The fine art of bumming a free ride

Illustration by Nicolene Louw

As the world has become faster and scarier, hitch-hiking has become unfashionable. But there’s a freedom in a raised thumb that you just can’t match.

As I drove past a hitch-hiker on the N1 near Worcester recently, I tried to remember when last I’d stopped to give an itinerant stranger a lift. It had been a while. And then I wondered why I hadn’t picked up this person now disappearing into the distance behind me.

I used to hitch-hike… a lot. It was an uncle who first taught me how. This uncle taught me many things, like how to hold a cigarette properly and how to pick up girls in bars. The fact that I was only 16 didn’t bother him in the least. My roguish uncle and I would hitch-h ike from Wellington to Katryntjiesdrift â€" a spot on the Berg River â€" for no reason other than a quick swim. We would hitchhike to Malmesbury for a Coke and be back again for lunch before my mom even realised I’d gone.

I never could get the hang of cigarettes and even less so of women, but oh how I took to hitch-hiking. It was as if I’d been born to do it.

The trick is to project a casual, confident attitude from 500 metres away, which says, “Don’t worry, he’s hitch-hiked before and it went well for everyone”. Success depends mostly on appearing harmless but not pathetic; wearing an eager expression without looking like a crazy person. Most of all, a hitch-hiker should look interesting. A colourful backpack or a random object like a pair of scuba fins in one hand will help in this regard. An axe or a machete, less so.

Once I’d shared my newfound skills with my friends, we hitch-hiked to Hangklip to snorkel, we hitch-hiked to the city to buy music (the latest Depeche Mode!) and we hitch-hiked to Paarl to watch Indiana Jones at the Protea Theatre. We even hitchhiked just to see who had the best technique or in search of the elusive Holy Grail: A lift in a supercar! My dream car was always a Porsche, but I never lucked out.

But I would also hitch-hike solo. With practise came an ability to sense which cars were okay to get into. When that inner voice expressed concern at an approaching car, I would lower my hand and look away disinterestedly.

Being in a stranger’s car was always fascinating. Occasionally the stench of an overflowing ashtray and spilled alcohol would be sickening. At times I’d get picked up by a pleasant family â€" their teenage daughter and I stealing sidelong glances at each other. More often than not it was a farmer and his dog on their way back from a market, and I’d be in the back of the pickup wedged between crates of wilted produce that hadn’t been sold.
At age 17 I discovered Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a 1976 novel written by American author Tom Robbins. It was a tough read for a schoolboy, but the enormously large thumbs of the novel’s protagonist â€" called Sissy Hankshaw â€" hooked me. Her mutated digits were the size of bananas and compelled motorists to pull over whenever she extended them. All these travels turned the once-shy Sissy into a strong, confident woman. I liked that. This book was part of the reason I begged my parents to let me visit America…

I was 19 when my wish came true. My worried mother insisted that I travel with a family friend. We took the Greyhound bus from New York to Los Angeles and once we arrived there I decided that this wasn’t how I wanted to experience America. So we parted ways.

I hitch-hiked up to San Francisco, down to Arizona, up to Wyoming and back down to Texas. I drifted across the USA for several months, performing odd jobs in between hitching to sustain m yself.

The countless cars and pickups in which I travelled were usually driven by friendly, down-to-earth folk. I became part of the hitch-hiking community and learned some amazing trivia from my occasional travel companions. For example, in Cuba it’s mandatory for government vehicles to pick up hitch-hikers; in Nepal it’s considered bad karma not to pick up a hitch-hiker; the Netherlands and Israel have designated hitch-hiker pick-up zones to help travellers get lifts; and the thumbs-up gesture isn’t universal.

Hitch-hiking doesn’t always go well. I was given a thrashing outside Chicago by some thugs. Shortly thereafter in Indiana, I was stuck in one spot for 25 hours and had to sleep under a bridge. I put my misfortune down to bad posture and the bleak expression on my face. After I pulled myself together, things got better.

A few years later I backpacked through Europe, where hitch-hiking was even easier than in the States, especially in t he rural areas. My favourite lift was when I got picked up by a Belgian couple in a big camper van. They allowed me the run of the living space while they stayed in the cab. We drove around the Scottish Highlands for the entire day, through purple fields of heather and the emerald valleys of Glencoe, until they dropped me off on the shores of Loch Lomond.

So why hadn’t I given that stranger next to the N1 a lift? That inner voice of mine didn’t like the hitcher’s insolent posture. He slouched and almost seemed irritated by the cars that didn’t slow down. Call it hitch-hiker’s pride, but I just couldn’t bring myself to offer a lift to someone who didn’t respect the fine art of bumming a free ride.