I Hitchhiked In The 60s And 70s & Never Thought Twice About It — Now I Watch Parents Track Their Kids’ Phones In Real Time
Brester Irina | Shutterstock It was the 70s. We girls, my cousin and I, sat at the end of a long dock on the river near her house. King County, Washington State. We saw a white van stop on the road near us.
“That’s the Green River Killer,” she said. She wasn’t kidding. She thought it was. We sat in the sun, our hair blowing in the breeze. My heart pounded. She said to stay there. Don’t run. Don’t leave her alone. He wouldn’t do anything to two girls, just one.
The white van sat, idling. Was he watching us? As soon as the van slowly pulled away, we ran back home, screaming and laughing. We were young girls listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival songs like “Sweet Hitchhiker.”
I hitchhiked in the 60s and 70s and never thought twice about it.
Dmitry Shulga / Unsplash
In the ’70s, we hitchhiked, girls and boys alike. My brother hitched all the way to Southern California to hang out with an older female cousin for a few weeks. That was 1978. He came back with stories of getting laid by a thirty-year-old woman who picked him up. An innocent eighteen-year-old man with light blue eyes, it was fun for him.
He showed off a fat red Swiss Army knife, purchased by a woman in a convertible who picked him up. He had new jeans and a jacket lined with wool.
Hitchhiking wasn’t as fun for my sister. When she got stuck in Portland, she hitched a ride to get to our family farm in Canby. Just five miles from home, the older guy who picked her up turned off on a road leading down to the Willamette River, on winding 99E.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Finding us a place to be alone,” he said.
It was then she noticed her door didn’t have a door handle. When he rolled to a stop and turned to her, she jumped into the backseat and got out of the car, running up a steep incline to escape. The guy learned that she was extremely athletic. He was a bulkier, older guy, and would not have been able to chase her down.
I grew up hearing various warnings from my parents, but hitchhiking wasn't a huge deal.
- Don’t accept candy from strangers
- Don’t swim alone
- Don’t help someone if they’re pulled over. Call for help at a payphone and send someone back to help them.
I rarely rode motorcycles — death rockets, according to Dad. But hitchhiking? There was kind of an appeal to that. I didn’t do it much. Once, my car broke down. I was on my way home from my bank job. I trudged along Highway 205 between the interstate and Oregon City, my car pulled to the side.
I was wearing heels and a maroon-colored dress. In my early twenties, I was fairly slight at the time. My nylons were shredding inside my high heels, and my feet were killing me.
Big trucks drove by, making the ground shake. The breeze stirred up garbage on the ground. A dead deer lay to the side, crows pecking at it. I kept walking. Straight ahead, one foot in front of the other, hey.
I refused to hitchhike, knowing it was dangerous. I took off my shoes and walked in my nylon stockings. A car pulled over. It was a man and a woman, in their thirties.
“How about a ride?” he asked. Sure, I said. It looked like his wife was there too, so no harm could come of it. The wife glared at her husband. She was furious that he stopped and picked me up.
“Don’t think I don’t know about the others,” she said. What the hell? What others? Was this some weirdo who raped and murdered girls? I sat in the back seat, feeling sick. I asked him to pull over the car as we got into West Linn, and I got out and went to the police station. I called a friend to pick me up.
“I’m a good judge of character,” I told people. I loved to boast about my ability to judge a person’s likelihood of causing me harm. This didn’t always work well for me.
“You’re going to get assaulted. Do not hitchhike. It’s dangerous,” Mom said. My parents gave the same advice I heard from Grandma, who lived down the road.
She had different methods for making sure I knew monsters existed. She left magazines around with horrendous stories of assailants and murderers. I read everything. Well done, Grandma.
Sadly, most young people only learn through experience.
MART PRODUCTION / Pexels
With young girls hitchhiking, a bad experience is sometimes the last experience.
In 1972 and 1973, the Santa Rosa Hitchhiking murders occurred in California. Several young teenage girls were abducted. The girls were found hog-tied and battered, and often missing one earring. Apparently, the abductor took souvenirs. A gold hoop. An earring in the shape of a bird. A necklace with a delicate cross.
They would be down an embankment or in a creek bed. Parents identified items. In the early ’70s, when Creedence Clearwater Revival released Sweet Hitchhiker,” it was so romantic and cool to think about someone falling in love with a girl on the side of the road.
By the mid to late ’70s, we’d heard too much about girls raped and murdered — no more hitchhiking for this girl. An excerpt of lyrics from the song, Sweet Hitchhiker:
Was ridin’ along side the highway
Rollin’ up the countryside
Thinkin’ I’m the devil’s heatwave
What you burn in your crazy mind?
Saw a slight distraction
Standin’ by the road
She was smilin’ there, yellow in her hair
Do you wanna, I was thinkin’, would you care?
Sweet hitch-a-hiker
We could make music at the Greasy King
Sweet hitch-a-hiker
Won’t you ride on my fast machine?
Debra Groves Harman is a memoirist who lives in rural Oregon. She’s an online publisher with five magazines and finds time to write creative nonfiction when she can
