Whatever happened to the fine art of hitch-hiking? You rarely see anyone doing it anymore. I remember my folks never refused to pick up a soldier in uniform that was hitch-hiking. These days, if you see someone hitch-hiking, they certainly don't look like anyone you'd want to pick up.
It was different years ago when students were always hitch-hiking somewhere, either home for the weekend or back to college. It was common and now it's a dying art. Probably because most people these days have a car or at least easy access to one.
My own hitchhiking experiences are plentiful, both as a hitchhiker and as a ride provider. I had a lot of fun doing both. First I'll talk about being a hitchhiker.
The very first day of my college experience my college buddies and I already had made our plan. As soon as our parents dropped us off at Western Kentucky State College (before it became Western Ky. University), we would meet in a pre-designated place and would hitchhike to Louisville and the State Fair to meet with some of our buddies in the Class of '65 & '66 that we left behind. I practically "shoved" Mom & Dad out the door of South Hall, gathered up a few necessities, met up with a couple of buddies and headed out to 31-W and Louisville. We were to meet at the some motel near the fairgrounds where a couple more buddies rented a room and we would share it with about 7 or 8 other buddies. We would spend the weekend frolicking with other kids at the fair's midway. School and classes could just wait!
There were four of us leaving Bowling Green. We felt that was too big of a group so we split up in twos. The first two had no more than stuck out their thumbs and "viola," they got a ride from about the third car that approached. After they pulled off, my other buddy and I stepped out to the curb and stuck out our thumbs. About an hour and a half later some people finally stopped and picked us up. They were driving a nearly new '62 Ford station wagon, the one with woodgrain all over it. In the car was a typical family. The dad and mom looked like Beaver Cleaver's parents (the Dad complete with a cardigan sweater and smoking a pipe - The Mom in a print dress with belt and patton leather pumps). There were two kids in the back seat, a boy and girl. In the cargo area, along with some luggage was a dog that was a clone of the canine in the movie "The Shaggy Dog!" It was hard to tell it's back from it's front except when it panted. One would assume it's tongue didn't come out of the back. As we piled in the back seat of the car, the boy jumped over the seat and rode in the cargo area with the luggage and the dog. The girl rode in the middle between us.
We had a pleasant ride to Louisville, stopping briefly in Fort Knox so we could take their picture standing in front of the Gold Depository with their Kodak Brownie. They dropped us right off at our motel where we met up with our group. Pretty uneventful. We lucked out on the return trip because one of the guys up there had a car and he gave us a ride back to Bowling Green two days later. I wondered for years what my parents would have done if they had known that my first day at college wasn't even spent there. I expect I would have been hitchhiking for several more years had they found out.
Freshmen at Western weren't allowed to have a car on campus. The lucky ones who did have a car had to park it in an impound lot from Sunday night until Friday at noon and could not drive it at all during the week. Upperclassmen were luckier. They could have a car if they got a pass and could find a place to park it. Most weekends, students (especially Freshmen) "high-tailed" it home as soon as they could on Friday. Every other Friday, I had a late class and most of my friends with cars had already left before I got out of class. This meant if I was going home, I would be hitchhiking. You've got to remember that there was no Natcher Parkway then. The only route was Hwy. 231 to Morgantown, then Hwy. 70 to Browder and finally U. S. 431 South to Central City. These roads were extremely narrow, hilly and/or curvy. There were no actual towns between Bowling Green and Morgantown but there were lots of "congested areas" which had a centralized General Store with a few homes around it. One of these was Cool Springs in Butler County. In Cool Springs, there was the General Store, a log church, and about 10 homes clustered along a one-half mile stretch of highway. Cool Springs General Store set in the center of all of this activity and it was geographically located on a sharp curve in a deep valley followed by another sharp curve. I often wondered why they named something after a Spring when there wasn't one in sight.
One November Friday about 4 p.m., I had hitched a ride with an older man in a pickup truck and he told me he could give me a ride to Cool Springs, as that was as far as he was going. I gladly accepted it and "hopped in." As we drove along the way, I couldn't help but notice that he had removed his false teeth and placed them in his ashtray, which protruded from the center of the dash. This might not have been so unusual except that he smoked and the dentures shared the ashtray with about forty cigarette butts and a half-cup of ashes. Didn't seem to bother him any. I assume he only needed them when he ate. Anyhow, when we got to Cool Springs, he pulled into the gravel lot in front of the General Store and let me out. I thanked him and went inside to purchase a candy bar and coke. Soon I was back on the highway attempting to get another ride. I must have stood out there for another forty five minutes before I discovered that nobody stopped there except natives (people who lived at Cool Springs....and they weren't going anywhere but Cool Springs). There must have been fifty cars (mostly trucks) that passed me by. I found an old tin can on the side of the road and I must have kicked it three hundred times. Finally, I set off walking and had gone about a mile and got away from the deep valley and two curves that made up Cool Springs. I came to an intersection that was along a highly visible straight stretch. It was beginning to get dark so I waited around the intersection because it has a street light on a pole that illuminated the area. It wasn't five minutes before I got my second ride. This was also an old farmer in a pickup truck. At least he kept his teeth in his mouth, along with a matchstick he kept chewing on. I remember he had an air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror that was the likeness of a nude Betty Boop. This guy was at least eighty years old and also had a statue of Jesus on his dashboard. I thought it was an odd combination but at least his heater worked in the old truck. He took me to the Rochester Dam and let me out there. It's also located on a sharp curve but I managed to catch another ride from a guy who had been fishing there. He took me to Ennis (about 3 or 4 miles down the road). From Ennis, I got another ride to the General Store at Browder at the intersection of Hwy. 70 and U. S. 431. By now it was well past 6 p.m. and completely dark. Again, there was a street light there so I had to hitchhike from that point so I could be seen under the light. After a few minutes, I got a ride to Drakesboro (about two miles). In Drakesboro, I ran into a guy I knew (although I can't remember his name) who was from Cleaton and he gave me a ride to the Cleaton cut-off. Finally, Danny Curtis, a friend of mine and his then girl friend (later his wife) "Tink" picked me up and took me home. It was about 7:30 and Mom wanted to know why I was so late for supper. I still don't think she believed me when I told her it took me eight rides to get from Bowling Green to Central City.
I (along with some friends) also had considerable experience at the "other side" of hitchhiking. Most of the summer after high school graduation, my friends and I liked to go to the drag races at Beech Bend on Sunday afternoons. My good friend David Greenwood (you remember David of "Red Goose" fame) got to drive his older brother Charles' Corvair while Charles served a hitch on active duty in the Army National Guard. Four of us drove up to BG in the Corvair on hot July Sunday afternoon. When the races were over and we were headed back (same route I hitchhiked), we saw this dude hitchhiking on the side of the road in Ennis. He was about 6' tall, thin with a greased "ducktail" hairdo, sideburns in Elvis fashion, a plaid sportcoat, white dress shirt with thin tie, black shoes with white socks that had two red stripes and Levi's that were "pegged" skin tight and the cuffs came right to the top of the socks exposing the two red stripes around the top of them. In other words he was a "Cool Dude." He was on his way to meet his girl friend at the State Theater.
Being the fast thinkers that we were, we quickly plotted to roll up all the windows in the Corvair and turn on the heater. It was at least 100 degrees outside. There were four of us in this four passenger car (they had a motor in the back) so since I was riding in the front passenger seat, I got out and let this guy ride in front between the bucket seats. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that this car was a four-speed with a floor shifter. It wasn't long that the inside of the car started to smell like a gym locker room and the windows were becoming "dripping wet" with fog on the inside. Pretty soon, this "Dapper Dan" unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie. His neatly combed hair was hanging around his shoulders like a shiny black mop. He (like all of us) was soaking wet except we had on shorts and tee shirts and he had on this "zoot suit with a reat pleat." One of us reached over and turned on the radio FULL BLAST...All it would do! It nearly burst our eardrums but nobody would say anything including our newly found passenger. This continued all the way to Central City where we let him out at the stoplight beside the Methodist Church. We told him we'd be coming back through around 9:30 or 10:00 and asked if he'd like a ride back to Ennis. Very politely he said "No Thanks!" I'm sure his girl friend wondered what happened to him and I'll bet it was sure cold inside the air-conditioned State Theater.
I hate to think of the times that we'd be going over to Bandy Lake in Greenville to meet girls and we'd see some poor hitchhiker and we'd go past him out of sight, pull over, put a couple of guys in the trunk and turn around to go get him. He'd get in the back seat and pretty soon the guys in the trunk would be hollering "Help, We're Being Kidnapped!" They usually got out in mid-town around the Courthouse and we'd go out to Bandy's, let our buddies out of the trunk and laugh about the whole matter. I always wondered if any of them tried to tell their story to a policeman and if so, why didn't we get picked up for kidnapping.
Now that I think about it.....I guess I really know why hitchhiking became a dying art!
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