One time a hitchhiking robot travelled across the country relying only on the kindness of strangers to get it where it was going. ‘HitchBOT’ was more of a collaborative social experiment than a marvel of modern technology. This little hiker was about the size of a six-year-old but with a computerized brain.
It got me to thinking of a few experiences I had with “a right of passage” or thumbing a ride in the day. One brought me luck, someone manipulated me, but my last one was a life-saver.
In my 20s and for a reason I can’t remember, I was hitching to Westmeath from Kingston. I shortly got a lift from someone who happened to be an old college-mate. It was karma! He was working for the Employment Office in Kingston – and I needed a more satisfactory job. He arranged an interview for me at RMC. I was hired as a technical assistant to a Professor who was working on his PhD. It was formfitting for me as this almost-genius knew everything about everything. No need to hitchhike now.
Some years later I was visiting family in Westmeath and on my return home to Scarborough, I had an experience that was more appropriate for a dream than realism. On the other side of Barry’s Bay, a hitchhiker was on the roadside with her leg, or was it her thumb, sticking out. How could I not stop – probably did too quickly, thereby showing my immaturity. She had one piece of luggage and wore a too-tight tee-shirt. The luggage though wasn’t so big. Now, I was a married man but not totally void of imagination.
As the miles clicked by, we started talking about what we did for a living. I worked in manufacturing and she was a woman of the night. Noticing my ambivalence and slight swerve of the car, she looked straight at me and followed up by saying, “I am a hooker and a dam good one.” She even canvassed my own neighbourhood, she said, but I’m sure I would have spotted her or at least heard of one of the local guys bragging.
I gulped for composure and asked, “Do you ever take time off for yourself?”
“Yes I do, and it ends tomorrow.” This dysfunctional connection was not going to be anything like in the movie ‘Pretty Woman’.
She asked if she could smoke and I said okay. However, it wasn’t a cigarette she meant – I worried about the smell of pot in the car but she decided against a third one, thank goodness.
I lived at the beginning of Toronto, she at the far end near the lake. What would she do if I dropped her off at an intersection. She decided that one for me. She coerced me with little difficulty into driving her all the way to Etobicoke. Finally we arrived. As I pulled in front of a really seedy motel, I thought, “What a way of life.” She probably liked hers though as much as I did mine.
Now she was saying a half-hearted goodbye and asking if I had any spare money, all in one breath. Instead of accelerating the car and leaving her in my dust, I reluctantly pulled out my wallet and showed her the only two bills I had. They were a twenty and a five. I said to her, “Pick one of them but remember that I need to get gas on the way home” – in the hope that I might salvage something. Of course she grabbed the twenty (I knew she would) and scrambled out the door, leaving me feeling like a second-grade actor that forgot his lines. How I could have been such a fool to allow a harlot like that manipulate me so handily. The only benefit of it all was a memory that no one would believe anyway!
When I arrived home, I escaped detection by my wife and did a quick change of clothes after dumping the ones I had worn in the bottom of the hamper.
The sight of the lone, free-wheeling hitchhiker on the side of the highway, thumb stuck out in high hopes, has dwindled to almost nothing these days. The image has become almost as much a thing of the past as the train-hopping hobo trying to escape his past in the middle of the night.
I was so desperate a couple of bitterly cold winter’s ago I had no idea what would happen to me. Heading to Pembroke one morning and just rounding the Old Mill Bridge, I had a flat tire. No amount of effort would loosen the nuts on the wheel. By now my hands were frozen and the rest of me was like a popsicle. With the hood and trunk up and flashers engaged, I tried to flag a passing car for help – six of them passed me without a glance. Almost in frozen tears with frustration, I simply gave up and accepted my fate. An angel is the only explanation! A car slowed, turned and came back and the driver asked if I was in trouble. This lady was a godsend. After my gibberish, she said get in and proceeded to drive me to the garage. Upon hearing of my anguish, Brian, like a General with almost a couple stars, had Russell and Carson take his truck and myself back to my car to get the wheel with the flat off and the spare on. As Russell unscrewed those frozen wheel nuts I was ecstatic but at the time felt so helpless that I couldn’t have done it myself. As for this lady, my saving grace, I run across her occasionally and always vehemently thank her for coming to my rescue that day. She doesn’t know it but if and when I win the Big One, she is in for a cut, and not chump change either.
These days, people are wondering if it is too dangerous to hitchhike. I hope I never have the experience of finding that out again, ever.
