Browsed by
Tag: hitchhiking

The Outsiders

The Outsiders

Hitchhikers meet some of the most interesting people. Or at least they did when I was thumbing rides between 1968 and 1972, mostly in the US and Canada, but also in Europe and Africa. I even got picked up by some very nice moms whose own kids were hitchhiking. They felt an obligation to offer lifts to young people since other drivers were picking up their children. I told the moms that it was kind of them to stop for…

Read More Read More

Four Dead in Ohio

Four Dead in Ohio

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’We’re finally on our ownThis summer I hear the drummin’Four dead in Ohio I have only participated in one major protest march and public demonstration in my life, but that one time was an experience I will never forget or regret. As it turned out I just barely missed witnessing one of the most bizarre events in American political history at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. My good friend David Clyburn had just finished his…

Read More Read More

The Ugly Americans

The Ugly Americans

I have met many delightful Americans while travelling in foreign lands, but I think it is safe to assume that collectively Americans go abroad less and are generally less well liked overseas than travellers from comparable countries because of their sense of superiority and belief in American exceptionalism. They may just be TOO exceptional for foreigners to appreciate. I encountered two of the most exceptional while hitchhiking around Europe in 1971. A few weeks earlier I had met a wonderful…

Read More Read More

Flying the Hippie Airlines

Flying the Hippie Airlines

By 1971 I had hitchhiked around virtually every corner of North America except the American deep south, meeting people of all kinds and travelling through mountains, deserts, the prairies, the bible belt and the great plains, plus visiting many of the continent’s big cities and basking in that California sun. Now, it was time for something new and different – Europe. I was excited by the idea of experiencing different cultures and interacting with the local people, but a little…

Read More Read More

Like a Rolling Stone

Like a Rolling Stone

Sometimes I just can’t make up my mind. That’s when I leave things up to fate. It was late September 1970, and I had been hanging out at my parents’ place in West Orange, New Jersey, for about a month. It was my second visit that year and it was clearly time to move on. But where to? I could hitchhike back to Edmonton and see if I could land a job, but I was also tempted to head north…

Read More Read More

Confessions of a Hitchhiker

Confessions of a Hitchhiker

I loved long distance hitchhiking. It was free, it was fun, and I indulged in it often during the golden years of thumbing, 1968 to 1972, when a lot of ordinary folks hitchhiked and a lot of ordinary folks picked them up. I met many interesting and eccentric people that way and had some wonderful adventures on the road. I had no idea who would pick me up, when a ride would come, or what surprising experience was around the…

Read More Read More

One Night in Texas

One Night in Texas

The deputy sheriff of Vega, Texas, chewed heartily on a toothpick, his feet up on his desk as he perused a paperback copy of Perry Mason’s The Case of the Rolling Bones. I guess it was a slow day in the justice business. I sat in a chair across from him, fresh from a night in the local jail. Somehow a pleasant jaunt across the American southwest had turned into a Coen Brothers film. It all started innocently enough when…

Read More Read More