Teen killed while trying to carjack motorist at Birmingham gas station, police say

Birmingham News / AL.com ^ | July 2, 2015 | Carol Robinson

[Alas Babylon!]

Me too. But carry.

Remember the nickel-plated rule: Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

Oh, and some places should be avoided at night and on weekends.

But nice place, Birmingham. I like the zoo.

[arthurus]

I don't carry on my person but there is a tool of immediate usefulness in my car. That mode of travel now is much more dangerous than it was, for the driver and for the hitchhiker.I pick up thumbers because I traveled that way extensively in the 60s-80s.

A few years ago I picked up a black kid (he said 17) near the University in B'ham. He didn't have his thumb out but he looked like he needed a ride. He had been beaten up a half an hour before and lost his pack. He had, indeed, been hitchhiking. Turns out he had been "seeing the country" without untoward incident for a couple of weeks and came into B'ham on his way to Florida to visit relatives. I took him down to Dothan where our paths diverged.
It has never been safe (relatively speaking, of course) for Negroes to hitchhike and doing it nowadays is insane. He thought he could get rides from Negro drivers easily. You know he's not a city boy.