Last Seen Hitchhiking

Начало книги

Laws prohibiting hitchhiking usually go roaring through, with a minimum of nays. Every member of every state legislature owns his own automobile; it is one of the unwritten conditions of being elected to office. Knowing how unlikely it is that he will ever find himself standing at the edge of a highway ramp with his thumb up, he has no hesitation in legislating against the practice.

But these are curious laws. Who is being protected, hitchhiker or motorist? No doubt the motorist, but no one has compelled him to pick up the hitchhiker, just as no one has compelled the hitchhiker to hitch. In every big city there is more crime on some streets than on others, but it is not illegal to walk those streets. To some authorities, anti-hitchhiking and anti-vagrancy statutes are closely related — attempts by settled communities to keep out itinerant strangers with no means of support. But there seems to be more to it than that. Hitchhikers, of course, would be silly to carry much money, but often they are students with access to money, not bums or tramps or drifters, who, if stranded, may do mischief or become charges on the public treasury. And yet the state troopers are as harsh with students hitching home from an expensive college as they are with truly penniless outsiders. It is not that hitchhikers are against automobiles; they travel in automobiles. But they are against the ownership of automobiles — the insurance, the 18-percent loans, the worries, the repairs, the status competition, the tensions of driving in expressway traffic, the parking problems. And this goes to the bone. State troopers, whose days are spent moving up and down the highway, are believers. They never would have taken up this line of work if they hadn’t loved cars. Cars are their specialty.

Читать дальше →