You never know when two escaped convicts are gonna pick you up and try to teach you a lesson.
In the late 60’s and early 70’s there seemed to be an anti-war protest in Washington, DC just about every weekend. I lived right outside of the city, and since I fancied myself a radical member of the MOVEMENT, I made it my business to be at as many of the events as my busy teenaged schedule would allow. I was young, I was broke and had no car, and in those days there was no Metro, but I had my trusty thumb. With or without company I traveled all over the region without a second thought about my safety. After all, it was the age of Aquarius; we were all one. Usually I was picked up by like-minded young people who were always happy to offer me a toke of weed or a sip of wine and made the journeys not only economical but damed fun. Occasionally I did run across some slight trouble. It was also the age of Easy Rider and Washington was still a fairly southern town back then. My long hair made me a target for the occasional redneck’s empty beer bottle or screamed curses, but I knew to just duck and keep my thumb out and my middle finger in.
This one particular day changed it all for me. I had been at a rally on the mall, and I was heading home to Virginia. I’d had one ride to the outskirts of Arlington, and it had started to rain. I’d been waiting for a while when an old Rambler pulled over. I hopped in the back and was a bit surprised to see two middle-aged white guys up in the front. Not your typical ride giver. I told the driver where I was headed; the passenger appeared to be asleep. I was pretty wet by this time, and my long hair was dripping down in strings. The driver said something I couldn’t hear, and I leaned forward and said, “Excuse me sir, I couldn’t quite hear you.” The passenger sat up and turned around, and I found the barrel of a pistol in my face. “He said if you don’t keep that long hair of yours off me I’m gonna blow your fucking head off!” He then turned around and said to the driver, “Where’d you pick this one up?” “Just a little ways back,” the driver answered.
“You can let me out here,” I said, “I’m just going right up here.” The driver turned and looked at me, He was probably in his 40s, balding and had bad teeth. He also had a pronounced foreign accent. The passenger called him”Dutch.” He said to me, “That’s not what you said when we picked you up, we’ll take you all the way.” The passenger appeared to be a bit younger, but he was one of those people that you would look at and just know he was wrong. He had greasy hair, he hadn’t shaved for several days at least, and he also had teeth that looked like he lived on nothing but coffee and cigarettes. He still had the gun in his lap, and I was rapidly rediscovering my dormant Catholicism.Dutch then said something that turned my blood to ice, “We’ve escaped from prison, how do you like that?”
I must have looked like I was going to faint because the passenger ( I never did learn his name) smiled for the first time. “I think you might have scared the hippie, Dutch.” We were passing an old back-country road that I sometimes took to my house. I said, “Really, you can let me out here, I can take this road to get to my house.” Dutch said, “We know a guy down here right? Doesn’t Jim live down here?” His friend grunted as Dutch turned the old car down the road. We drove for about half a mile until we came to an old abandoned looking dirt drive. Dutch turned on to it and pulled off a hundred yards or so from the road. He turned the car off, which I remember ran on and coughed a couple of times before it died. He turned back to me and began speaking to me in a gentle voice. “Look kid, we know about the horrors of prison, we just want to set you straight. Clean up your act or you’ll end up like us.” I said, “But I haven’t done anything wrong!” The passenger yelled, “Bullshit! Lets tie him to a tree and fuck him in the ass and then shoot him in the head!” Now I was on the verge of tears. “Look mister, I haven’t done anything, I was just looking for a ride. Please let me go!” Dutch continued to lecture me on the evils of prison life and the virtues of being set straight. His friend kept glaring at me or glaring at Dutch.
Finally, Dutch said, “Enough of this. I think we’ve made our point, let’s get out of here.” He turned the key and nothing happened. He told me that I’d have to help his friend push the car to jump it. We got out and began to push the car down the dirt road. The passenger turned to me and said, “Do you know where you belong?” I just stared at him without saying anything. “In bed,” he said, and with that we gave the car a shove and it turned over. He hopped in the car, shut the door and they took off up the road without another word. I began walking up the road toward my house, but every time a car came near I was ready to jump into the bushes. I did indeed take a hot shower and got into bed, and even though it was a couple of years before I got a car, I never stood out on the side of road with my thumb out again. I continued to be active in the MOVEMENT, I just made sure I had a ride first.
Originally appeared at Open Salon.
—Photo cvanstane/Flickr
Oh, boy…that’s horrible! You’re lucky you’re still alive and that those guys didn’t kill you outright. Too bad you had to learn a lesson about hitchhiking the hard way! Sorry about that. Glad you came out okay, though.
Ouch .- scary. I used to hitch hike all over Europe during my holidays – from the very north to the very south. And I would sleep on beaches or in peoples barns or whereever. I saw so much of the continent, at next to no cost. Such great cultural lessons.
I’m not sure I’d let my kids do the same today. The world has changed, or I’ve become more afraid, or both.
What a shame! I too, stopped hitching in the USA after some frightening experiences (when I was young and stupid). But I have hitched all over Europe, especially throughout the British Isles, Scotland and Ireland. I have had about 99% good experiences doing so– meeting people, being taken to their homes for food and even a bed for the night a couple of times. Other travellers often picked me up and we would end up sharing journeys for a few days, even a couple of weeks. For a nation that prides itself on being the “home of the free and… Read more »
Informative post Morgaine. Great post
dude, THAT was scary, really fvcking scary
I occasionally hitchhiked myself during the early to mid-1970’s, but after having a couple of creepy experiences that I thought had the potential for evolving into something even more sinister, and reading/hearing about a whole slue of young woman here in the Boston, MA area (who ranged in age from their late teens to their early 20’s), who disappeared and then turned up dead while hitchhiking to school, work, or wherever, I stopped hitchhiking altogether, because I felt it wasn’t worth the risk.