HitchHiking Number 1 (in America)
I have made only two major journeys as a hitchhiker. The first was in America during the war when i was on leave from an airfield in Oklahoma, America’s mid-west when, having seen quite a lot of America from the air I wanted to experience it at ground level. The other time was in the 1958-1959 years when I landed from a South Pacific coaster in Brisbane, north-eastern Australia, and hitchhiked to Bourke in the outback.
I had twelve days available for my first venture in America and went with an airman friend, Don Hitchcock, who had much the same ideas as mine.
We were dressed in US military khaki kit and RAF hats with white inserts denoting that we were trainee pilots, not that that mattered at all since few of the occupants of the Mid-West knew of anything at all outside their limited orbit.
So off we went using navigation by a rough map of America, and road signposts instead of airspace maps, compass bearings and drift calculations.
We were picked up early on by a doctor who was curious and might have been apprehensive as we both spent time in his car looking around - up, down, sideways as with even fairly sophisticated equipment, we were used to looking in all directions when airborne to prevent collisions and death. On discovering why we did this, the doctor was much relieved and interested.
We had noticed that although we had obtained lifts, ladies on their own were understandibly reluctant to pick up a couple of male hitchhikers. So I devised a plan. Immediately we saw a lone lady appearing from the distance we would lower our arms with outstretched thumb pointing in the desired direction and turn our backs to the road. This gesture indicated “understanding” and they would often stop for us.
The first major stop on this voyage was Dallas, Texas, before we headed west towards the Pacific coast, which we never reached.
Now, in the southern states toward the west, it became quite noticeable that nearly all small towns were branded by an all-American stamp. They were almost identical as we headed west across desert country, punctuated every so often by ever-changing scenery, and many a cactus.
We continued westerly with only the scenery changing and some token adobe dwellings in plaster and poking-out timbers to indicate a more simple past.
But in this part of America silver and turquoise must have been mined as reasonably-priced pieces, probably made by indigenous Indians, were available and delightful in their colour and simplicity of design.
Touching the Mexican border we headed north toward Denver, Colorado, and the Rockies.
At one place, arriving in the early hours the smell of peaches was overpowering. There were trucks full of them, presumablly waiting to be processed elsewhere. So we stocked up on this bountiful harvest.
Soon after, a man, who turned out to be an officer in mufti, had his vast car filled with gas (petrol) and then threw us the keys and said, “Drive me to X a couple of hundred miles north”, and then went to sleep on the back seat. So we did as he had asked.
From Denver, the mile-high city, we changed direction toward our airfield, travelling fast over enormous plains for the production of wheat and corn to Kansas City, and then south to our airfield at Miami, Oklahoma.
We had travelled 2,425 miles in 8 days and spend 21 dollars.
What we had seen were fascinating landscapes and a mid-west of America-stamped townships, one like another.
As for the people, all were friendly, most interested in us and why we were in the USA, and nearly all quite oblivious and disinterested in the turmoils beyond their own district and country, being interested only in parochial affairs.
Cities have been transformed since 1944 from those with small-time skyscapers being replaced by enourmous ones. But I imagine that townships and the local affairs in America’s mid-west remain much the same.
