CHAPTER FOUR
WAWA
One of the occupational hazards of thumbing is arriving at your last drop off, and there are a few hitchhikers already ahead of you. This is what I found in Wawa. There were two or three other groups ahead of me. You kind of want to keep your distance to give them room, not crowd them. I asked, “How long you been here?” “Two days”, they grunted.
My heart fell. The two guys were a bit older and kind of rough looking. I was a little bit afraid that they would harass me or tell me to move on, so I just kept walking down the road to keep my distance. Finally a pick-up truck came along and picked up those two. I watched them pile into the back. I saw them squinting at me as they pulled away. I felt relieved that they were gone. It was getting late and I hadn’t moved in about 8 hours. So I kept talking to myself about patience and what it means.
I don’t think I was born with a lot of patience but I was allowing myself the need to exercise it. I believed that there was something spiritual about having to wait for your reward. The reward might be a ride further up the road, or just someone taking one good look at you, a thin scrawny kid, and offering you an apple that tasted delicious. I wasn’t eating much and the less I ate, the tighter and smaller my stomach got.
It was late afternoon when I saw this pale robin’s egg blue Plymouth approaching at a moderate pace. It was a Plymouth Valiant, a car I knew well. The guy pulled up and he looked really friendly as he talked to me through the open window. He also had a dog with him that seemed happy to see me. I was overjoyed when he said, “hop in!”
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Non-FictionA memoir, Hitchhiking In America Trilogy is about a Canadian Huckleberry Finn, a green farm boy who goes on an acid laced Homeric journey of discovery. The journey takes him to the mountain people of Montana, the streets of America, and transvesti...
