I read ON THE ROAD this summer. Kerouac's breakneck semi-memoir about drug-crazed beatniks during the Eisenhower years remains a classic primer for hitchhikers and hobos, however I was surprised by the paucity of roadside tramps during my summer travels. Not a single hitchhiker on the Interstates and state roads. None on the back roads either and when my friend Malinda invited me to work on her farm, I contemplating hitting the road.
"Hitchhikers are extinct." Malinda informed me from her house above Saratoga.
"I was thinking about hitchhiking to you." I would leave from the West Side Highway. I had done so countless times in the 70s.
"You're crazy. No one hitchhikes and no one picks up hitchhikers." Malinda paid for my Amtrak ticket and drove me back to the city after I had prepped her farm for winter. My eyes searched I-91 for the sight of someone standing by the side of the road. I saw no one. Her statement on extinction seemed correct, until I spotted a hitchhiker in Williamsburg. A Hassid on Fort Hamilton Parkway. He was thumbing to his fellow Hassidim.
He got a ride within three minutes.
So hitchhikers aren't dead.
For where there is one, they will be many.
No comments:
Post a Comment