Hitchin’ in the USA – (Not a Cautionary Tale)

by Mark Kneeskern

Have you ever woken up on the floor of a one-room rock house in the Chihuahuan Desert, knowing that sixty years before a Mexican mercury miner woke in the same rock house that he built with his own two hands?? Have you scratched and yawned, going outside to find your bike has a flat tire, realizing that you’d have to hitch hike for the first time in your life to get to work, a job that entails floating on a watery border, back and forth between a “developed” nation and a “developing” one?? Did you then rush out the door with a personal flotation device strapped to your back, stumbling to the road between prickly pear and lechuguilla to receive a ride from a beautiful, sleepy-eyed creature with whom you would fall in love and spend many happy years?

I have.? Just once.? That’s all it took to hook this boy.? I thought, “So THIS is what hitchhiking is like!”

I hadn’t owned a car in three years when I stuck my thumb out that fateful day to snag a ride and a soulmate. I’d been on the bus circuit, taking long trips seated next to a wide variety of fine Americans: those just released from prison, those on their way to prison, and those who should be in prison. Beyond the sheer mind-melting experience of a long bus ride, the major bus companies had taken the little towns off their schedule and hiked up the rates.? If I ever take that grey coffin across the country again, it will be for journalistic purposes. But how would I get around?? Airlines are out of the question – the carbon footprint leaves a black residue on my conscience.

What’s left is the train (a ticket would be too expensive and hopping one too dangerous), cross-country bicycling (my body aches with the mere thought), and hitchhiking.? Hitchhiking? Does anyone even do that anymore?

Two months later I was hanging for my dear life off the back of a pickup already crowded with twenty people.? I’d found my way down to Guatemala, via the more comfortable Mexican buses, and was hitching a ride to the Semuc Champey waterfalls with some campesinos. So I’d gotten some more experience under my belt.? Next, on the way back to Far West Texas where I live in the winter, I tried Mexico on for size.? The britches may have been far too big for me and slightly uncomfortable, but I made it work, much like David Byrne and his over-sized suit.? From Mexico City I hooked a ride from a pill-popping truck driver who confessed his love for teenage girls, an anthropology professor in a BMW, several rides in the beds of old pickup trucks, and one conspicuous ride from, believe it or not, a UPS truck.

I must admit, my first attempt at “Hitchin’ in the USA” was a dismal failure.? I set out towards Moab from Big Bend with a Kerouac Shuffle, but by Las Cruces I was doing the Masochism Tango.? There, a trucker with the moniker “Dirty Dan” emblazoned across his Peterbilt door didn’t like me hitching outside his truck stop, so I flipped him the bird, not knowing he had a Bowie knife and wasn’t afraid of wielding it.? I had a bus-relapse at exactly the moment he drawled “I’ll cutcha’ good, boy!”

Since then I’ve thumbed thousands of miles, going on my “Friends and Family Tour” each Summer. I’m happy to report that, post-Dirty Dan, I have had no threats to my personal safety, and have published a book about my adventures.? I began keeping a thorough journal while hitching, otherwise I’d forget all the weird and wild details … people open up their verbal diaries on the road and I try to scratch down all the best stories and sketch out the strangest characters so that I can write colorful prose when I reach my destination.? I may be on the road by the time you read this.? My journey from Salida, CO to Preston, MN will begin on August 10 or thereabouts.? Colorado Central Magazine has picked me up as a roving reporter of sorts and I’ll be sending “national road conditions” based on my observations from the wild world of hitchhiking.? By the way, I’ve done my research and found that hitchhiking is indeed legal, except in some municipalities and alongside the interstate, so if you see me out there, please pick me up!