On Feb 9, 2009, at 11:24 AM, Robert Naiman wrote:
Wouldn't it be a Pareto improvement if hitchhiking were made safe, legal, and reliable in America?
In 1973-4, I hitched almost 20,000 miles, coast to coast in the USA, Canada to Mexico. I may be qualified to have an opinion on this subject. (You can buy my booklet "Dream on a Star, A Girl With a Car" on my website (www.coolhanduke.com). It is a compilation of graffiti gleaned from the back sides of the "Pedestrians Prohibited Beyond This Point" signposts on every on-ramp in the Interstate System (except Oregon, I believe, where one is allowed to hitchhike on the freeway).
In my travels, I often approached highway departments in capitol cities to encourage them to facilitate hitchhiking -- benches and trash cans and street lights on on-ramps, for example, -- but never to any avail.
I have always considered hitch-hiking to be a form of freedom of speech. After all, sticking out one's thumb is merely a way of saying "can you give me lift?" This is free speech. But the dumb fucks who run our cities and states feel otherwise. I believe they are simply jealous of the free spirit exhibited by folks who are willing to place their journey in the friendly (hopefully) hands of others.
It wouldn't take much to create a mindset (milieu, if you will) in this country that makes giving rides to others a common event. We just gotta wanna do it.
Dan Scanlan _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
