The Pros and Cons of Enchiladas

There's not much you can do when the worlds most famous TV therapist waves his knobby little general back and forth under the steering wheel. 

I needed the ride. 

I hugged my backpack tighter to my chest and stared out the side window waiting for my exit sign to appear.

"Well you said you've had your thumb out all day and haven't gotten a ride?"

I nodded.

"So how's that working out for ya, sport?"

The inside of Dr. Phil's van was lined in a deep red shag carpet. On his dashboard there were some old McDonald's burger boxes stacked next to a crucified wishnick statuette. And the stubby poking out of his trousers looked uncannily like Peter Boyle.

Dr. Phil's brushstache grew two feet wide as he gave me his best Grinch leer.

"Waddaya think of that?"

"I think I really liked him better as The Monster in Young Frankenstein." I said.

Peter Boyle looked up at me with one baleful eye and pleading for release. Somehow I knew in only the way you know things in dreams that it would take a crochet mallet to dislodge him and I had left mine at home. 

The tires made a sound like whack-a-mole, whack-a-mole, whack-a-mole as we bumped down the dark highway.

If I got out of the van he'd kill my dog. If I tried to help Peter Boyle, he'd kill my dog.

I knew it.

And then there was his partner Baba Looey to consider.

As we passed into a mountain tunnel, Dr. Phil morphed into a black bristled janitor's broom and I woke myself up. Not untypical for enchilada night.  I had no one but myself and my shitty diet to blame.

I heaved a sigh of relief that I wasn't really nearly raped by Dr. Phil.

Small things, right? Gratitude and whatnot.

Hey! Dreams don't need to make sense. In the real world, I never would have gotten into that van. I would never accept a ride from a man with Peter Boyle poking out of his trousers. 

I just wouldn't do it.

I'd been thinking about hitchhiking lately which probably had something to do with the dream.

Over the weekend I saw a guy by the side of the road with his thumb out. Young, kind of scruffy but not in the counter culture kind of way. More like day laborer on his was back from work scruffy. The first hitcher I've seen in years. I'm not surprised it brought up my own suppressed memories of hitching, I have no explanation for the Dr. Phil connection. Bad juju. You're welcome to speculate. Just do it somewhere else please.

There was a long period of time when I hitched everywhere I went. I didn't own a car through most of the 1980s so I begged rides. No complaints. I was young and it fit in pretty well with my partying plans for the decade. I rarely missed having a car except when I needed to do something like use a bank drive-thru. That's only a problem if you have money in a bank that you needed to get to in a hurry.

I was mercifully unencumbered by such problems.

Hitching combined two of my favorite activities – being alone with my thoughts and meeting the occasional psychopath. I was a bit of a psychopath too back in the day. But even loner psychopaths need to compare notes sometimes – get a new slant on the floating pixie problem plaguing the earth.

Fucking Pests

On the day I graduated high school I said good-bye to my parents, handed over my cap and gown and hit the road to see the America I'd read about in novels and the letters section of Penthouse. I had about two hundred bucks in my pocket and no plan except to get high and get laid a lot.

I'm pretty sure I was successful in at least one of those categories but it's a bit fuzzy.

There is a Zen to hitchhiking that puts the momentary problems of the day into perspective. You concentrate on the flow of traffic, the weather, your own heartbeat and breathing in a mindless awareness that flows from the tip of your thumb down through the soles of your feet into the pavement. 

Occasionally, a beer bottle will sail by your head and you'll think, "Gee, that might have hurt if it hit me in the head! Thank god that guy was too drunk to aim!"

Thank god I was too stoned to care.

"Twoooo outta three ain't baaad Baaay-beh!!!!"

Saw this bumpersticker alot in middle America. You know they call it begging rides for a reason. If I wanted to pay I'd flag down a cab. If I had weed I wouldn't be hitching. If I wanted to peddle my ass I'd still be an alterboy. There's a fine line between hitching and standing by the side of the road looking like an ordinary jerk.

My weirdo radar usually worked pretty well with just a few outstandingly bad calls.

Sometimes you could tell right off how the ride would go and how things would end.

Sometimes you got a good feeling about things up front…

only to be proven wrong in retrospect

You never knew where the day would take you.

I hitched all over the US and Europe. I hitched for adventure and for mundane reasons like getting to and from work or school. 

I slept in fields, or in hostels or on stranger's couches depending on the luck of the day. 

It was all marvelously random.

On the road, sometimes the hours of solitude would be broken by moments of sheer terror.

In 1984 I was crossing the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland riding in a bread truck. My timing could have been better. You see that day, an American named Martin Galvin, the leader of NORAID (douche bags who give money to terrorists), had appeared at a rally in Belfast. A riot ensued and the Royal Ulster Constabulary had killed a young Catholic protester. We were stopped at the border by British soldiers and ordered out of the truck. I was made to lay face down on the ground while they went through my backpack and interrogated me.

I'll agree with anything you have to say when you point a machine gun at me.

I'm just that kind of pussy.

That was the only time that looking like Howdy Doody did not work in my favor hitchhiking.

Other than that, hitching in Europe was a pleasure. People expected to see hitchers; it was very much part of the culture. None of that "get a job hippy!" shit shouted out in dopplered redneck-ese. Even old people hitchhike over there. To get to school in the morning, I'd stroll down to the corner, stick out my thumb and catch a ride to the top of the hill. Every day there'd be a queue of students waiting to get a ride at this spot. Everyone would politely wait their turn with no cutting in line. Cars would pull over and the driver would signal how many riders he could take and things moved pretty quickly.

Astounding. Not one person asked me to blow them. 

Not one. 

At first it kind of hurt my feelings till I figured out it must be a European thing.

In France the police hassled me a few times but not seriously. I feigned ignorance of the language (not feigned at all) and was told to stay off the motorway. The German and Austrian police were more abrupt about it. But even there they merely told me to stay off the autobahn.

Good advice. Don't try to hitch on the autobahn.

The average German driver is attempting to break a land speed record every time he pulls out of a parking spot. If you're lucky the driver might flash his Lichthupe at you as a warning to clear his path. The downside is that in Germany - flashing headlights can be interpreted as either "I'm slowing down for you" or as "I'm not slowing down for you." Take your pick. You see a black speck on the horizon and a split second later the fillings are sucked out of your head as they whoosh by with a muffled sonic boom.

Germany is the only country where I saw car headlights going into red shift.

In the Netherlands, the cops brought me back to their station house and gave me a cheese sandwich and a bottle of Orangina and then gave me a ride to the edge of their jurisdiction.

Cops in the US were a different story.

All in all, I felt much safer hitching through countries where I was completely ignorant of the language and culture than I ever did hitching across my native land where I'm ignorant only about the language and the culture.

Most of the time I hitched alone. I like the company of others but at my core I am a loner. I like my own company and mindless chatter bugs the shit out of me. Occasionally I would hook up with another drifter for safety or entertainment. 

Harrowing experiences are the norm hitching around America. I lost count of the "shallow grave" image flashes after awhile. I got propositioned by weirdos, had guns pulled on me and got dumped miles from human habitation. 

I don't believe in karma. Too many criminals die peacefully in their sleep to buy the karma theory. I was an idiot, not unconscious. 

Some of my rides were really fucked up.

"Hello world, here's a song that we're singin'!
Come on, get happy!"
(After an hour of this happy horseshit you'll wish you never left home.)

There is an imperfect art to getting the right kind of rides. Location is where it's at and proper presentation is the key. Long hair, ripped jeans and tie dye gets you rides from Dead Heads and people who like to beat up Dead Heads. Leather… you don't want a ride from the people that leather attracts. Wearing a Member's Only jacket is fine if you want a ride from David Hasselhof or KIT the talking car but regular folks will keep on going. 

Best to go for the clean, average non-psycho look if you can pull it off.

And then there is Jesus.

Jesus miracled me a shitload of rides. Just call me Brother Jebedoseph. I got saved a lot and had enough Bibles pressed into my hands to start my own church. I am very saved, praise the Lord and pass the trail mix. 

Most of the Jesus heads on the road mean well but can be really pestiferous if you don't do a lot of testifying and repenting. Their territory extends from New York to California so if getting preached at bugs you, avoid this region.

Truckers are usually a safe bet.

With truckers you can always offer to do something useful for them like read a map or get the childproof cap off a bottle of amphetamines. The trick with getting rides from a trucker is to catch them before their rig passes third gear. A blonde wig and hot pants doesn't hurt either.

Hitching allowed me to be whoever I wanted to be. I really got a kick out of fabricating a new life story for all the different folks I met. A traveling student, a pilgrim, a haunted man on the run from the law always searching for the one armed man who killed my family. 

Sometimes they'd wise up and I'd have to hit the ground running – but isn't that what life is all about anyway? Staying one step ahead of your own bullshit?

I'm only mildly nostalgic about my vagabond days. I'm not nearly that sentimental. Nor am I mourning some lost youth – no more so than I mourn my lost ability to climb a set of stairs without getting winded or being able to stay awake beyond the first three pages of a novel. If the alternative to getting older is dying I'll picked growing old every time. No. At least I did it. The free spirit thing. I wasn't old before I was young.

Now I drive an SUV with a kid, a wife and a flatulent Golden Retriever. We'll blame the dog regardless. That hitcher reminded me of a time that has passed us by. Passed us all by. An era of trust and openness. A willingness to chuck it all and take risks.

No, I didn't give that hitcher a ride.

But man, if I had a beer bottle in my hand, I would have pegged that lowlife hippy fuck in the head but good!