It may finally be Spring and safe to plant flowers. Not that I've ever planted a flower, but I know people who do.

For those of you who look forward to my running stories, both of you, there is an absence of them this year due to some physical therapy I am going through. I am hopeful that I will bore you, I mean thrill you with a few stories in the next couple of months, culminating in the Falmouth Road Race in August. This year will be my eleventh time running in Falmouth, and I only have nine more to go until my friend Gary, in Falmouth, has promised to run with me.

I will be supporting the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for the fourth time.

There is a missing category of people in the country today that used to be very common, seen in almost every town and every highway. We called them hitchhikers, and they were picked up all the time by all kinds of caring people.

Today, I think, you’d need to have rocks in your head to pick up a hitchhiker, especially the ones who look like they were buddies of Charles Manson (look him up). I wouldn’t pick up a hitchhiker today even if my wife ordered me to, and I’m not the defiant type.

This weblog is not a definitive history of hitchhiking, but it is a definitive history of my hitchhiking career that I find it hard to believe even as I am writing it.

My first time hitching a ride was probably at the age 15 as I was entering my sophomore year of high school. Even though my Junior High was a couple of miles away by car, it was not on a main road and there were shortcuts through the woods and along the railroad tracks that made it a fairly quick walk, so no thumbing was required.  

When I was in Junior High there were no ‘late busses’ so if you played a sport, and I played baseball and soccer, you had to walk home.

When high school hit, the Braintree High School was even further away, but was connected to my house by main roads, with the longest one being Elm St-Hayward St (same road, changed names in the middle). After practice, I'd walk to Braintree Center, lean on the mailbox, and stick out my thumb and wait. (On a recent trip I took a photo of that mailbox location.)

Sooner or later, mostly sooner, a nice adult would pick you up, ask you where you lived, and if you knew so and so. That was it. Simple. In daylight after soccer practice, or at night after hockey practice it was the dominant form of transportation.

In those days, no one rode a bike to school. You either walked, took the bus, or hitched.

Naturally when I attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, I used my skills for much longer distance rides. UMass was about 100 miles from my home, and it was always a multiple ride trip.

Thumbing Part 1:

There was a line of kids standing along Route 9 on the Amherst College campus with thumbs out, usually with destination signs. If you were lucky, a kind adult would take you as far as the Mass Turnpike connection in Palmer, about 40 minutes away. Sometimes you got lucky and got a ride beyond the Pike and all the way to 128 about 12 miles from Boston.

Thumbing Part 2:

But most of the time you were dropped off and stuck that same thumb out on the Mass Pike toll booth approach. 

You definitely needed a sign because people were either heading towards Boston or New York. If you didn’t have a sign, you’d open the passenger door, or the driver would roll down the window for the communication that determined if it was a good ride or not.

Turning down a ride because you didn’t like the look, or the vibe from inside the car, happened frequently. Because experienced hitchhikers would ask ‘where are you heading’ first, so they could lie about where they were going if they felt uncomfortable. Everyone has a personal definition of what a creep is.

Thumbing Part 3:

128 to Home was sometimes the most difficult and imprecise part of the trip. You had to hitch at an on ramp: hitching on an interstate was not easy, not cool, and dangerous. You also had to find a ride that ended up close to your home. Generally getting off at an exit in your town was a homerun.

Once you were on your home hitchhiking turf, no matter the time of day, you were basically home free, since you knew where to thumb, and knew you’d be safe.

Coming Home for Christmas

After some experience hitching from Amherst to Braintree, I made signs for my old cardboard suitcase and taped them to each side. One said ‘AMHERST’ the other said ‘BRAINTREE’ and depending on the direction I was heading; I placed the suitcase in front of me when I stuck out my thumb.

My most memorable hitchhiking experience one year took place close to Christmas. I had snagged rides from Amherst to the East Street Exit on Route 128 in Dedham, about 15 miles from my home. On the way to Dedham, it got dark and started to snow very hard as I got out of the car that had taken me that far.

The next part of this story sounds made up, but it really happened this way. I stood on that highway ramp in the driving snow in the dark freezing my ass off for almost two hours-now that is a definition of frustrating. 

15 miles from home. I could have been half-way home if I walked. I was getting desperate. Remember: no cell phones, no one to call, and no one wanted to come out in a blizzard.

I carefully considered my options, and there appeared to only be one choice left. I carefully knelt down behind my suitcase on both knees, closed my eyes and folded my hands in prayer.

The next car stopped, and a very nice man brought me to my front door in Braintree.

It may not have been the last time I thumbed, but it was the last time I thumbed in a snowstorm at night.

It may have taken me five weeks to get it right, but I finally did. This photo was submitted by long time loyal reader Bob Perry from Starbucks country in the state of Washington.