Roadside Americans

On June 24th, 1962, a clean-cut young man named Don Maddux stepped to the edge of the highway in his hometown of Lancaster, Ohio.

With a dark leather suitcase at his feet, he took a deep breath and stuck out his thumb in search of a lift westward.

A recent college graduate, Maddux wanted to explore the fabled landscapes of the western United States before starting a new job in Washington D.C. Lean on funds and desirous of adventure, Maddux aimed to hitchhike all the way to

California and eventually visit the World’s Fair in Seattle.

The rest of his journey would be more spontaneous, guided by his own curiosity and the willingness of passing motorists to give him a lift. Although he frequently hitched rides as a university student, this was going to be his most ambitious journey to date.

Maddux’s summer getaway did not disappoint.

Reminiscing to a local reporter upon his return, he spoke of a series of rides across the desert in the Southwest via Route 66 as well as a week spent with a family from New Jersey who welcomed him into their tour of the California coast.

Maddux also had fond memories of bussing tables at a Lake

Tahoe resort for two weeks. In addition to earning some cash for his journey, he got to sneak glimpses of famous celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin while taking in the majestic scenery. By August 26th when he returned home,

Maddux calculated that he had traveled 17,000 miles via 212 rides, visited 24 states, and only spent 81 dollars. Reflecting on the journey and the hospitality so many people showed to a traveling stranger, Maddux noted, “It is truly hard to believe how friendly the American people really are.”

While perhaps surprising to our contemporary eyes,

Maddux’s experience was not all that unique. Indeed, many young people in the sixties and seventies regarded the spring and summer months as the “hitchhiking season.”

Throughout the year hitchhiking was local in nature, but as school terms ended many baby boomers in search of thrifty transit took to the road with visions of distant cities and stunning natural vistas fueling their imaginations. Still, hitchhiking was not always motivated by adventure. During the golden age of hitchhiking between the late 1920s and the mid-1970s, generations of Americans thumbed rides for a variety of reasons, each informed by the historical climate of the time—whether it be the Great Depression, World

War II, or the advent of the hippie counterculture in the late 1960s. Yet, by the 1980s Americans had largely moved on— associating the practice with excessive risk and danger. As a result, hitchhiking fell to the margins of acceptable behavior where it remains today. But for a time, roadside Americans were a quintessential part of the cultural picture of the

United States.

I Need a Lift

Thumbing rides first gained traction in the United States in the mid-1920s amid a booming economy and a period of expanding car ownership. Critics in the media typically framed the practice as a hobby of young elites taking off on frivolous adventures. The story of a Swissn exchange student named Max Houseman speaks to this dynamic. In May of 1929, Houseman was finishing up his spring semester at St. John’s University and itching to leave Annapolis for a cross-country adventure to California’s golden shores. Considering the 70-dollar bus fare would overwhelm his 100-dollar budget, hitchhiking was the obvious choice. Yet, as the practice was “unknown in the Old Country,” Houseman had to seek the counsel of another student in his dormitory. The young man explained to Houseman that, above all, it was critical to “look as collegiate as possible.” Knickers and a university sweater appealed to the most common individuals willing to offer lifts—bored traveling salesmen looking for an entertaining distraction. After all, automobiles lacked the robust entertainment options we enjoy today.

Together, they outlined a path from the East Coast to St. Louis—the historic “Gateway to the West” for generations of overland travelers. Once there, Houseman would have to make a choice—take the northern route to California through Colorado and Utah or follow what the pair referred to as the “Santa Fe Trail,” commissioned as Route 66 by the U.S. government just three years earlier. Houseman opted to take the northern route, hoping to avoid crossing a vast stretch of desert in the summer heat. Yet, as often happened with something as unpredictable as hitchhiking, six days later he found himself in St. Louis stepping into a car heading all the way to Los Angeles via Route 66. Despite the change in plans, Houseman was elated with this development as it cut his arrival to California from roughly two more weeks of traveling to just five or six days.

Although, by the 1950s, Route 66 came to be known for its colorful roadside attractions, in 1929 the path from Albuquerque to Los Angeles lacked many of the creature comforts it would boast in later decades. Vast stretches of the road were not even paved. Understandably, Houseman’s host expected him to pull his weight. At the time, proper thumbing etiquette often meant taking turns driving, but in this instance, Houseman was also expected to help with roadside maintenance. He ended up changing two blown tires over the course of the five-day trip navigating rockfilled, dirt roads. During one such pit stop he passed out on account of the scorching 120-degree heat. As Houseman could attest, hitchhiking was not always glamorous. Either way, it got him to California with a few stories and some cash still in his pocket.

Although Houseman and other young people in the roaring twenties saw hitchhiking as a ticket to thrifty adventure, the Great Depression and World War II transformed perceptions of thumbing rides—along with nearly everything else in American life. Reeling from economic uncertainty and wartime rationing, many Americans began to associate hitchhiking with utter necessity.

A Bad Idea?

Today, the idea of soliciting rides from a stranger may trigger anxiety about personal safety. During the Depression, however, those on the road were often more concerned with finding a job, a hot meal, and a dry place to sleep. Familiar with the unemployment crisis, many motorists were sympathetic to their plight. Sadly, this benefit of the doubt and generosity of spirit was rarely ever granted across racial lines to people of color, for whom hitchhiking was often prohibitively dangerous.

Even so, a 1938 poll by the Institute of Public Opinion found that 43 percent of Americans approved of hitchhiking. Despite crime blotters from the period highlighting roadside muggings and murders, Americans generally looked past this periodic violence in ways that later, more affluent, and risk-averse generations would not.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration made a point to defend the character of those on the road, framing transient individuals and families as hard-working, industrious “pioneers” seeking out opportunity. A young Ronald Reagan was one such individual. Upon graduating from Eureka College in 1932, he hitchhiked throughout the Midwest in search of a radio broadcasting position before eventually landing a job in Des Moines, Iowa. Women also took to the road. Although reports varied, a conservative government estimate from the time suggested that upwards of 250,000 women between the ages of twelve and eighty-six were considered transient during the mid-1930s.

Perceptions of hitchhiking from the Depression years evolved as World War II began. Perhaps most impactful, the U.S. government began dramatically rationing gasoline and tire usage, limiting all Americans (excepting those with a special status) to 240 miles of driving per month. The government also instituted a national 35 miles-per-hour speed limit, deemed “victory speed.” Impatient drivers likely discussed this seemingly glacial pace in less triumphant terms. On top of these limitations, the military—facing a serious vehicle shortage—also repurposed school and city buses in some locales. Taken together, these actions dramatically altered the nation’s transit options, leading many to look at carpooling and hitchhiking in new ways.

Even former critics of the practice softened their stance, especially for service members in uniform. Moved by a sense of patriotic volunteerism, many Americans went out of their way to offer soldiers in uniform a lift. In one instance, a soldier leaving his South Carolina base made it home to California so quickly that he arrived before the letter alerting his parents of his imminent arrival. Civilians frequently hitched rides as well. Mindful of the war effort, the New York Times etiquette columnist Emily Post gave women she deemed “Defense Debutantes” the go ahead to hitch to their jobs in munitions factories and other positions in the war industry. Everyone made sacrifices. Lacking a team bus, a high school football team in Paris, Texas, made the best of the situation by hitchhiking to their away games. Likewise, roughly onethousand Texas A&M football fans hitched 500 miles to Baton Rouge to see their team ultimately lose to Louisiana State in the 1942 season opener.

Following the war, young baby boomers growing up in the comfortable environs of suburban America began to characterize thumbing in new ways. Hitchhiking became a rite of passage for youths like Don Maddux who felt hemmed in by the predictability of their normal routine. Soliciting rides from strangers over the course of an extended journey offered these relatively sheltered youths an unfiltered dose of the human condition. Writing about this brand of “sport hitchhiking” in a feature story for Sports Illustrated in 1964, Janet Graham observed “It is true that hitchhiking…can be mildly dangerous,” but she reasoned, “that’s one of the attractions in this overcushioned age.”

With nothing but a few essentials tucked into a backpack, young people roamed the country sleeping under the stars and chatting with farmers, businessmen, college students, and any number of personalities as they roared down the highway. In 1951, a fourteen-year-old Merle Haggard and his pal Bob Teague hitchhiked from Bakersfield, California, to Central Texas in search of their musical hero Lefty Frizzell. Ten years later, a young Bob Dylan hitched from his hometown in Minnesota to New York City to pursue a career in music. Reflecting on the decision years later, he explained, “I suppose what I was looking for was what I read about in On the Road.” In each case, these young people had ambitious plans. Due to financial restraints and a romanticized notion of the road, they turned to hitchhiking to reach their goals. In other words, the reward outweighed the risks. Despite this youthful enthusiasm, the national media and law enforcement agencies began to see ride solicitation in an increasingly negative light. Reports of robberies, kidnapping, and serial killers targeting hitchhikers inspired a push among critics, including FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, to ban thumbing in the name of the public good. Many older Americans were nostalgic about their own hitchhiking experiences, but felt it was time to move on. Comparing the practice to “the open cracker-barrel, the common drinking cup and the typhoid saturated swimmin’ hole,” one journalist suggested that these “pleasant aspects of a by-gone day” ultimately had to be “abandoned in the interest of public safety.” Other critics

were more direct, with one penning a book titled, Hitchhiking: The Road to Rape and Murder.

And Still, I Need a Lift

Even with this negative attention, thumbing was more popular than ever in the early 1970s. With its promise of free, untethered, and spontaneous mobility—hitchhiking became a key aspect of the era’s countercultural movement. As the hippie aesthetic of flamboyant clothing, casual drug use, and communal living entered the mainstream, hitchhiking also gained popularity and became a hip way to get around for a generation coming of age in the 1970s. Notably, this wanderlust was not confined to the United States. Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple, for example, dropped out of Reed College and embarked on a hitchhiking journey through India and Tibet in search of expanded consciousness and a more meaningful life. Beyond the counterculture’s appeal, the women’s liberation movement also inspired a growing number of women to hitchhike. As a 1973 University of Wisconsin sociological study concluded, “younger ‘liberated’ co-eds see themselves as having the same prerogatives as men, i.e., the right to take a walk at night, to thumb a ride, and have freedom of access and movement at any time and in any place.” Gas shortages and a budding environmental movement also fueled the practice’s mainstream appeal. Notably, this hitchhiking renaissance inspired several guidebooks as well as popular songs, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival’s hit “Sweet Hitchhiker.”

Yet, the very things that made hitchhiking exciting to young people—its unstructured and unpredictable flourishes—clashed with the broader trend toward safer and more regimented behavior in the post-war United States. Inspired by a worldview that revered social cooperation and trust, many youths in the 1970s ignored the negative characterizations of hitchhiking from law enforcement agencies and the media. For them, hitchhiking (or offering a lift) was a political statement, a vote in favor of the essential goodness of others in the face of cynical arguments that claimed otherwise. Things began to change by the late seventies, however, with the rise of a new youth culture centered on ostentatious wealth and a celebration of capitalist individualism. As Risky Business replaced Easy Rider, fewer young people romanticized the practice. Years of anti-hitchhiking messaging also began to take root in the minds of this next generation—further marginalizing the practice. Observing this trend in 1988, a California Highway Patrolman recalled, “Up until 1974 and 1975, you would see

Bakersfield, California, April 1940. Photograph by Rondal Partridge. hitchhikers at the ‘on’ and ‘off’ ramps, but in my five years on the force, I’ve seen a marked decrease.” Across the country, a New York State Police officer agreed, “Absolutely there’s been a decline. There aren’t nearly as many hitchhikers out there today as there were ten years ago.” By the 1980s, the vast majority of those still hitchhiking were doing so because they had to. As drifters and itinerant laborers replaced fresh-faced students on the road, fewer and fewer Americans were willing to offer lifts. Although some felt a pang of guilt and thought about stopping, most decided that it was not worth the risk. Aware of this, one middle-aged man stranded outside of Barstow, California, in 1981 bitterly observed, “They know you’re desperate. They know you’re hungry,” and he astutely remarked, “They’re afraid of that.” With nearly six decades in the rearview mirror, it is worth wondering what a young Don Maddux would do today. The yearning for adventure and worldly experience would likely still be there, but most twenty somethings planning a trip these days are content to save up for gas money or an airline ticket. Maddux would still get away, but it would no doubt be a different trip. All things considered, he’d probably spend a lot more money, miss out on meeting some interesting people, and see less of the country. He’d be safer, but I bet he’d have fewer stories to share with folks back home in Lancaster.