Advice to novice hitchhikers: write a destination on that blank piece of corrugated cardboard.
“Holly came from Miami F.L.A./
Hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A.”
–“Walk on the Wild Side,” Lou Reed
Draw near and let me regale you with my walk on the wild side.
I was a high school student who had become fed up with the long bus ride home. I didn’t have a car, but I had two thumbs.
And I really only needed one thumb to hitchhike my way across Lisbon Falls, Lisbon Center and Lisbon, Maine. It was nearly four miles along Route 196 from Lisbon High School to my home.
You want wild?
How about the time that I got a ride from a guy who soon stopped for an ice cream cone?
Or how about when Frank Dingley and I got in a car that had no back seat? We sat on the metal floor.
That’s how we rolled in the early 1980s, back when a teen-ager might get up at the crack of dawn and walk miles in utter darkness – sometimes in knee-deep snow – to deliver newspapers.
John Waters and hitchBOT
But while daily newspapers and paperboys and papergirls are increasingly things of the past, hitchhiking has made a bit of a comeback.
The New York Times was on the case in 2012 with an opinion column titled, “Hitchhiking’s Time Has Come Again.” Some people in Kansas think so, as evidenced by Lawrence OnBoard.
Perhaps this year marked a tipping point between the publishing of “Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America” and the exploits of Canada’s hitchBOT, which has swim noodles for arms and rubber gloves for hands.
So much for the debate about whether hitchhiking is more dangerous for the person doing the hitchhiking or the one giving the ride. The Canadian college professors who created hitchBOT said their project raised the question of whether robots can trust human beings.
HitchBOT successfully completed its nearly 4,000-mile trek in three weeks’ time, little worse for wear and minor celebrity cemented. There has been speculation about hitchBOT coming to America and whether its journey would be as successful.
Without question, I would pick up hitchBOT. I’d handle it with great care and accommodation.
I’d even buy it an ice cream cone.
