I did a lot of hitchhiking in my youth. If you recall, hitchhikers were a fairly common sight back in the ’60s and ’70s. I had a real desire to see the country up close. I also was hungry to learn about life, and hitchhiking was a crash course on that subject.
There were so many rides from so many kind strangers. If I learned nothing else from that experience, it was the rule of “pay it forward,” which I figure is a close cousin to “The Golden Rule.”
One of the most memorable rides came on a 1972 trip from California to New York. I was headed home for Thanksgiving. I made a bet with myself that I could thumb my way cross country in under 72 hours. Crazy or what? If I pulled it off, I was expecting a full-page spread in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”
I was doing great, until I got stuck outside of Reno, Nevada, for about three hours in the middle of the night. I figured the bet was lost.
But then, around 2 a.m., a car stopped to pick me up. It was a serviceman on leave for five days. He was headed home to Kansas to propose to his girlfriend. Needless to say, he was in a hurry. My stock suddenly rose.
We took turns at the wheel, as we booked it straight through the desert, the Rockies and the Great Plains. It was nothing but pit stops and coffee refills.
Long story short? Thirty hours later, I was dropped off in Lawrence, Kansas. I actually made it home in just under 71 hours. As I reflect back, now, it was the coolest Thanksgivings ever — except for one.
In the mid-80s, I was living in Portland. My girlfriend and I were preparing a quiet Thanksgiving dinner just for us. As soon as the bird was in the oven, we made a quick trip to the convenience store to pick up some food items.
On the way to the store, we saw a young man with a duffle bag. He was hitchhiking right in the middle of town — something I’d never seen before in Portland. I instinctively picked him up, having no idea where he was going or coming from.
Turns out, he was headed home to Lewiston. He hitchhiked the last few days from Alabama, where he was just kicking around, doing odd jobs.
He had a falling out with his father a few years earlier, and they were now estranged. His sister called him recently to tell him their father had taken ill. It was serious. That was the reason this young man was coming home. To mend fences.
Instead of dropping him off at the Interstate 295 onramp, we decided to drive him all the way to his front door in Lewiston.
When we finally dropped him off, he didn’t need to say the words, “thank you.” There are times when words aren’t necessary. The grateful expression on his face was all the thanks we needed. It’s a smile I’ll never forget.
He invited us into his home, but we declined. After all, we had our own bird in the oven. And we prayed we didn’t set the apartment on fire while doing a good deed.
After dropping him off, I should have pulled away immediately. But I couldn’t help myself. I tarried for a moment to watch this young man’s mother greet him at the door. Yup, it was a Hallmark moment, alright.
So, if you see someone in need of a ride this Thanksgiving, think about stopping. That wayfaring stranger might not the boogy man, after all. Like so many of us, he might just be trying to get home and offering up a golden opportunity to pay it forward.
Happy Thanksgiving to one and all — even the least among us.
Eddie Adelman is a writer who lives in Belfast.