In the second installment of our series of TPM Reader emails on ‘your hitchhiking story’, TPM Reader RCE shares the story that ended his days as a hitchhiker …
Here is the story that cured me of Hitch Hiking.
I hitch hiked throughout the 1960s and 1970s as a kid and teen in Pittsburgh. It was a necessity for jobs or getting up to the river where we jumped off the bridge……[yes, my friends jumped off the bridge so I did too]
During the summer after my first year of college, I had a job as a night watchman in a glass factory in Jeannette, PA. I was working the 3-11pm shift, and I had to hitch hike home because my mom was already in bed for work the next day.
I always stood in front of the “Big Boy” restaurant on US Rt. 30 because the rides were quick, and one night a guy from the local missile base picked me up (yes! a Nike missile base).
We chatted amiably until I noticed that he had a gun sitting between his ….er….legs… [readers will have a field day with this].
“Is that a gun?”
“Yes, why?”
“Oh, no reason, just wondering”
At this, he picked up the gun and pointed it directly at me in the passenger seat and — I am not making this up– he pulled the trigger — BANG!–…..and after a few frightening seconds I realized it was a blank (I am, after all, still here some 45 years later).
I asked him to pull over, got out, and jumped over the guard rail without looking to see what was below….fortunately just a rocky hill that I rolled down.
As you can imagine, I never hitch hiked again….
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