From 1946 when I got out of High School until 1951 when I came to Dallas to live and work I did an extensive amount of hitchhiking. After my last trip in 1951 the stories I told of these trips surely became very tiresome to those who heard them.
In 1987 oral history became written history as it was then I purchased my first computer and could document and archive all of my adventures. Only one or two others have read my complete journal and were probably bored by it. But I can’t resist printing in this space the EPILOGUE to that document.
There will be some who will read this and know exactly what I was talking about. It will be a waste of space and time for others.
Did I really have all of these adventures? And more? Sometimes it has seemed that they were all a dream for surely a kid as young and unsophisticated and shy and moneyless as I was during those years would not have undertaken this sort of thing. But, I did. And I would not want to give up the memories of places that I saw and people that I met.
Each trip was "fun", I have often told myself and others. But to say this is to ignore the many hours of hardships that went along with the fun. Standing for boring hours at the fringe of a community or in the country, often in the rain, waiting for a ride that might not come was certainly not fun. Neither was it fun to be grimy all of the time and denied a service station rest room because I was "too dirty". And always being wary that a car would be a police car or that the man who gave me a ride would be "one of those" was not fun.
The long hours of boredom traveling across prairies with a stranger was not fun. Not knowing when, or if, there would be another meal was not fun. A thousand miles from home with only a dollar or so was not fun.
So, after the first trip, why did I continue? I really don't know. Perhaps it was just the human urge to see what was over the next hill. Perhaps it was some sort of a rebellion against family whom I thought would have preferred that I remain at home, sheltered. Perhaps it was because my peers were doing so many things that I could not do or was fearful of doing. What does go through a youthful mind?
What did I gain from these days when others my age were spending their time in a useful manner at some productive job? Certainly I gathered a lot of tales to be told to anyone who would listen. But foremost, I believe, these trips were for me a way of developing confidence in my own abilities to survive in adverse circumstances. I also believe that through these experiences I gained an interest in and some sensitivity to people as individuals.
I have made many trips since; by automobile, bus, train and airplane, and for the most part enjoyed them all. But there has never since been the same thrill of following a road with no particular destination in mind.
Yes, for a time I was a "free spirit" with responsibilities only to myself. I will always remember those days.