On the Road Bard by Thumb

AS A FRIEND and I were taking off last summer on a car trip to California, his father repeated his earlier warnings against picking up hitchhikers. "They can be dangerous, you know," he said. And last Sunday, after I had informed my mother that I had hitched the day before from Harvard to Bard College in New York, she warned against accepting rides from strangers. "They can be dangerous, you know." she said.

Taking danger in my stride. I left Cambridge for Bard late Saturday afternoon. A co-hitcher named Adam joined me on the entrance ramp to the Mass. Turnpike. He asked me the score of the just ended Harvard-Princeton football game, and I told him I didn't know. Adam was hip, though; he hastily added, "Not that I give a shit."

Adam and I got a ride for about 20 miles up the Pike and extended our thumbs again. One car whizzed by and stopped to pick up a soldier in uniform who was standing down the road. We ran down to join the party, but the soldier closed the car door quickly behind him, and the car whizzed on. Adam was angry, but I understood perfectly. After all, what had we done for our country?

We finally were picked up by a truck driver who had just delivered 35 gallons of onion soup from New York City to Boston. He let off Adam in Worcester and took me as far as a Howard Johnson's somewhere in western Massachusetts.

None of the forgotten Americans at Howard Johnson's would adopt me-not even the one at whom I flashed my Harvard I.D. Everybody's car was "too crowded." Eventually I won the trust of four cheerleaders, in bright blue uniforms, from the University of Buffalo. They had cheered their boys to victory over B.C. that very afternoon.

The cheerleaders were great. They even rhymed-Kathy, Sharon. Alice, and Karen. They're all in the same sorority. Kathy told me about her school's SDS chapter, which is trying to kick fraternities, sororities, and football off campus. She couldn't understand why SDS wouldn't let other people do what they want. I'll take a cheerleader over a radical any day: for one thing. "Hold that line!" is always much better synchronized than "Ho, Ho, Ho!"

I got as far as New York's Taconic Parkway with the cheerleaders. The toll-taker there told me that hitching is illegal, but that he didn't care what I did. He'd hitched as a boy. "It's illegal to use our john, too," he said, "but if you take a leak outside. they'll get you for indecent exposure. I'm all for it-not indecent exposure, but I still like my sex." He told me to pretend I didn't know him as I thumbed two feet away from his booth. But he waved goodbye when I got picked up.

My ride from the toll booth took me about 20 miles down the Taconic. By now it was completely black outside, so I took a white T-shirt out of my suitcase and tried to flag down the passing cars. After a few minutes I started yelling "Help !" at each car. A man picked me up and took me to Red Hook, 15 miles from Bard.

I got out the T-shirt again, but feeling more confident. I yelled "Hello !" at passing cars instead of "Help !" A young couple in a Volkswagen pulled to the side of the road. But as I approached, the boy in the driver's seat started shouting at me: "You fucker! What the hell is the idea of acting like there's some kind of big emergency when all you want is a ride? I ought to kill you !"

But he told me to get in the car. "Are you gonna beat the shit out of me or give me a ride?" I asked. His girlfriend, looking embarrassed. told me not to worry, and I got in for the last leg of my trip. Kevin, the driver, is in the Army and has been ordered to serve in Washington this weekend.

Kevin is the type of stranger my mother was talking about.