500 miles.
Pittsburgh was a short hop, in the big picture. It seldom took me more than 6 or 8 hours to make the 300 miles or so. There were hitchhikers at nearly every exit of the Interstates and Turnpike in those days. People always stopped to pick up riders. I was at the fraternity house in plenty of time to do some serious partying with my ‘brothers’ that night. That indiscretion led me to have an unusual, memorable time the next day. There’s nothing like starting a trip across country “under the weather.”
My roommate drove me out to the Turnpike entrance ramp about ten the next morning. When he dropped me off there were at least twenty hitchhikers lined up. Most of them had signs advertizing their destination. I just had my backpack and a bad hangover. After I was there for almost two hours and had watched dozens of people get rides, I found an old piece of cardboard lying in the ditch and wrote “Ohio” on it. I thought “Montana” might discourage someone who didn’t want to be obligated to keep me for a couple of days. Sure enough, within ten minutes I had a ride.
Two clean-cut guys a couple of years older than me picked me up in a four door sedan. They were headed for South Bend Indiana, via Detroit. The driver was a student at Notre Dame. The other guy was a friend of his, a Christian missionary of some sect. He was second generation Mexican American. I was happy to have a ride that far. I didn’t mind the side track to Detroit. I’d never been in Michigan before and was eager to add it to the list of states I’d seen.
It was an uneventful afternoon, though, for some reason, I developed a bad headache. They were nice, mature people, and I was still a congenial fellow myself, back in those days. The missionary lived in a pretty dingy part of Detroit. I had no idea that there were so many Mexicans that far north. It was late spring, so it was still light when I was dropped off along Interstate 80 at South Bend. My driver wished me luck.
I didn’t have to wait long. My next ride was with a single guy about my age. He was headed for Chicago. It was Memorial Day weekend so everybody else was headed out of the city. There was a minor accident on the east bound side of the Interstate. It was the longest traffic back-up either of us had ever seen—20 miles. On our side it was smooth sailing, though. Within a few hours, I was walking along the Interstate west of Chicago. It was close to 9:00 pm and I was beat.
The traffic was thinned out. I was on a broad, eight or ten lane highway headed out of the city. There was no place for me to hole up for the night unless I climbed a fence and found a spot in the surrounding industrial area. I kept walking even thought I was asleep on my feet. I turned around and stuck my thumb out as cars occasionally passed by. If there were a couple of them, I walked backwards almost begging for a ride. But, the cars became fewer and fewer as it got later.
After I’d been walking about an hour, a car zoomed past at 80 miles an hour blasting me with wind. It stomped on the brakes, skidded to a stop then backed up along the shoulder of the road at a frightening speed. It screeched to a halt about a dozen yards from me. All the doors flew open. Four angry looking men piled out and started walking back toward me.
“I’m dead!” I thought to myself. I looked around. There was no place to go but out onto the highway and hope to flag someone down before they knocked me out and dragged me back to their vehicle. But, there were no cars coming. The only weapon I had was my Boy Scout pocket knife. I took it out and opened it. As the first guy approached, I started backing away, out onto the traffic lane, knife in hand. I had never been so frightened in my life. No one knew where I was. No one was around. I was sure I was about to be murdered.
He saw the fear in my eyes. He got a big smile on his face and said, “Relax! We’re just stretching our legs. You want a ride? We’re going to Des Moines.”
My emotions went instantly from panic to elation. “You bet!” I said.
It was a tight squeeze. I had to jam my pack in on the floor behind the driver’s seat and sit with my legs scrunched up, knees against my chest. Three of us were packed, shoulder to shoulder in the back. They were all Navy men, headed home from up in Michigan for the holiday. They were in a hurry. They played, Beatles albums, over and over at high decibels, bopping, drumming and singing along. The driver seldom got below 80 miles an hour.
It was only because of my overindulgent night before at the fraternity house that I was able to fall asleep like that. It was 3:00am when they skidded to a halt at a Des Moines exit on Interstate 80. I piled out into the night. I hopped the guard rail and got back down onto the highway, but there was hardly any traffic and I was dead beat. I walked up the slope into the nearly waist tall grass along the road, unlashed my sleeping bag from my pack and crawled in it.
It was the end of the first day of my three week journey, hitchhiking across two countries. In 18 hours, I’d made it from Pittsburgh to Des Moines. Not bad. And, it actually wasn’t that eventful, except for those few moments of terror. As I quickly drifted off to sleep, I wondered how many of the people I knew might think that my day; no, my whole adventure was a little bit unusual.
(assignment: Unusual Day)
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Yeah Jack, I use to hitchhike all over the country. Today is different than the 60s, it's hard to get a ride these days.Yep- this was '71. Thanks for reading and commenting
WOW Jack ....you are so adventurous, and where is 'the rest of the story', as Paul Harvey always said. You make the story interesting, and bam, that's it?that was day one- it took over 3 days to get to Christine's house- it gets more interesting.
what a great story; sets the premise, builds the suspense to climax with a twist, then leaves you wanting more and wondering what the night/next will bring. Can't wait for the book!thanks for reading and commenting--have you heard this one before?
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