Sweet Hitch Hiker

Was busted up along the highway, I'm the saddest ridin' fool alive...
-Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Sweet Hitchhiker" [1972]

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Picking up a hitch hiker is a split-second decision.  Like all good acts, you have to decide ahead of time if you're going to do it at all.  Otherwise, you'll be speeding down the freeway in the middle of desert Colorado (like I was) when you'll suddenly see a lonesome stranger with his thumb out, and you'll at once worry what if he's a serial killer? An escaped convict?  A strung-out drug addict? Mentally unstable? A scammer?  A con artist?  A hijacker?  What if he assaults or attacks or robs me?  And of course that most despicable of Anglo-American impulses will inevitably cross your mind as well, the one that assumes that the poor are so because they deserve to be, and thus to help them would be a sin.

But then you cast that last awful thought out of mind, and your more charitable impulses kick in, as you consider the great leaps of faith that the poor hitch hiker is taking, having all the same worries about you as you do about him, and how every good act carries some intrinsic risk but that doesn't excuse us from doing them, and how if these hitch hikers are sticking their thumbs out in the middle of the desert then something has clearly gone south in their lives and what they really need is your help not your judgment, and if you're Christian you wonder what would Jesus do, and if you're LDS you remember "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief," and if nothing else you consider that life is unpredictable and uncontrollable so who knows one day it might be you having to stick your thumb out on a desert highway and you'll want good Karma then, plus it's just good to do good to others and this 2 day road trip is already plenty lonely as it is, so you get ready to pull over to the shoulder--

Now, all these thoughts flash through your mind in only a split second mind you, and by the time that split second is up you've already passed the hitch hiker and careened another half-mile down the freeway at 80 mph, and you feel a twinge of guilt.  For as more than one important thinker on the topic has stated, when the time for action has come, the time for preparation has ended.

Such was my experience early Tuesday morning, in the middle of a long solo road trip across the Midwest and Rocky Mountains.  I privately swore that the next hitch hiker I passed, I would pull over immediately, the risks be damned.

I didn't have to wait long for my resolve to be tested.  Less than an hour later outside of Grand Junction, Colorado, I saw yet another thumb along the I-70.  I pulled over immediately.  This 18-year-old drifter ran up, hopped in the passenger seat, thanked me profusely, then immediately apologized for his B.O. (which I actually didn't mind--it was a clear sign to me that he was in fact stuck in the middle of the desert and not scamming--my faith had been validated).

I asked him how far he's going.  He said as far west as he could.  I said I was heading to Salt Lake City.  He said that was perfect, cause he was trying to hitch hike to Sacramento and Salt Lake would make a serious dent in his journey.  His sob story was that his younger sister (whom he hasn't seen in 12 years) was dying of cancer out in California, and his Uncle had finally tracked him down and invited him to see her and move in with him.  The kid's lemon of a car had broken down and been impounded he said, and he'd had a row with his Mom and her boyfriend and roommate back in Grand Junction, so he just up and left spur of the moment for California, even as he didn't even have the cash for a bus ticket.


In that inimitable self-focused way all teenagers are, he talked endlessly about himself, of all his music ideas and ambitions to become some Skrillex type DJ, and when he saw my guitar in the back he talked of all his favorite bands and at which album exactly Metallica sold out and etc.  As he described it, over the course of his young life, thanks to a truck-driver grandfather and some illegally-underage cruise-ship jobs, he has either lived in or passed through all 50 states and most of Canada (he spouted a bit of French at me to prove he'd been to Quebec; I only responded, "je ne parle pas le francais").  This kid had an odd M-name that I asked twice but couldn't remember either time.  He was observant enough to wait till we stopped for water before he stepped out for a cigarette.  After about 2 hours of him non-stop talking he suddenly conked out and fell asleep, and understandably, as he said he'd been awake for roughly 36 hours straight, having started walking midnight previous.  I didn't know whether to believe all of it or half of it or none of it--but then, he really was hitch hiking in the middle of a parched desert, which no one does voluntarily; and besides, at midnight previous myself, I was sleeping in a van at a truck stop in eastern Colorado, so it certainly wasn't me who should be questioning strange road stories.

In the mean time, as he slept soundly in the passenger seat, I looked up and admired in awe the canyons, mountain passes, and sheer beauty of the Rocky Mountains and southern Utah (which I'd always appreciated but perhaps took for granted but didn't any longer), while in even more awe I considered the strange series of events that had to come together just precisely for me to give this kid a lift part way to his dying sister.

For only a few days earlier, I was seriously asking myself why I was even bothering with the expense and hassle of buying a new(ish) car that wasn't completely falling apart, just to drive all the way to SLC for only a month or so, for the heavy inertia that settles in after a long graduate school year and a cruel winter had me considering how easy it would feel to just hang out in Iowa City all summer long (for I could read and write and hang out with friends as easily there as anywhere), and driving clear through Iowa and Nebraska in one day didn't improve my mood about this journey.  Really, only the house-sitting I promised to do for some strangers on the internet roused me enough to break my inertia and load up a van to strike out west.

And though I was initially excited to finally see mountains again, the lazy pragmatist within me (the one that urged me to just call the whole trip off in the first place) told me that if I was going to make this whole pointless drive anyways, then I should save time and money by cutting through southern Wyoming and further oppress my soul. It was almost with a feeling of rebellion that I, literally last second, took the exit into Colorado instead when the I-80 and I-76 split.  A few hours later, I slept with a baseball cap over my eyes at the aforementioned truck stop.

But then as I woke up with the stunning sunrise on the wind-swept prairies, and as I drove I beheld the skyline of the Rockies beyond Denver, and my spirit lifted...and as I ascended into the mountains once more I remembered why I'd longed for them so long, for my view increased and my soul expanded...and I considered the incredible synchronicity needed for me to buy an affordable old van that was somehow still in great driving shape, and get that house-sitting gig for just this particular month, and take the I-76 instead of the I-80 at the last second, all for me to help this poor kid try to see his dying sister one last time.  The Lord doth work in mysterious ways.

I believed enough of his story to assume that he really was penniless and therefore probably starving, so I took him out to Cafe Rio once we reached Salt Lake, where he quickly learned why anyone who's ever passed through Salt Lake raves about the place.  I dropped him off at the junction for the I-80 W, to continue his Quixotic quest for Sacramento...well, maybe not so Quixotic, for after I dropped him off and found a parking lot to turn around in, I saw that he was already gone.  He was either walking down the freeway shoulder like a madman or had already stuck out his thumb and found another ride to California.  Given my relative sleep deprivation and solid 2 days of driving, I almost wonder if I didn't just hallucinate the whole experience.  But then, life is a dream...