Hitchhiking Across America

Hitchhiking Across America

Jacob Schlitt

"It was June 1952. The original plan--for Sylvia and me, together with our friends Sid and Barbara, to learn how to drive, buy a car and travel across the country during the summer--was scrapped."

2010-08-09

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1952

HITCHHIKING_revised

HITCHHIKING ACROSS AMERICA

It was June 1952. The original plan--for Sylvia and me, together with our friends Sid and Barbara, to learn how to drive, buy a car and travel across the country during the summer--was scrapped. Too unrealistic. The substitute plan—that we hitch hike separately, but in the same direction—was also scrapped. Too ridiculous. Which left us hitchhiking across the country by ourselves. We had our first taste of hitchhiking together during our honeymoon, and it was fun. Lots of young people were doing it. You get to meet the folks in the area, and you can’t beat the price.

I had been working as an organizer for Local 38, ILGWU, since the fall of 1951. As June approached, I asked my boss if I can take a leave of absence for the summer. He wouldn’t have to pay me for the seven weeks I would be away, saving the local $60 a week. Besides, it is slow in the summer. He was delighted.

We planned our trip. We read lots of guide books, and then had our friend, Connie, letter, in a large sketch pad, the names of the cities we were hoping to visit. My cousin Louis, who belonged to the AAA, ordered maps for us, routing us across the country. There were six maps, each two feet by three feet. (When we returned home, we scotch-taped them together to make one big map, four feet by nine feet, covering half our bedroom wall.) We bought two knapsacks, decided on the bare minimum of clothes and toiletries we would take, and contacted friends we might want to stay with as we crossed the country. Several of my friends from the ILGWU Training Institute were working in cities we planned to visit. We did not intend to do any camping. It would be hotels, motels, restaurants and diners.

Bright and early on the morning of Monday July 7, Sylvia and I walked to the Longwood Avenue subway station with our knapsacks, and pushed our way into the crowded car. Our fellow passengers were going to work. We were starting on our adventure. Exiting the subway, we walked over to the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. We stationed ourselves on the side, making sure there was room for a car to pull over to pick us up, and held up our sign BALTIMORE. Within a few minutes a car stopped. We jumped in and were on our way.

This began a pattern that was repeated dozens of time over the next seven weeks: The driver pulls over. We run to where he stops. We smile and ask him if he is going to where we are going. If he is not, we calculate how close, and decide to accept or reject his offer. In 1952, all cars seated three in the front. If we accepted, we would throw our knapsacks in the back, and Sylvia would get in, being squeezed between the driver and me. We would introduce ourselves, and explain that we are planning to hitch across the country. The driver would introduce himself (we were never picked up by a woman) and would usually say that he never picks up hitchhikers, but we looked like a nice, clean-cut couple. He would then tell us stories about hitchhikers who shot the drivers who picked them up, stole their cars, and raped their wives. We would assure him that we would do nothing of the sort. Hitchhiker stories out of the way, we would tell the driver something about ourselves, and then hear his story. If either of us was uncomfortable with the driver or his driving, we would say that we are not feeing well and would ask him to stop the car, so that we could get out. We did this a couple of times.

That first day, not only did we make it to Baltimore, we found our way to the ILGWU office, and my friend Martie Lipschitz. We met the manager, Angela Bambace, and Jean Pagano, with whom she was meeting. Everyone was duly impressed that we were hitchhiking across the country. Jean asked if we were going to Washington DC. We said of course. She asked how long we intended to stay. We said about three days. She said we could use her apartment, since she will be away for the week, and her husband is running a union summer school in Virginia for the Communications Workers. What a great way to begin.

We took a bus to Washington, (we were not purists) saw all the sights, and had an absolutely wonderful time. When we were in the apartment (The Crestwood, 3900 16th Street) the phone rang, I answered it, and a surprised voice at the other end demanded to know who I was. It was Jean’s husband, Jules Pagano. I tried to explain, as he kept asking where his wife was, and what was I doing there. He didn’t seem to buy my explanation. (Thirteen years later, as a resident of Washington, I found myself passing The Crestwood every day, on the bus. And 35 years later, as a Member of the Board of Review, I joined the National Association of Unemployment Insurance Appellate Boards, one of whose officers was Jules Pagano. Small world.)

Leaving Washington, we developed the system which we followed all through our journey. We took public transportation to the city limits, as close to the highway as possible, which would take us to our next destination. We would leave early, and start hitching. From Washington, we held up our PITTSBURGH sign and got rides through Maryland and then Pennsylvania. Most of our rides were for fairly long stretches, and we would frequently stop for lunch with our driver. One incident stands out on our way to Pittsburgh. We had a lift with an older person who regaled us with stories about rural life. When we stopped for lunch, he reached for his jacket, which had been on the back seat. Looking at his jacket, he became very agitated. His stick pin was missing. He accused us of taking it, and was going to call the police. We tried to get him to calm down, and suggested that he look more thoroughly in the back of the car. He did, and found it. He was mortified, apologized profusely, insisted on paying for our lunch, and then went out of his way to take us to a motel.

The following morning we were back on the road, from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, where I had worked a year and a half before. We had a wonderful time with the Glasers (Henry had been in my Training Institute class), the Gladnicks (Bob had been the organizer I was assigned to when I worked in Cleveland),and the Klitzmans (Nicholas Kirtzman was the district manager). I know we spent time with them because I took their pictures. Sylvia had a Brownie Kodak 127, part of her dowry, and that is the way we recorded our trip. When we came home, we had the pictures developed and placed them in an album, which helped me reconstruct our trip for this memoir. After starting to write this, I removed some of the photos from the album to discover that we had written the dates and places on some of them. (Cleveland July 11-14) I was surprised to see that, in many of the photos, Sylvia was in a dress and I was in a suit

It was a hop, skip and a jump from Cleveland to Detroit, and Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village. From Detroit, we got a ride in a brand new Chrysler Crown Imperial, (July 16, according to the photo of me standing next to the car) driven by a very dignified and soft-spoken man. He was the owner of a Chrysler dealership in Davenport Iowa, and had picked up the car at the Chrysler factory, custom made for Mrs. Schaeffer, the wife of the Schaeffer pen Company. He explained that instead of chrome, the car had German silver. We chatted about hitchhiking, and he told us that we were the first people he had picked up since an experience he had the past winter. He had given a lift to a young woman who looked as if she was going to freeze to death. She got into the car. The heater wasn’t working, but it was warmer than standing by the side of the road. As he drove away, she pulled a gun from her purse and ordered him to stop and get out. He had been driving with one hand, and had the other hand in his pocket because of the cold. He calmly told her that he had a gun pointing at her, and that she should put her gun down on the seat between them, that he will stop the car and that she should get out, which is what she did. He took off, trembling. When he passed some woods, he opened the car window and threw the gun out.

He let us off in Chicago, and we made our way to Irv Weinstein. Irv gave us his apartment and stayed with a friend. His apartment was small, but cozy, and it had the first and only Murphy bed that we ever saw—a bed that folded into the wall. We swam with his friends in Lake Michigan, we visited the stockyards and the Chicago Art Institute, but the highlight of our visit to Chicago was the 1952 Democratic Convention. We went to the Convention hotel, mingled with the delegates, and picked up a lot of campaign buttons which are prominently displayed in my button collection. I couldn’t believe that some people mistook us for delegates. I was 24 years old. Candidates included (and I have their buttons) Kerr, Russell, Barkley, McMahon, Sparkman, Kefauver and Stevenson. Our guy Adlai Stevenson won the nomination with Sparkman as his running mate. Stevenson had the misfortune to run against Eisenhower. Throughout our trip, we asked our driver, when it seemed appropriate, who they liked. Most everybody liked Ike. We knew we were in trouble.

Leaving Chicago, (July 23) we found another memorable ride. A station wagon stopped. In it, were a man, a woman and a couple of kids. Still, they insisted that they had room for two more. The woman moved to the back seat with the kids, and we slid in next to the driver. As usual, we introduced ourselves, and the members of the family introduced themselves. I thought the man said his name was Bornstein, and I assumed we had some ethnic solidarity. (We actually did.) When I said "Bornstein" he sounded annoyed, correcting me: "Boorstin." He told us that he teaches American History at the University of Chicago, that they are heading out west where they have a cabin, and that he loves the west so much, he gave one of his children the middle name "West." He also spelled out our responsibilities: if there was a flat tire or other mishap, we would help. And, where, up to now, we were the ones asking questions, Professor Boorstin turned the tables, and kept asking us questions. I felt as if we were back in a classroom. What had we seen? What were our impressions? What did we expect to learn? What was the political climate that we observed? It was a great ride, but I was relieved when we left them; it was as if we had completed a tough oral exam. Sylvia observed that he tended to answer his own questions, that he had a theory about the homogeneity of the country that didn’t match our observations, and that he minimized our concern about the frequency of the racist remarks we heard.

Subsequently, we learned a lot more about Daniel J. Boorstin. When we returned home, I found a couple of books that he had written. He went on to write 18 more, and in 1975, he was appointed Librarian of Congress. I thought about calling him (as I did Otto Eckstein) but restrained myself. From Google, I discovered that he was born in Atlanta, his father was one of the lawyers that defended Leo Frank, the family moved to Tulsa in 1915 when he was a year old, he graduated from high school at 15, went to Harvard, was a Rhodes Scholar, got a PhD. from Yale, and taught at Chicago from 1944 to 1969. He apparently was known for clever sayings: "Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know," and "I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren’t open that early." He died in 2004, at 90. A few years ago, Sylvia was volunteering at the Phillips Collection when she heard someone say goodbye Mrs. Boorstin. Sylvia stopped her and asked if she was Mrs. Daniel Boorstin. She answered yes, and Sylvia told her about our meeting in 1952. She was delighted, especially being reminded of their old station wagon. But she didn’t remember picking us up. I wonder if Daniel Boorstin would have remembered.

Next stop: St. Louis, (July 24) and another ILGWU connection: Martie Berger. From the snapshots, it would look as if we spent all our time at the zoo, the Municipal Opera, and the banks of the Mississippi. We did get to see the city and the union hall, thanks to Martie. On to Iowa and the Corn Palace, to Sioux City, then Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Riding through the Great Plains, we were amazed at how flat the country was. We were beginning to get to more hilly country: the Black Hills and the northern Rockies.

We were fairly lucky getting rides. We had a good sense of where to wait and how to thumb a ride. Occasionally, there were other hitchers, but we looked a lot more presentable. When we saw other hitchers, we tried to put a lot of distance between us.
There were times when we had a long wait between rides. To wile away the time, Sylvia and I played a variation of an Italian finger-counting game which I had learned somewhere. It is played in bars for drinks. At the count of three, the two of you throw out your hand, extending fingers, from none to five, and shouting the number you believe the total will be. Italians (and sophisticates who know Italian) do it in Italian. Sylvia and I did it in English. Example: I extend one finger, and guess Sylvia will extend three fingers, and shout FOUR. If she extends one finger, and shouts TWO, she wins. We did this across the entire country.

We are now in the wild west: Rapid City, South Dakota, near the Montana border. Wonderfully picturesque cities: Lead and Deadwood, and the monument we were anxious to see, Mt. Rushmore. How in the world was Gutzom Borglum able to carve those presidents’ heads into the mountain? With lots of help. It was awesome. It had been completed about 10 years before. As always, equally memorable was the person we met there. An Indian (now called Native American) was lounging around waiting to have his picture taken for tips. We didn’t realize that, and got into a lengthy conversation with him. His name was Benjamin Black Elk. He told us that he is the son of an Oglala Sioux Medicine Man, also named Benjamin Black Elk, and that his father told his story to a writer 20 years before, and the book that was published is called "Black Elk Speaks." Black Elk explained that he lectures occasionally, and likes to talk to people and school children about the history of the American Indian. He spent several years in Hollywood portraying Indians, but never Sioux Indians. We took his picture, but he refused our tip. Again, Googling Benjamin Black Elk, I learned that he was called the fifth face on the Mountain (in addition to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt), that he translated his father's Lakota language into English, and that when he retired, the National Park Service would not permit any other Native American to take his place around Mt. Rushmore.

Rides kept coming, and we were moving right along. We were in northern Wyoming—cowboy country, and we had lifts with cowboys and ranchers in pickup trucks. They really wore cowboy hats and boots. One unforgettable ride was with a rancher who was transporting a couple of horses in an open truck. It was late in the day, he had just picked up the horses, and was in a hurry to get back to his ranch. While we were driving, there was a noise from the rear of the truck. One of the horses got his leg caught in between the slats on the side of the truck. The driver pulled over, got out, lowered the ramp, and climbed into the back. He untied the horse, extricated the horse’s leg, and in the process, the horse backed down the ramp and ran away. Our friend led the second horse down the ramp, gave me the reins and told me to hold on to him. I never held a horse in my life, and I never realized they could be so big. And restless. The rancher went off into the field where the horse had gone. It was getting dark. We were becoming more uncomfortable. Within 15 minutes he came back with the horse. He led both of them back into the truck, tied them up, and we were off.

From Rapid City and Mt, Rushmore, we headed for Yellowstone. We were fortunate to get a lift with a young man named Bob Dorney from Maryland, driving alone and delighted to have our company. (Thanks Sylvia, for writing his name on the back of the photo, and for recalling that we had a moment of fame in Yellowstone when Bob told everybody that we were hitchhiking across the country.) We stayed together for three or four days. We shared adjoining cabins in the Park and were his passengers as we explored the park, hiked trails, and were overwhelmed by the geysers, hot springs, canyons, rapids and waterfalls. I took lots of pictures, and with good reason. We had never seen any place like it. Mountains, rivers, lakes, wild life, petrified forests, and more geysers than any place in the world. It was breathtaking. Unbelievable sights everywhere. And for comic relief: the bears. We stopped thinking of them as dangerous. They were all over the road and at all the sightseeing locations. At one spot, someone left his car window open and a bear clambered into his car, found a bag of food and started picnicking in the back seat. When he opened the back door, the bear exited with the bag in its mouth.

The time came for us to bid farewell to Bob and to Yellowstone as we headed south through the Grand Tetons to Salt Lake City. However, here, on Route 89, outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the rides stopped coming. No explanation, except that we were told that lots of rich people live in the area. There were times that we may have waited for an hour or more before getting a lift, but that day, we waited five, six hours, and nothing. We started hitching on both sides of the road, hoping to get to a town where we could stay overnight and start again. We finally got a ride. I don’t remember the details, but from that day on, Jackson Hole was synonymous with bad luck hitching.

The next day our luck changed. We were picked up by a Mormon who couldn't have been more gracious. Fifty-eight years later, I remember his name (and I'll bet Sylvia does too): Nephi Manning. He told us all about Mormonism. He wasn't proselytizing; he was teaching. Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, plural marriages, sea gulls, the Great Salt Lake, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Mr. Manning lived in Ogden (address: Route 3). A nice man who made an indelible impression. We loved Salt Lake City, and we even swam in the lake.

A system we came up with for finding a good restaurant when we hit a new town: We would stroll down the main drag, stopping people and asking them for their favorite, reasonably priced eating place. If the same name came up three times, that's where we’d go. Never failed. In retrospect, I realize that food wasn’t uppermost among our concerns. People like different foods in different parts of the country, but we weren’t doing a survey. I don't remember big differences; not like the south. Nor were we looking for Jewish communities and landmarks, as I do of late. We were aware of the Jewish owned stores in small towns, and I may have inquired about a shul, but that was it. We just wanted to see as much of America as we could.

Leaving Salt Lake City, we got a ride with a soldier, an RA Sergeant, who was headed for California, and he was happy to have us for company. We were with him for a looong time: western Utah and across Nevada. Two days of hard driving. We stayed overnight in adjoining motel rooms in Winnemucca, and he couldn’t start early enough the next morning to get to Reno, "The Biggest Little City in the World." What he wanted to do was to play poker in Reno. We arrived before 8 am. He headed for the poker tables; we played the nickel slots, and hit a junior jackpot for 95 cents! In less than an hour, our friend lost a couple hundred dollars, pretty much all he had. Where he was singing all the way from Winnemucca to Reno, not a peep from Reno to Sacramento, where we parted company.

After a little sightseeing in California’s capitol, (August 8) we headed for everyone’s favorite city, San Francisco. It was all that we hoped it would be. We found an inexpensive hotel, and soon after, found the cable cars. People were friendly, the weather was perfect, we loved Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the parks, and Lombard Street. We found an outdoor dance concert, and strolling around North Beach, we heard jazz coming out of a club nearby. We went in, and it was Turk Murphy’s jazz band. We were thrilled. Turk, who played trombone modeled after Kid Ory, was one of the San Francisco musicians instrumental in the New Orleans revival. We had heard him in New York, and I had one of his albums (and still do.) During a break, we spoke to the musicians, and the tuba player offered to drive us back to New York. Unfortunately, our next stop, was to be Los Angeles.

We always tried to get on the road early in the morning, and get off before dark. We left San Francisco and had a good ride down the coast. We spent a few hours sightseeing, then another lift which took us to Santa Maria. It was getting dark, so we decided to stay overnight in Santa Maria. Unfortunately, there was no room at any of the inns. One hotel said that if we liked, we could sleep on a couch in the lobby. We didn’t like, so we decided to do what we had never done before: hitch at night. We got on the highway and within 20 minutes, a huge truck pulled over. We had gotten lifts with truck drivers and they were among the best rides and the best drivers. We were standing under a highway light with our LOS ANGELES sign. The truck driver said he had seen us earlier that day. He was carrying two tons of strawberries to LA. We got in, Sylvia, then me. It may have been close to 12 midnight. The trucker was right out of central casting: big, gruff but kind, talkative and he smoked a lot. We barreled down, and crept up, the long hills. At one curve, he pointed out a spot where he turned over a truck some time ago. On a couple of occasions, going up a steep hill, doing about 10 miles an hour, he gave the wheel to Sylvia while he had his foot on the accelerator, opened the door and hung out, smoking a cigarette. His advice to Sylvia: just keep your eye on the white line. She did fine. We arrived at the LA wholesale fruit market about 6 am, August 12, exhausted. We found a motel, and slept for the rest of the day. We then did Venice where an old friend of Sylvia's mother lived, and Hollywood, a studio, and Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Can’t remember much more. Not as exciting as San Francisco.

Then the big push to our next destination: the Grand Canyon. We must have gone through Phoenix, but it was two years before our friend Sol moved there. Rides weren't too hard to come by. No more experiences like Jackson Hole. We arrived at the Grand Canyon August 16, ready to be overwhelmed, and we were. I was impressed by the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This was a lot grander. Again, we rented a cabin intending to explore for two or three days. We learned that there were mules that would take you part of the way into the Canyon, and asked a Ranger where you could get them. He scoffed at the idea, and said we were young and should hike down. At the bottom of the Canyon there was a wonderful ranch where we could stay overnight. They would provide a lunch and water for the hike back. Sounded like fun, so we did it. In fact, we met another couple who were planning to hike down, so we did it together.

After the first couple hours, it stopped being fun. It was hot, the trail was narrow, from time to time people came by on mules, and we had to squeeze into the wall of the Canyon to let them by. I am uncomfortable about heights (it has gotten worse) so it was hard for me to look down into the breathtaking abyss. Instead, I kept my eyes on the trail so the main thing I remember seeing is mule droppings. The ranch at the bottom, and our accommodations, were fine. There was even a pool. The next morning, we had breakfast, we packed a lunch and a water bottle with a screw-top cup, and headed up. If hiking down wasn't much fun, hiking up became agony. It also took twice as long. The unforgettable moment: We were about halfway up, and an older man was heading down, looking as if he wouldn't make it. He was overheated and exhausted, and asked us if we had a little water. We had been taking sips, trying to make it last. We reluctantly said yes, and gave him our water bottle. He proceeded to pour some water in the cup, rinse it out, and throw it away. Then took a drink. We felt like throwing him away. We made it to the top of the trail, in agony, and staggered to our cabin. Muscles we didn’t know we had, were killing us. We bought some liniment, and in rubbing it on my thighs, it touched my scrotum. Now, that’s pain! I found a basin, filled it with water, and sat in it for most of the evening.

We recovered, and were back on the road, heading east to Albuquerque and then to Amarillo. One of our rides was in a Cadillac convertible with two gentlemen from New York City. The driver was short and thin; the other was big and beefy. They explained that they left New York because the "heat" was on. They were either bookmakers or numbers runners. What they did for a living didn't bother us, but the reckless way they were driving, did. Sylvia announced that she didn't feel well, and we said goodbye.

We realized that we were running out of time. It was August 20. We could never make it back to New York, hitching. By the next day, a couple of long rides took us to Oklahoma City. We figured out that we could take an overnight train to Chicago, which is what we did. In Chicago, we caught a non-scheduled airline to New York. It was Friday, August 22. We were ready to go home. I was expected back at work on Monday August 25.

We did it! We really saw America. From sea to shining sea. The small towns and the big cities. The plains and the mountains. A trip of a lifetime. We met an awful lot of generous folks who shared a part of their lives (and their cars) with us. Two quotes from two men who gave us rides: One was from a car salesman who said: "I’m not old. I just have a lot of miles on me." The other was from one of the New Yorkers who gave us a lift when we left the Grand Canyon. They had also been seeing the country. We asked them what was the most beautiful sight they had seen. The big one replied with a sigh, "Las Vegas at night."

When Sylvia and I separated 20 years after, the photo album remained with her. Thinking about writing this, I borrowed it as a way of reminding me of all the places we had been, reliving the experience, 58 years later. As I wind this up, the line from the movie, Casablanca, comes to mind: Instead of, Humphrey Bogart saying to Ingrid Bergman, "We’ll always have Paris," I can say, "We’ll always have America."

August 9, 2010

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