hitchhikers

Last Monday (May 14, 2007), traveling to the Canandaigua YMCA, I passed a rather disgruntled-looking hitchhiker on 5&20 just went of Canandaigua.
She was seated atop her crumbling suitcase, and sullenly extended her thumb as I passed.
I used to hitchhike quite a bit, although I haven’t done so in years. In fact, I haven’t picked up hitchhikers in years.
It became too dangerous, and I wasn’t carrying a loaded 44-magnum in my lap.
In fact, I don’t carry a gun in my car, and don’t even own a gun.
Most hitchhiking I did was at Houghton, which is somewhat an aberration, since those that picked you up often knew you.
Even though I had The Beast, I’d hitch to the supermarket in Fillmore, the next town north.
And in November of 1963 (or 1964), my friend (and Houghton classmate) Charlie Gardiner and I decided to hitchhike all the way from Houghton to Boston — actually Harvard, where a past friend and 1963 Houghton-graduate, Charlie Green, was matriculated in Harvard Divinity School.
By now Gardiner may have forgotten about it, but not me. It was one of those incredible events you remember all your life.
Step One was getting to the New York State Thruway; probably a couple of hitches.
On the Thruway we hitched a ride with some salesman in a Volkswagen Beetle. It was clear across the state.
Charlie drove part way; he claimed familiarity with Beetles.
Finally we got left off, probably when the guy turned south at Albany toward New York City; and we continued east into Massachusetts.
I remember standing next to some lonely rural tollbooth at midnight, freezing and stomping about in a light dusting of snow.
Finally we were picked up by some guy in a new full-size Chevy with a 283 four-speed. He was headed to Westover Air-Force Base, maybe two stops east.
I remember bemoaning it wasn’t a 409, but what it was, of course, was warmth.
More rides took us all the way to Harvard, where we found Charlie Green’s apartment and knocked on his door at 3 a.m.
Groggy Charlie, despite being totally zonked, was thrilled to see us.
We yammered until 5 p.m. the next day, finally sacking out on the floor.
For the next day or two we traveled all over the Boston area in Green’s humble ‘54 Bel Air; including some funky second-floor restaurant that served family-style, the House of the Seven Gables, and some downtown key-shop that surreptitiously cut us keys for the Houghton barn.
We even attended the urban church in Lynn where Green was student-pastor. He tried to shepherd a youth-group of obvious malcontents. It was a joke! They were bored silly.
Finally, after a couple days, Gardiner and I were standing at a Mass-pike interchange in nearby Cambridge to begin our return to Houghton.
It may have only been one ride; all the way to Rochester — except that going to Rochester was roundabout.
I also recall a Toronado, which doesn’t make sense, since the first Toros were 1966.
Whatever; we rode all the way into Rochester, and from there began hitching south.
Back then the main road into Rochester was West Henrietta Road, U.S. Route 15 — I-390 hadn’t been built yet.
Route 15 was also Mt. Hope Ave., and one hitch took us from out of Rochester to West Henrietta Road.
There we walked up the long hill that comes down into the area, but is deceptive, since it also comes back down the other side.
We were picked up by a rather plain fat-girl in a black 1949 Chevrolet four-door fastback.
It was raining, and I think she may have carried us all the way back to Houghton.

“5&20” is the main east-west road through our area; State Route 5 and U.S. Route 20 combined on a single road.

“Houghton College” is the college I graduated from in 1966.

“The Beast” is my first car, a rather rudimentary, but very fast, 1958 Triumph fish-mouth TR3.

“283” is Chevrolet’s revolutionary Small-Block, introduced in the 1955 model-year. “409” was a hotrodded version of Chevrolet’s 348 cubic-inch truck-motor; introduced in the 1961 model-year. 283 and 409 are the cubic-inch displacements. (The 348 was introduced in 1958 — totally unrelated to the Small-Block.)

RE: “Keys for the Houghton barn......” Houghton College had an old barn off-campus where they stored everything. Charlie (and/or I) had been given keys to the barn to use it to build a class-float inside. We had keys cut so we could access the barn on-the-sly.