Picking up Hitchhikers — Picaresque Adventures in the US
Or Buddy can you spare a lift?
Generally speaking, I don’t pick up hitchhikers in the US anymore. Back in the day I was not averse to it and two occasions particularly stand out that are worth recounting.
In 1974 a work mate of mine from the University of Maryland decided to take a cross country trip to British Columbia. I thought I’d tag along as far as Seattle and go and visit some cousins of mine in Port Angeles and Portland.
In the Student Union building in the University there was a large map of the United States called the ‘Ride Board’. You could advertise on it that you were willing to give a ride or if you needed a ride to anywhere in the country. The idea was that gas and driving would be shared. It was a great resource and I had used it to go to Tucson on one occasion.
We got two young women to accompany us and headed off on a classic American road trip. We started with a brief diversion to go skinny dipping on the Cacapon River just outside of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. I knew a great place with a large pool just behind a small dam on the river that was great for the purpose and that could only be accessed by trespassing through some farmer’s land.
We dropped one of the girls in St. Louis and headed across the Great Plains. Somewhere in Nebraska we picked up a guy who went by the name of ‘Blue’. He was a Viet Nam vet and said that each summer he and his wife took turns looking after their kid while one of them went on the road for a month and hitched around the country for fun. He also informed us that on his last night in Viet Nam he had been at Da Nang Airforce Base and had been hit by shrapnel from a rocket and had his guts torn open.
As a result of this wound, he said that he couldn’t take LSD as it made what was left of his small intestine hurt. Instead, he said that he preferred mescaline. Now, I took LSD about twenty times when I was young, and it is a very interesting drug. I pretty much enjoyed its effects except for one time when I very stupidly took it during High School in the 11th grade. That was a very uncomfortable experience.
In retrospect, I believe that a lot of the LSD that we took was stepped on with methamphetamines of some kind as the trip would always start out with a very electric sort of buzzing through your whole body. That would last for about three hours or so and then it would mellow out.
I also took synthetic mescaline about four times and I also much preferred it. It was mellow throughout the ‘trip’ and less intense but still provided the interesting hallucinations and spatial and sensory distortions. One thing that I found fascinating about psychedelics is how they effected your sensory perceptions. It was as if your sense of sight was enhanced for a period of time and that was the only sense that you could experience at that time. Then it would switch to your hearing and for a while the sounds of the environment in which you were in is all that you were aware of. And of course, touch which would result in the most intense orgasms when the time was ripe to go there, usually just before dawn.
I noticed that ‘Blue’ had a number tattooed on his arm and curious about this I asked if that was his service number in case that was the only piece of him, they could find if he got blown up! He said, “Nah! I was really fucked up on smack one night in Saigon and fell in love with a Vietnamese girl and this was the only way that I could remember her phone number, so I had it tattooed on my arm”!
Somewhere else we picked up a young Brit who joined our little group and as ‘Blue’ had a large stash of mescaline on him we arranged to stay one night just outside the North entrance to Yellowstone National Park and we all took some mescaline and have a very good time enhanced as it was by how dark the night was away from all of the light pollution. One of the unpleasant effects of psychedelics is that they dilate your pupils, and so electric lighting is unpleasant and harsh. Fluorescent lights were the worst.
The second memorable hitchhiking incident that occurred was sometime around 2012. I had driven from LA to visit my brother in Colorado Springs. On the way home and somewhere still in Colorado I spotted a young couple by the side of the road. She had a cardboard sign that said, “Will not kill you”! So, I figured that they were benign and at least had a sense of humor, so I picked them up. They were trying to get to Las Vegas, so I agreed to take them the whole way as I was going to take I 70 to the I 15 in any case.
As we rolled across Colorado and Utah, they told me an extraordinary story which impresses me til this day. They were pretty much broke and indigent, and the fellow had lived in Las Vegas before and had a plan to pull himself and his girlfriend up from poverty. He said that when they arrived in Vegas that they intended to live in one of the storm drains that are in the city. I had seen a documentary about this phenomenon, so I knew what he was talking about. The central problem that they both had is that in the US you cannot get a job without having a residence and obviously you can’t get a residence without money.
So, their plan was to get a space in the storm drain and he was going to teach the girl to make garlands out of palm fronds from the palm trees in the city and sell these to tourists on the strip. They would do that until they had enough money to buy a guitar. Once he had the guitar he would start busking on the strip. He would continue busking until they had enough money to rent a room by the month. Once they had the room then they could get IDs with an address on them and then they could get jobs!
I was deeply impressed by this incredible entrepreneurial spirit in the face of adversity. As we neared Vegas it was about 1 AM and I intended to spend the night there before heading on to LA in the morning. They asked if there was any way that I would let them take a shower where I was going to stay before going on to the storm drain. They offered me some money for the privilege which I wouldn’t hear of given the condition they were in. I said sure and started trying to find a hotel or a motel. Everything was full! After driving around for about an hour I called the Las Vegas tourist board and was informed that due to some conventions every room in the city was booked as was those in the surrounding suburbs.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to help them in this regard and regrettably had to leave them at the entrance to one of the storm drains which the fellow directed me to. I ended up finally getting a place out in Boulder City at about 3 AM.
I certainly hope that everything worked out for them and that their plan came to fruition!
