Hitchhiking
Title
Hitchhiking
Creator
Jacob Schlitt
Description
"I abhor waste. I am troubled by a society that is driven by built-in obsolescence."
Date
2006
Format
application/pdf
Type
text
Language
en
Coverage
1946/1952
Identifier
Hitchhiking
Text
Hitchhiking
I abhor waste. I am troubled by a society that is driven by built-in obsolescence. I keep trying to figure out how we can get those who have too much to share with those who don’t have enough. I hate seeing food thrown out. We all remember our parents telling us to finish our meal because there were children starving in some strange part of the world. My wife saw through that one—there was no way leftover peas could feed a starving Armenian. I knew the deeper meaning—don't throw away food when a child is going hungry. And, oh yes. I am cheap.
So what has this got to do with hitchhiking? Hitchhiking is the most economical way to travel, bringing together a driver in a car, with a hitchhiker looking for a ride. It is a win-win situation, though a bigger win for the hitchhiker. But the driver gets companionship, and the satisfaction of doing a mitzvah.
Hitchhiking was very popular in the '30s, and was featured in the movie "It Happened One Night" starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. It really caught on during World War II when GIs would hitchhike to and from their army bases. Some high school and college kids hitchhiked, and hippies who didn’t have psychedelic-painted buses, hitch-hiked.
From the time I was a kid, I wanted to hitchhike, but it didn’t make sense in the Bronx. I could get to wherever I wanted to go for a nickel by public transportation. Whoever saw anyone hitching on the streets of New York? And besides, my mother wouldn't let me.
I had my first taste of hitchhiking the summer of 1946, when I was a busboy at the Palace Hotel in Parksville, a small hotel in the Catskills. I would take off, usually with a waiter, after dinner on Saturday evening and we would hitch to one of the larger hotels in the area. Guests at the less fancy hotels would head for Grossingers, or the Nevele or the Concord or Brown’s, and it wasn’t too hard to get a lift. The distances were not great between Parksville and Liberty and Livingston Manor—up and down Route 17 in Sullivan County, also called "Solomon County."
That experience whetted my appetite. But I had to wait two years to do some real hitch-hiking. It was August 1948 and I was working that summer at Reich and Schrift, the stationery store where I worked part time while going to CCNY. I also worked with my friends Mel Schulman and Phil Bernstein selling candy at the Lewisohn Stadium concerts. But come the last week in August I planned to take off with another friend, Sol Rauch, and hitch to Toronto and Montreal. I had gotten road maps from my cousin Louis Goldstein who was a member of AAA, and studied the route for weeks. We were going to leave on Sunday, but earlier that week Sol called to tell me that he could not leave then because he had to sign for his "52-20" check. He had just been discharged from the Army and was entitled to receive $20 a week for 52 weeks, if he didn't have a job, and he didn't. He had to sign for the check every Wednesday. After thinking about it, I came up with a revised plan. I would leave on Sunday and go to Toronto by myself. Sol would leave after he signed for his check and head for Montreal. We would meet at the Y in Montreal on Thursday. Whoever got there first would check in and wait in the lobby between 9 and 10 AM, 12 and 1 PM, and 5 and 6 PM. If we didn’t connect, we would do the same thing Friday. We found each other at noon on Thursday. And we did this without cell phones.
I had a great trip through upstate New York, got lots of good rides without having to wait too long on the road, and took in the sights of Albany and Syracuse and Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and was appropriately impressed by my first sight of the Falls. In anticipation of the trip, I had written to my cousins in Toronto, and alerted them when I made it to Niagara Falls. I got a ride from the Falls to Toronto, and found the trolley that took me to my cousin's house. I was greeted as the long lost relative that I was—we had never met, and they hadn't seen my mother in over 20 years. We talked about family, had dinner, I went to bed, and early the next day, I headed for the highway and Montreal. It was a straight shot, over 500 miles, but I did it with just a couple of rides in one day.
Hitchhiking was getting easier for me. Through trial and error, I figured out the best place to stand on the road to get a lift—a straitaway so you can be seen, and near a spot that the driver can pull in to. I didn't hitch at night; I always smiled as I extended my thumb; and I dressed neatly. I certainly did not want to be mistaken for a bum. I carried a paperback book in my knapsack to read while waiting for cars. When someone stopped, I would ask him if he was going wherever I was going, and if he said yes, (and if he looked OK) I would get in. (It took a while for me to learn not to take a ride that was not going where I wanted to go. Serendipity can take you just so far. If you have to back-track, you may have to make up a lot of miles.) After I got in, I would introduce myself, tell him about my trip, and ask him about himself. I met a lot of interesting people. (I am not being sexist referring to the driver as "he." Even when I hitched with my wife, we never got a lift from a woman.)
I had been warned that hitchhiking was "dangerous." My mother had trepidations about my doing this, but I assured her that I would be careful. If anyone looked suspicious, I would not ride with him. More than half the drivers who gave me a ride repeated stories they heard of hitchhikers who robbed the people who gave them lifts, but I looked trustworthy.
Sol and I met at the Montreal YMCA, astounded that our plan really worked, and we set about to see the sights. While we checked out Montreal, Sol regaled me with stories of his adventures in Korea where he had been stationed, and I filled him in on life at CCNY. And after three days of sightseeing, we got back on the road for home. (To confirm some of these facts, I called Sol, and the only thing he remembered was my complaining about his leaving dirty socks around in our room at the Y,)
In December 1951, Sylvia and I married, and we went on our honeymoon to a cabin in Mt. Tremper in the Catskills. To get to our honeymoon cabin, we took the subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and a bus to Mt. Tremper. To get around, which we didn’t do very much, we took a bus, or hitched. One evening, we went out to dinner in Kingston, and decided to hitchhike back. A small sports car stopped for us, and the driver insisted that we squeeze in, Sylvia sitting on my lap. As we were driving, it got very foggy. Our driver's solution was to turn off his lights, which scared the hell out of us. He explained that he is a professional racecar driver, and that you can see better in fog without the glare of lights. Over the years, I have driven in fog, but never had the courage to try it.
A few months later, in the spring of 1952, we began dreaming about traveling across the country. Where some people thought that "travel" meant Europe, we believed we should "See America First." What other country has the variety of sights—mountains, prairies, rivers, parks, large cities, small towns, mines, mills, factories, museums, theatres, concert halls, zoos, and a network of highways and roads to take you there? I was 24, Sylvia was 22. We were newly married, everything was exciting. I was working as a union organizer and going to school full-time to stay out of the Army; Sylvia had graduated the summer before, was working for Jewish Family Service and was furnishing our apartment. And then we got caught up in planning our trip.
We talked with our friends Sidney and Barbara Stern about buying a car, and the four of us driving cross-country. They were all for the idea. But there were a few problems: We didn't have a car and we didn’t drive. So we decided to learn how to drive over the next few months, and buy a car. We took driving lessons, rented cars on which to practice, and then bought a car—a 1948 Ford—from Lou Pastor, Sylvia's sister's husband, who had just become a used car dealer. Mel Schwartz, a friend who had a driver’s license and who knew cars, was helping us. When he saw the car, he said it was a repainted cab. We checked; it was; we returned it, and we realized that it was foolhardy for four inexperienced drivers to undertake such a trip.
"OK" I said. "But what about hitchhiking? We would follow the same route but go as two separate couples and meet up in all the place we were going to visit." The Sterns didn’t think it would work and made other plans. Sylvia and I sat down with maps of the United States and outlined the sights we would see as we hitchhiked across America. I had again turned to my cousin Louis for AAA maps. They were nice enough to route us across the country and provided us with six separate maps: Northeast, Northcentral, Northwest, Southwest, Southcentral and Southeast, and suggested places to see. I then bought an 18" by 24" sketch pad, and our artist friend and calligrapher Connie Wain, filled the pad with the names of the cities and sights we planned to visit.
Sylvia and I arranged with our respective employers to take off the months of July and August. (For both of us, work was slow in the summer and they were delighted not to have to pay us.) We bought two knapsacks at an army surplus store, and figured out what clothes we absolutely needed for a seven week trip. We realized that we should travel light. We called friends and relatives with whom we hoped to stay to let them know our plans. A number of them were my classmates from the ILGWU Training Institute who were now assigned to union locals around the country. By the end of June, we were ready to go, ready to do some big-time hitching.
Bright and early on the first Monday in July, 1952, we took the subway to the stop closest to the Holland Tunnel. We walked to the tunnel entrance, and at a spot where cars could see us and where they could stop, we held up our first sign "PHILADELPHIA" Within 10 or 15 minutes, someone pulled over, we threw our knapsacks in the back seat and got in. We were on our way! However, the driver wasn't going to Philadelphia; he was going to Baltimore. That was OK with us. Baltimore was going to be our next stop.
Fourth—Across the South from Florida to Phoenix 1954
Giving back.
I abhor waste. I am troubled by a society that is driven by built-in obsolescence. I keep trying to figure out how we can get those who have too much to share with those who don’t have enough. I hate seeing food thrown out. We all remember our parents telling us to finish our meal because there were children starving in some strange part of the world. My wife saw through that one—there was no way leftover peas could feed a starving Armenian. I knew the deeper meaning—don't throw away food when a child is going hungry. And, oh yes. I am cheap.
So what has this got to do with hitchhiking? Hitchhiking is the most economical way to travel, bringing together a driver in a car, with a hitchhiker looking for a ride. It is a win-win situation, though a bigger win for the hitchhiker. But the driver gets companionship, and the satisfaction of doing a mitzvah.
Hitchhiking was very popular in the '30s, and was featured in the movie "It Happened One Night" starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. It really caught on during World War II when GIs would hitchhike to and from their army bases. Some high school and college kids hitchhiked, and hippies who didn’t have psychedelic-painted buses, hitch-hiked.
From the time I was a kid, I wanted to hitchhike, but it didn’t make sense in the Bronx. I could get to wherever I wanted to go for a nickel by public transportation. Whoever saw anyone hitching on the streets of New York? And besides, my mother wouldn't let me.
I had my first taste of hitchhiking the summer of 1946, when I was a busboy at the Palace Hotel in Parksville, a small hotel in the Catskills. I would take off, usually with a waiter, after dinner on Saturday evening and we would hitch to one of the larger hotels in the area. Guests at the less fancy hotels would head for Grossingers, or the Nevele or the Concord or Brown’s, and it wasn’t too hard to get a lift. The distances were not great between Parksville and Liberty and Livingston Manor—up and down Route 17 in Sullivan County, also called "Solomon County."
That experience whetted my appetite. But I had to wait two years to do some real hitch-hiking. It was August 1948 and I was working that summer at Reich and Schrift, the stationery store where I worked part time while going to CCNY. I also worked with my friends Mel Schulman and Phil Bernstein selling candy at the Lewisohn Stadium concerts. But come the last week in August I planned to take off with another friend, Sol Rauch, and hitch to Toronto and Montreal. I had gotten road maps from my cousin Louis Goldstein who was a member of AAA, and studied the route for weeks. We were going to leave on Sunday, but earlier that week Sol called to tell me that he could not leave then because he had to sign for his "52-20" check. He had just been discharged from the Army and was entitled to receive $20 a week for 52 weeks, if he didn't have a job, and he didn't. He had to sign for the check every Wednesday. After thinking about it, I came up with a revised plan. I would leave on Sunday and go to Toronto by myself. Sol would leave after he signed for his check and head for Montreal. We would meet at the Y in Montreal on Thursday. Whoever got there first would check in and wait in the lobby between 9 and 10 AM, 12 and 1 PM, and 5 and 6 PM. If we didn’t connect, we would do the same thing Friday. We found each other at noon on Thursday. And we did this without cell phones.
I had a great trip through upstate New York, got lots of good rides without having to wait too long on the road, and took in the sights of Albany and Syracuse and Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and was appropriately impressed by my first sight of the Falls. In anticipation of the trip, I had written to my cousins in Toronto, and alerted them when I made it to Niagara Falls. I got a ride from the Falls to Toronto, and found the trolley that took me to my cousin's house. I was greeted as the long lost relative that I was—we had never met, and they hadn't seen my mother in over 20 years. We talked about family, had dinner, I went to bed, and early the next day, I headed for the highway and Montreal. It was a straight shot, over 500 miles, but I did it with just a couple of rides in one day.
Hitchhiking was getting easier for me. Through trial and error, I figured out the best place to stand on the road to get a lift—a straitaway so you can be seen, and near a spot that the driver can pull in to. I didn't hitch at night; I always smiled as I extended my thumb; and I dressed neatly. I certainly did not want to be mistaken for a bum. I carried a paperback book in my knapsack to read while waiting for cars. When someone stopped, I would ask him if he was going wherever I was going, and if he said yes, (and if he looked OK) I would get in. (It took a while for me to learn not to take a ride that was not going where I wanted to go. Serendipity can take you just so far. If you have to back-track, you may have to make up a lot of miles.) After I got in, I would introduce myself, tell him about my trip, and ask him about himself. I met a lot of interesting people. (I am not being sexist referring to the driver as "he." Even when I hitched with my wife, we never got a lift from a woman.)
I had been warned that hitchhiking was "dangerous." My mother had trepidations about my doing this, but I assured her that I would be careful. If anyone looked suspicious, I would not ride with him. More than half the drivers who gave me a ride repeated stories they heard of hitchhikers who robbed the people who gave them lifts, but I looked trustworthy.
Sol and I met at the Montreal YMCA, astounded that our plan really worked, and we set about to see the sights. While we checked out Montreal, Sol regaled me with stories of his adventures in Korea where he had been stationed, and I filled him in on life at CCNY. And after three days of sightseeing, we got back on the road for home. (To confirm some of these facts, I called Sol, and the only thing he remembered was my complaining about his leaving dirty socks around in our room at the Y,)
In December 1951, Sylvia and I married, and we went on our honeymoon to a cabin in Mt. Tremper in the Catskills. To get to our honeymoon cabin, we took the subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and a bus to Mt. Tremper. To get around, which we didn’t do very much, we took a bus, or hitched. One evening, we went out to dinner in Kingston, and decided to hitchhike back. A small sports car stopped for us, and the driver insisted that we squeeze in, Sylvia sitting on my lap. As we were driving, it got very foggy. Our driver's solution was to turn off his lights, which scared the hell out of us. He explained that he is a professional racecar driver, and that you can see better in fog without the glare of lights. Over the years, I have driven in fog, but never had the courage to try it.
A few months later, in the spring of 1952, we began dreaming about traveling across the country. Where some people thought that "travel" meant Europe, we believed we should "See America First." What other country has the variety of sights—mountains, prairies, rivers, parks, large cities, small towns, mines, mills, factories, museums, theatres, concert halls, zoos, and a network of highways and roads to take you there? I was 24, Sylvia was 22. We were newly married, everything was exciting. I was working as a union organizer and going to school full-time to stay out of the Army; Sylvia had graduated the summer before, was working for Jewish Family Service and was furnishing our apartment. And then we got caught up in planning our trip.
We talked with our friends Sidney and Barbara Stern about buying a car, and the four of us driving cross-country. They were all for the idea. But there were a few problems: We didn't have a car and we didn’t drive. So we decided to learn how to drive over the next few months, and buy a car. We took driving lessons, rented cars on which to practice, and then bought a car—a 1948 Ford—from Lou Pastor, Sylvia's sister's husband, who had just become a used car dealer. Mel Schwartz, a friend who had a driver’s license and who knew cars, was helping us. When he saw the car, he said it was a repainted cab. We checked; it was; we returned it, and we realized that it was foolhardy for four inexperienced drivers to undertake such a trip.
"OK" I said. "But what about hitchhiking? We would follow the same route but go as two separate couples and meet up in all the place we were going to visit." The Sterns didn’t think it would work and made other plans. Sylvia and I sat down with maps of the United States and outlined the sights we would see as we hitchhiked across America. I had again turned to my cousin Louis for AAA maps. They were nice enough to route us across the country and provided us with six separate maps: Northeast, Northcentral, Northwest, Southwest, Southcentral and Southeast, and suggested places to see. I then bought an 18" by 24" sketch pad, and our artist friend and calligrapher Connie Wain, filled the pad with the names of the cities and sights we planned to visit.
Sylvia and I arranged with our respective employers to take off the months of July and August. (For both of us, work was slow in the summer and they were delighted not to have to pay us.) We bought two knapsacks at an army surplus store, and figured out what clothes we absolutely needed for a seven week trip. We realized that we should travel light. We called friends and relatives with whom we hoped to stay to let them know our plans. A number of them were my classmates from the ILGWU Training Institute who were now assigned to union locals around the country. By the end of June, we were ready to go, ready to do some big-time hitching.
Bright and early on the first Monday in July, 1952, we took the subway to the stop closest to the Holland Tunnel. We walked to the tunnel entrance, and at a spot where cars could see us and where they could stop, we held up our first sign "PHILADELPHIA" Within 10 or 15 minutes, someone pulled over, we threw our knapsacks in the back seat and got in. We were on our way! However, the driver wasn't going to Philadelphia; he was going to Baltimore. That was OK with us. Baltimore was going to be our next stop.
Fourth—Across the South from Florida to Phoenix 1954
Giving back.
Original Format
application/msword
Collection
Citation
Jacob Schlitt, “Hitchhiking,” Autobiographical stories & other writing by Jacob Schlitt, accessed April 28, 2024, https://tsirlson.omeka.net/items/show/31.