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Somewhere in the middle of Texas in the mid 60s I change direction in a small town. I got checked out by a local constable then I got one ride out to an intersection of a very small road a couple of miles east of town. Daytime became night and it commenced to get cold and I did not see another car. The road looked good on the map but it seems nobody actually used it. There were loose apparently dead bushes rolling around and I captured one and decided to make a fire. Well, I put a match to it and it went up like paraffin- big torch. A few minutes later the cop who had checked me out drove up and he said I wondered how long it would be before I heard from you again. He took me back to the road I had turned from and I decided to take the longer better traveled route.

I think that the end of my hitchhiking days corresponded to the CB craze. I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out but once I was hitchhiking from Chicago to Boston. Somehow I got the idea that truckers might be willing to give me a ride and that I could leverage the power of CB to make the whole process easier. I don't know how I got my first trucker ride - I think by hanging around at a truckstop (since truckers weren't likely to stop on the road for you). But once I had that first ride, the rest was obvious. As you approach the point where one guy is going to let you off, you ask him to radio out for other truckers who would be willing to take you the next leg. The idea worked flawlessly and I made that trip in record time. I can't remember how many handoffs I engineered but I do remember that was a quick trip East. I think my hitchhiking days were coming to an end around that time, so I don't think I did that trick except that one time. Worked great, though.