Have You Ever Picked Up a Hitchhiker?

LonghornCatholic

LonghornCatholic

Deo Gratias
Or have you yourself ever hitchhiked?

I've never hitched it but for some reason I would like to give one a lift someday.
I think it would be cool and interesting to get their story, right before they slash my throat.

But seriously, I've always wanted to help out a hitchhiker but it seems every time I run across one,
I'm with my wife, kids, or on company business. I wouldn't ever take a chance with family passengers.

I'm interested to hear if anyone on here has any cool hitchhiker stories to share.
I'm not talking about picking some one up from the Piggly Wiggly and dropping them off at a bar.
 
No. I was sympathetic of them but felt it was just too dangerous.
 
I have hitchhiked a couple of times from Santa Fe to LA to visit my grandmother when my dad would travel to Europe on business. I would have gotten bored in school so up and left. Never had any problems. I may have just been lucky.

I have picked up a couple but never when alone or traveling with a female. I was with some Army buddies and the persons would have been flat out stupid to try anything.

I too feel sorry for 'em sometimes but it's not worth the risk. It just takes once for things to go wrong and who knows what happens to you. I also feel if you had good luck once you'd keep doing it, upping the odds away from your favor.
 
I hitched a number of times in my teenage years without incident. I also used to pick them up fairly often, but soured on it after a couple of incidents. I gave a lift to a guy in New Mexico, a harmless hippie type, who had BO that would set off a smoke alarm. He was in the car for about an hour, but his aroma stayed the whole day. Some years later, I saw a hitcher in Tennessee, whom I passed up because my car was jammed full of stuff, including a stack of records on the front seat. Yes, I'm old. After passing him, I watched him in the mirror and saw him throw a violent fit by the roadside as a reaction to my failure to stop. He slammed his knapsack onto the ground, kicked it around, threw punches into the air and made me feel that I had made the right decision.
 
I picked up a hitchhiker just south of Belton once when it just started to rain hard. The guy at first looked pretty normal. Then he got in the car and was scruffier than I expected and smelled terrible. The conversation was interesting for a while until for some reason we started talking about girlfriends. Oh man what a mistake. He became agitated, started ranting about what he'd do to the "*******." He pulled out a switchblade and started swinging it around (not threatening me -- but he was swinging a knife in the passenger seat. ) I tried to talk soothingnly and turn the conversation to another topic, even while taking notice that I had on a seatbelt and he didn't. I was trying to guess the speed at which he'd certainly be badly injured crashing into a bridge abutment or culvert, but I'd be OK. Fortunately it didn't come to that. I let him off in Austin, stopped and bought a can of Lysol and sprayed where he had sat and called the Austin Police to tell them I met a guy who may be dangerous to women. With no incident to tie it to, they weren't much interested.

Since then, I think the only hitchhiker I've picked up was a professional-looking woman whe had car trouble in downtown Austin. Turned out she was a lawyer-lobbyist.
 
Hitched in Europe a lot. Farthest I went was from Wurzburg Germany to Yugoslavia (at the time Yugoslavia) to a resort town on the coast. Me and my army buddies would have hitchhiking races and who got there first would get his beer paid for.
 
I hitch hiked a few times between Dallas and Austin in the 70's when I didn't have a car and I gave some lifts to folks after I got one. It was much more common in those days I think.

All trips were uneventful even though once some house painters who picked me up were very drunk. I picked up prostitutes twice without realizing it. On both occasions, when we realized we had made a mistake they each asked to get out so they could get another ride. I picked up a recently discharged soldier once who told me that when he got back home from Germany he had given his wife the clap. He said "She couldn't take a joke so I divorced her @$$."
 
I used to pick up hitchers in Austin all the time during the era of peace and love and never had anything but good experiences, some of them psychedelic. I don't do it anymore..

I was commuting to UT in the 70s from San Antonio and saw an attractive woman, dressed to the max, hitching between New Braunfels and San Marcos. I changed lanes to give her a ride, but an old pickup stopped first. A man got out of the truck to let her in. There were already three men in the only seat in that pickup and she got in between two of them, making 4 adults on one seat. The men were scruffy looking, construction types. I remember thinking, "I'll bet she gets robbed or raped or murdered or all three". I went on by and shortly there after that truck passed me. Later I saw them again, letting her off at the IRS building outside of Austin, none the worse for wear.
 
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