Where Have All The
Hitchhikers Gone?

When I was in my late teens and early twenties I did a lot of hitchhiking. I don’t want to brag, but I got pretty good at it too. I knew how to hitch rides at the end of the entrance ramps on interstate highways so as not to violate federal laws against such behavior. State troopers knew that I was technically not quite on the interstate yet so for the most part they let me be even though drivers on the highway could clearly see me thumbing for a ride.

I once hitchhiked to Boone from a friend’s house in Auburn, Alabama on a Friday, then spent the subsequent Saturday thumbing from Boone to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to see my girlfriend who was working as a counselor at a summer camp there.

If you’ve ever hitchhiked in the rain you can appreciate this guy’s dilemma. Photo courtesy ABC’s Lost.

During my freshman and sophomore years at UNC-Chapel Hill, I routinely hitchhiked back to Boone for Thanksgiving and other holidays. In many ways it was faster and more convenient than trying to find a ride with someone on campus who was going to Boone and back at the exact same time that I was.

Of course, hitchhiking has never been an exact science and there were times when it seemed like I would never get a ride. On the trip back to Boone from Pennsylvania I got picked up by a particularly strange person that can only described as a leisure suit lecher. When he had finally creeped me out enough that I demanded to be let out of the vehicle, I found myself somewhere in eastern Tennessee sometime after midnight. With a fully loaded backpack on my back I walked through a darkened neighborhood in what I hoped was the direction of North Carolina.

I was taking a shortcut through a school playground when all of a sudden a pack of neighborhood dogs began to follow me, growling menacingly. More than a little freaked out at this point, I scaled a chain-link fence on one end of the playground and wondered how long it would take for the dogs to figure out how to get around it.

It was at this moment in time when my luck turned around. Some late-night revelers pulled up in their car to drop off a guy whose name now totally escapes me. I told the guy my predicament and he said that his parents would not allow a stranger to stay at their house but that I could bunk in his shed with his motorcycle. It was a bright yellow Can-Am designed for motor-cross racing (I know what you’re thinking: You can’t remember the name of the dude who saved your bacon but you remember what kind of motorcycle he had).

Anyway, I laid out my sleeping bag on the floor of what’s-his-name’s motorcycle shed and fell into a dreamless sleep. The next morning I awoke at the crack of dawn and left without a goodbye so as not to alert his parents to my presence. Then I got a ride with some nice deer hunters who took me all the way to Watauga County.

It was definitely one of my more harrowing hitchhiking experiences but it all turned out fine eventually.

You just don’t see that many hitchhikers these days. My own last hitchhiking experience was probably ten years ago when I was stranded in Foscoe. I got a ride then, like I did many times in the past, with a person that wanted to show me how fast his car could go.

There are a lot of theories of why people don’t hitchhike anymore. Reliable vehicles are not any more affordable than they were in the past so that’s not it. I imagine cell phones do keep people from getting stranded as much as they used to, so that’s one reason.

A lot of people don’t hitchhike anymore—or for that matter pick up hitchhikers anymore—because they believe the world is a more dangerous place than it was in the past. You hear them talk glowingly of “the good old days” and complain bitterly about “kids these days.”

There has been a lot of discussion this past week about what’s wrong with kids these days in the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech. Are they desensitized by video games? Are they spoiled by our affluent American lifestyle? Are they looking to rebel against parents who rebelled against just about everything?

As horrible as the incident at Virginia Tech was, I don’t think it says anything at all about the current generation of young adults. It was just one very disturbed (and well-armed) young man who felt the whole world was against him. It is as tragic for his family as it is for the families of the victims.

This whole “what’s wrong with kids these days?” issue is an ancient one. If you read Shakespeare or the Bible you’ll find centuries-old references to people in their autumn years moaning about “kids these days.” There will always be some young kids raising a little hell as some old geezer stands on the porch shaking his fist at them. Always has been and always will be. It doesn’t make one generation any better or worse than any other.

I was thinking about this subject this week after I left Watauga High School. There I was covering a news story about high school kids who had organized an event that raised $6,400 for The Hunger & Health Coalition. That money will be used locally to purchase food and medical supplies for people less fortunate than the kids who did all the work.

I want to give a big shout out to those Watauga High School kids. And a big thanks to what’s-his-name who let me camp out in his motorcycle shed all those years ago.