re: Ever pick up a hitchhiker?

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Ever pick up a hitchhiker?

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No, but 4cubbies picked up a homeless guy.

Twice, but they weren't hitchhiking just walking to work (had Burger King Clothes on) I was going to WalMart which is next to BK so I stopped and gave them a ride. Happened twice.

ETA; 1 time was a black dude, the next time was a black chic.

My parents used to give rides to strangers when I was a kid.

They also used to feed people at our table if they knocked on the door hungry.

I wouldn’t do either nowadays

I've picked up hitchhikers. Been a while though. Never with my wife because she'd freak out. Picked up a guy walking along I-10 just after Katrina. He was on his way to New Orleans to try to find his son. He smelled bad. Very bad. You can imagine in that swampy late August weather.

In 1969, while a junior at LSU, I was coming from New Roads at dusk. Turned onto LA190 and saw this guy with long blond hair hitching. My first thought was to give him a ride before somebody stopped to beat the hell out of him for having long blonde hair.

It didn’t occur to me this might be a woman since you just didn’t see women hitching in the South. But when the door opened, in slid an incredibly beautiful woman with hair down to her butt and a rather nice body. She had hitched from Colorado where she had spent the summer on a commune, and was heading back to Florida State for school.

Where was she staying that night? She didn’t have a clue. I took her in for the night. She was quite an interesting woman. And it was an interesting night. The next morning, I took her to Florida and Airline Highway and watched her catch a ride in about three minutes.

I know she made it back safely because she mailed a card saying so. We mailed each other back and forth for a while, but it eventually tapered off. I never saw her again. And so it goes.

Never picked one up but I've sort of "hitchhiked" myself. In another life I was a broke college student that had bought a $200, 20+ year old Corolla at an auto auction as my daily driver. It hard started and had a leaky head gasket, but I didn't have money to fix it - so when I got it started I always drove back roads to keep it from overheating and left it running while parked anywhere.

I was also too broke to pay my cell phone bill regularly every month, and my phone service would get shut off for days at a time between payments until I could scrape enough together to pay it.

It was a very depressing time for me and just about rock bottom. I had been through family issues that left me paying my own way through college and ostracized, raising a toddler niece in my free time, and eating peanut butter and loaves of bread from the dollar store for meals. Every day was a struggle just to make it to the next.

I usually tried to hunker down and not go anywhere too far away on days when I didn't have cell service, knowing my car was an unreliable POS. For whatever reason I can't remember, I had to go somewhere 20+ miles away one of the times I had no service and of course this was the day my shitty car finally decided to die while on the back roads. I was ready to give up right then and there, debated stepping in front of the next 18 wheeler barreling down the highway or just walking into the woods and never coming back. I was panicked and sunken, felt hopeless.

Car after car after car passed and didn't even give me the time of day. By this point I was just sitting in the driver's seat with the hood up and my head on the steering wheel, trying not to cry. Finally the kindest old man I've probably ever met pulled over in this brand new top of the line truck, I'll never forget it. It was a brand new GMC Denali with tan leather, maroon paint job. Beautiful truck.

He asked if I was okay and I explained the situation to him, in probably more detail than I should've because I was at my wits end and exasperated. He more or less says "I'm retired and not in any hurry, let's see if we can't fix your car and get you home"

I can't even remember what the actual problem was, some sort of smaller electrical part under the cowl like a relay. But we got it figured out after a while and he drove me to the parts store a few miles away, bought the part and took me back to my car. He helped me fix it with his minimal tools and some rigging up, then said he'd follow me back to my place to make sure I made it.

I couldn't thank him enough, so much that tears were welling up in my eyes. I didn't even get his name and he never asked mine, just a stranger that helped me through one of the toughest points of my life. I can still see exactly what he looked like and his truck in my memory, I doubt he's still alive but I always hoped this man knew the impact he had and I've tried to pay it forward in his example many times.

Ill let them ride in the back of my truck. My uncle was a schizophrenic hitchhiker so I have a soft spot for them.

Ever been in a Turkish prison?

“These wheels don’t turn ‘fa free, baw”

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Back in the seventies

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Picked a soldier whose car broke down and brought him back to his base which was not far from where I was headed anyway. Cool guy, just a bad day for him and a small act of kindness that made it better.
I haven’t picked up another hitchhiker since.