One thing that strikes me is that nearly everyone who finally does offer me a ride—and hitch-hiking these days is not something to attempt if you have to get anywhere in a hurry, because the wait for a ride can be interminable!—immediately hastens to explain that they “never do this” ordinarily because it is so dangerous.
Why do people consider picking up hitch-hikers to be dangerous? I always felt as a hitch-hiker years back that it was I who was taking the risk—drivers can after all be inept, exhausted or drunk, and if it was a couple of guys in the car, there was also the risk of being mugged or worse. In fact, hitch-hikers in my experience, have tended to be nice people—often worldly-wise, though maybe a little down on their luck. In all the years I’ve picked up hitch-hikers as a driver, I have never been threatened, though I have had some scary experiences as a hitchhiker because of the people who have given me a lift.
In large part, I am convinced that the problem is our media, which exhibit a pornographic interest in violence and crime at the expense of any real news. Most Americans actually believe that the country is a much more dangerous place today than it was 30 or 40 years ago, filled with psychopaths, ax murderers and rapists. There is no way that Americans today are more violent and criminally minded than they were in the 1960s—in fact they may be less so--but the media barrage of violent news stories from across that nation has everyone convinced that this is so. This leads to a general sense of distrust of strangers, which makes thumbing a real challenge to the zeitgeist.
I’m thinking that with this new depression that we are entering, in which people are losing houses, jobs and cars, that it is time to resurrect the culture of hitchhiking, both as a way of providing needed alternative transportation to those without it, and as a way to challenge and undermine the prevailing debilitating national culture of fear.
For the last 30 years, we as an American society have become increasingly isolated socially. Not only do we spend all our time outside of work confined in our homes or in our cars, but when we circulate socially, it is almost exclusively within our own narrow class circle of acquaintances.
Hitch-hiking, and picking up hitch-hikers, can be a way of breaking down that wall of isolation.
So here’s a suggestion. If you need to go into town on an errand, and you’re not in a hurry, try hitch-hiking for a change (all the better if you live in a small community and the people passing by on the road are people who know you by sight). If you’re driving and you pass a hitch-hiker, pull over and offer him or her a ride. Who knows? It might be me.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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