Last weekend marked the end of an era for me. I may have cheated death twice.
The first incident occurred on Saturday when a black Mustang passed on the double-yellow and came head-on with me on Highway 20 between Nice and Lucerne.
We both swerved onto the shoulder. That would have been that guy”s fault.
Had I died on Sunday morning, I”d have no one to blame but myself.
I was headed toward Williams and saw a man hitchhiking. Without even thinking, I pulled over and let him into my car. In the past I”ve had a folklorish perception of hitchhikers.
I blame my Uncle Mark. He hitchhiked across America and I followed his progress and stories as a child. I lived vicariously through him for quite some time. He”s my favorite uncle.
One frigid winter in Massachusetts, our garage was frozen shut. Snow drifts had accumulated to 10-feet high. My mother instructed me and my brother to walk to our school, less than a mile away.
She put her heavy boots on, walked out to the road and stuck her thumb out to get to work at UMASS.
Aside from my familial memories of the mode of transportation, I”ve heard some wonderful tales from hitchhikers.
There”s something about sitting in the confines of a vehicle, looking straight ahead that prompts strangers to share their life stories. Maybe it”s the questions.
“Where you headed? Where you from? What”s bringing you to that part of the map?”
The hitchhiker I picked up Sunday struggled in an attempt to tell me his story.
His words vacillated from joyous emotion, to paranoia, to anger.He couldn”t remember why, but he thought there were people after him.
He said he thought he used to be married to Britney Spears and Salma Hayek. He wished he had a drink.
He doesn”t work, but people in San Francisco and L.A. told him he was a famous rapper, he said. But he”ll never rap again, because the rappers want to kill him.
I felt the presence of evil inches from me, a foggy blackish-gray aura – as I drove through an area where I had no cell phone reception.
I felt sorry for the confused man. If he would have hurt me, he would undoubtedly not remember or even understand why he did.
“I don”t want to go out this way,” was all I could think.
It was then that I realized I probably will not be picking up hitchhikers again – that is if I managed to get out of this unscathed. My rose-colored glasses had been cracked.
I”ve had a similar nostalgic view of the world as Elijah Wald in his book “Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker”s Journey,” Chicago Review Press, 2006. This is exemplified in the following passage from the book.
“This is my first non-music book, and follows a cross-country trip I made about a year ago from Boston to Portland, Oregon. The point of this journey, aside from having fun and trying to give a sense of modern life on the road, was to counteract the paranoia that is all around us and remind readers that the world remains a far safer and friendlier place than one would think from reading the newspapers or watching the nightly news.”
If you would have asked me about hitchhikers on Saturday, I would have mirrored his words. It certainly rekindles memories of Jack Kerouac”s “On the Road,” a book that inspired that generation to thumb the way to self-discovery.
In an overall sense, I”ve had fabulous experiences getting to know strangers from varied backgrounds and regions. In other words, I”ve experienced more joy than fear.
The practice provided me the opportunity to meet some folk I would not have met during my daily routine.
Mark Twain”s 1872 novel “Roughing It” explores hitchhiking in a travelogue of Twain”s adventures as a young man in the Old West. Max Neumegen, former world traveler, says “the hitchhiker is there so you can do your good deed for the day.”
Even John Steinbeck begins the book “The Grapes of Wrath” with a hitched ride.
The world hasn”t changed in such a vast manner, as much as I have changed in my mind – seemingly overnight. For now, the possibilities to perform good deeds are all around, and not limited to picking up hitchhikers.
Mandy Feder is assistant managing editor/night desk for the Record-Bee. She can be reached at mandyfeder@yahoo.com or 263-5636 ext. 32
