Lesson learned

Hitch-hiking is not wise.
There was a time in America when it was a wonderful thing to do and many did it often. Now only fools hitch-hike. I spent some afternoons at work at the pizza joint relating to a co-worker how fun it was to hitch to California from our home in Tulsa. I told him of all the fun adventures and exciting times I had. Left out most of the crap. Swear to God that kid went hitching and they found his remains in the desert. I know it wasn't my fault but I will always feel terrible about that.

I was lucky enought to do my travelling before it was a stupid thing to do.

There was a summer where my friend and I were heading west in a silly attempt to find ourselves, a thing that hippies used to do.We were hitching to California and caught a ride just outside of Oklahoma City with some guys from Chicago. They picked us up hoping that we had some money. We said that we didn't. They were on the verge of running out of gas and had to stop at a gas station to sell their tire tools for a tank full, which got us as far as Albuquerque.

When we arrived it was very late at night, so we stopped and slept in the car until the sun woke us. The guys with the car had been very nice to us during the ride, treating us as if we were all friends. They invited us to a blood plasma center where we could sell our own life juices for enough money to eat and get more gas. We declined because, even though we didn't tell our Chicago buddies, we had about fifty dollars between us and didn't really need to sell blood. We told them that we just wanted to stay there and sleep a little longer.

After they headed off down the street toward the center, we got out of the car and went around the block to a diner where we had a great breakfast. Since Albuquerque is a large city and I'm just a small town boy, I was smart enough to leave my travel bag in the car. That way no one would mug me or con me and steal away with all my worldly possessions. We took a five dollar bill with us to the diner and left all the rest of our money with all of our belongings safely in the car from Chicago.When we returned to the car it was no longer there.I'm sure that by then, it was heading down the highway toward the highway past Albuquerque, while some very nice people from Chicago were dividing up my worldly possessions and counting out forty five dollars in cash. Some of life's lessons are justly deserved.