More Bad Press

[raven23]

This one's just ridiculous. Perhaps I should write newspaper commentaries for a living. It obviously doesn't require any brains.

[b:694526c86f][size=18:694526c86f]Lost art of hitchhiking is best left lost[/size:694526c86f] [/b:694526c86f]

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By SCOTT BURNSIDE sburnside@kentuckynewera.com
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My Serve


It pays to advertise, especially in the disappearing world of hitchhiking.
This tidbit of unusable news was learned by servicemen hitchhiking in the 1960s, a friendly decade for thumbing a ride.

Nowadays, it's difficult to find a hitchhiker anywhere, and since there's so few of them plying their skills on the roadways, they really stand out.

The advertisement part comes through when you're standing by the side of the road, trying to sell yourself as a friendly, non-violent human being, a person with whom it would be entertaining to share a ride for a few miles (don't smile -- they'll wonder what you've been smoking).

I learned this skill while stationed in the wilds of Maine during the Vietnam days of the 1960s. It was relatively easy to get a ride, or at least from the origin of my travels, the military-friendly neighboring towns of Topsham and Brunswick, home to an U.S. Air Force station and a Naval air base.

It wasn't difficult to identify who was a serviceman in those days. If he had short hair and was wearing black brogan shoes, your bet was that he was in the military.

Today, short hair might identify a member of a neo-Nazi, fake-commando group, or better (worse) yet a skinhead.

The trick back then was to stand by the edge of the road (not too close), just a half block from an intersection, so the cars would be moving slow and not trying to roar through said intersection. A pleasant look would be appropriate and you didn't want to look too shabby.

Now, years (even decades) after those hitchhiker-friendly days have passed, and not to mention the scads of evil-hitchhiker movies¸ a hitchhiker seemingly has a tougher time.

In my Maine days, it was a tough situation coming back in the middle of the night from wherever we had been, whether it was Lewiston, Portland or Bath. You were almost out of military-friendly territory. It was night and sometimes your rides let you out in the middle of the interstate. If the police found you, they took you off the well-lighted parkway onto the dark, lonely two-lane rural roads.

One night I was picked up by a friendly drunk, whose legal capacity for drink had been passed several hours earlier.

On another occasion, while thumbing from St. Louis to eastern Illinois, a would-be pervert picked me up.

"I'll take you to my house for a second, and then I'll drive you to Illinois," he said with a leer, wiping the spittle from his chin.

"No, let me out here," I shouted.

He did, and although my next ride escorted me three hours to my home on the other side of the state, I never again hitchhiked.

Once I picked up a female hitchhiker coming out of Colorado. She informed she spent the night before in jail and was going "East, somewhere." We stopped at a rest stop in Kansas and she disappeared into a Volkswagen van of hippies.

It's thankfully a lost art and one that I never taught my daughters.

Scott Burnside is a staff writer and columnist for the Kentucky New Era. He can be contacted by phone at 887-3226 or by e-mail at sburnside@kentuckynewera.com.

[leather_strap2000]

That's ludicrous.

[Fait]

Morgan you can delete this if I'm too blunt, but that's bullshit. Its that kind of writing that makes it so hard for us to get rides now-a-days. Man screw that guy, he's obviously never been on this side of the thumb. But so many people think like that. How can we change our image? The only think that I've been doing is to be nice and curtious and unpsychotic to people who pick me up, so then they'll pick someone else up later, but for every ride that I get, I get 500 looks like I'm some sort of leper. People just can't wrap their minds around the fact that hitchhiking is noble. people always complain that we need to carpool, hitchiking is just improv carpool. People need to open their minds, even some of my friends. I tell some of them, and they're just shocked, they act like its the eight deadly sin. If theres a way to change things, I've yet to discover it.

[kerbuffel]

[quote:f7fc7edd24]People need to open their minds, even some of my friends. I tell some of them, and they're just shocked, they act like its the eight deadly sin[/quote:f7fc7edd24]

I know what you mean. I started hitchhiking to school last semester due to the bitter cold it gets here in the winter. It's only so many blocks, but when people hear I've done it they get this look of total surprise.

Over Spring Break I did my first ever long trip to St. Louis (from Central Pennsylvania) and [i:f7fc7edd24]everybody[/i:f7fc7edd24] that heard about it asked me "Did you really hitchhike?" like I had killed someone or something. I'm not sure why it seems like such a big deal; I think it might because everyone is so convinced that there aren't any good people left in the world.

[Salman]

Positive media in newspapers or television for hitchhikers is rare- and takes some guts from a writer (like Mark Holmberg, Duane Noriyuki and Eileen Travers).

The key reason is that hitchhikers fuck with the economy.

We are a group of people who don't sit in front of the tv all day or buy as much worthless crap advertised to us as our present system would like us to. Hitchhiking is portrayed badly, too, because there are too few of us who protect our rights and speak up for ourselves.

If you read or hear someone talking about what they don't understand (like the above editorialist) set them straight. Call them, email them, oppose them. Write 5 good reasons why hitchhiking is a positive thing and then give it to your friends and family. Remind people that the more they fear the unknown, the more that fear -and the unknown- will control them.

This is the time for us to start speaking out again. To say that we don't buy into the lie that "the world is a dangerous place, so we better just stay indoors, play video games, watch TV and buy anything that flashes in front of us."

Hit the road because it is a statement in favor of trust and against fear.
Get out there because the alternative is restrictive and boring.
Travel far because if we don't widen our fences, others will step in to hedge us further in than we thought possible.

When I say this is the year of the open road, it's not hype. I say it because it [b:5304ac69b9]has to be[/b:5304ac69b9]. Widen your mind, your heart, your soul. Get out there and make the bigger connection... as if your life depends on it.

[gqsmoothie]

Hell ya Morgan!!!!!!!!!!!

[Fait]

Sing it Morgan!!!

[Tumbleweed3636]

I liked that post by Morgan. Many people don't like it when others don't let fear restrict their lives. This is a call to action for those people and strips away their excuses for living lives they don't like but being too afraid or lazy to get out of them. So they make something like hitchhiking fearful so they can justify their own sterile safety.

[Fait]

But why are people so afraid of hitchhiking?!?!? I don't understand it. People always think that you'll get raped or shot or robbed, and obviously that's a possibility, but you can get run over crossing the street, or you can get carjacked cause somebody wants your ride. If you just start listing bad things that can happen, you'll never stop. People just need to focus on the good stuff. I'll never understand it, but like I say, maybe I havent had enough bad stuff happen to me on the road. Speaking of which, we've all heard the story about morgan in that guys house who tried to rape him when he was 16, how did he get out of there? Just curious.

[moonburnt]

tumbleweed3636 - i agree completely.