View source for Hitch-Hiking by Mario Rinvolucri/chapter-1

==Part I: PSYCHO-SOCIOLOGY OF HITCH-HIKING==
<h2>
  Chapter 1: Hitch-hiking and the Umbilical Cord
</h2>
<p>
  Still in the womb:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>I personally have never hitch-hiked because ... well one of the reasons being that I haven't got
    this sort of love of adventure&mdash;I like to be certain of what I'm doing, have a sense of security,
    and also that I've never been in the position where I couldn't afford to go where I actually wanted to go
    .... As an only child who's a girl, Mother tends to want the best for her and protect her in a way, as
    far as she can. Even if she's not there, she knows you've got a train ticket and where you're going.
    Because I've been brought up with my parents, it's just never crossed my mind to hitch-hike, so far. I've
    just adopted their attitudes.</strong> (Cambridge University second year girl student)
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Beginning to wean:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Well, it's a bit difficult because I don't hitch-hike, which my parents didn't want me to. They
    don't think it's a good thing ... if I can't afford the fare to get from place to place, I shouldn't
    sponge on other people. But ... I don't see why not; but being a girl it's more difficult. I live in
    Manchester and I can't go home during the middle of the term because I can't afford it .... I probably
    mentioned to them could I come home by hitch-hiking and they said: "No." I'm very tempted not to agree
    with them, but I wouldn't fight them saying I can hitch-hike, but I don't see why other people shouldn't
    especially if it's students, young men that want to ....</strong> (Teacher training college third year
    girl student)
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Active revolt against parental domination:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>When I was much younger I used to worry about whether I ought to hitchhike or not and I think
    with me it's associated with lots of guilt feelings because it's all, my parents always forbade me to do
    hitch-hiking. This is one thing they said I must never do, you know, that they would let me have freedom
    in every way, in every respect, but I must never hitch-hike.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>In fact, even now I'm twenty years old, I still cannot say to my parents that I've hitch-hiked,
    even with a friend, which I think is ridiculous. I very much resent their attitude, and it's ... so it's
    very ... it's very personal sort of independence. I get out of it. I like hitch-hiking because it brings
    me in contact with people I wouldn't meet otherwise, because I was brought up in a very sort of upper
    middle-class atmosphere where you didn't meet anybody who did an ordinary working job or drove a lorry.
    My father is the managing director of a firm, and it's always represented a great freedom for me to be
    able to hitch-hike&mdash;freedom in a sense&mdash;a kind of, well, independence ...</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>My parents are very dogmatic about this and most of my friends, girlfriends, who hitch-hike,
    either their parents just sort of accept it and don't mind, never bothered about it, or else they have a
    kind of relationship in which they don't ask questions, and they, the parents, really know what's going
    on, but they're ... they just don't ask questions, whereas my parents are always asking and saying: "You
    mustn't, you mustn't do this, you mustn't do that, you mustn't hitch-hike. This is the most important
    thing .... My father once said to me very angrily: "Well, if you get ... have a bad accident and you're
    an invalid for life, I'm not going to support you&mdash;I shall put you on the National Health and leave
    you." Hitch-hiking was one of the first gestures of defiance I made against my parents&mdash;the first
    time I hitched was about four years ago when I was still at school, I was at day school. I think their
    generation, um, very often can't understand how people of my age live and the way we are.</strong>
    (Cambridge University second year girl student)
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  These girls illustrate three different stages of emancipation from childhood. The first one, though
  entering her twenties, is still tightly bound to her mother. In talking to the interviewer, a complete
  stranger, about her mother and herself, she apparently feels there is nothing odd or babyish in saying:
</p>
<p>
  <strong><em>Mother</em> tends to want the best for <em>her</em>, and protect <em>her</em> in a way
  ....</strong> The girl readily admits that she has not thought for herself but has simply adopted her
  parents' attitudes. She hasn't begun to become an adult
</p>
<p>
  The second girl, though not daring to break into open conflict with her parents, is beginning to allow
  herself to doubt the sacrosanctity of their views. Hitch-hiking is a thing she sees many of her
  contemporaries doing and she sees nothing to condemn in it.
</p>
<p>
  The third student sees hitch-hiking as a central factor in her open conflict with her parents, in her bid
  to demand that they accept her adulthood. In hitch-hiking she finds a way of physically escaping from home.
  The thumbing convention allows her to travel around almost without money, money which she would presumably
  have to get from home. Hitching also affords her psychic escape from her parents. Since <em>they</em> have
  made it an issue, since they have made it clear she must not hitch, by hitching she defies them and
  proclaims the integrity and independence of her own personality. Finally hitching offers her a temporary,
  perhaps illusory escape from the social background of her upbringing. Daughter of a company director, she
  has the chance of mixing with lorry drivers, of jumping, or appearing to herself to jump class barriers. In
  her case, as in the case of many young people, hitch-hiking emerges as both a practical and symbolic issue
  in their struggle for emancipation from their parents' psychological and sometimes financial control over
  them. The first tentative lifts hitched can sometimes resemble the Boston Tea Party. They may be the start
  of a long drawn out war of independence from 'parental colonialism'.
</p>
<p>
  All the same it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that all parents oppose their children when they
  show a propensity to start hitch-hiking, <em>if</em> they do. People (see [[Hitch-Hiking_by_Mario_Rinvolucri/appendix-1|Appendix
  I]]) hitching at the London mouth of the M.1, near K garage were asked:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>When you started hitch-hiking did both your parents approve?&mdash;<br></strong> <tt><span class=
    "c5">685</span></tt> people altogether gave answers.<br>
    <tt><span class="c5">228</span></tt> people reported that their parents approved.<br>
    <tt><span class="c5">&nbsp;28</span></tt> people reported that their parents approved with
    reservations.<br>
    <tt><span class="c5">156</span></tt> people reported that their parents didn't mind, didn't
    disapprove.<br>
    <tt><span class="c5">240</span></tt> people reported that their parents were worried or disapproved.<br>
    <tt><span class="c5">&nbsp;11</span></tt> people reported that their parents were one for, one
    against.<br>
    <tt><span class="c5">&nbsp;22</span></tt> people could not remember.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  In other words around one third of the nearly seven hundred thumbers had parents who more or less approved
  of them hitch-hiking when they started; about one third had parents who disapproved or were anxious and
  rather more than one fifth had parents who didn't mind either way.
</p>
<p>
  The above is in no sense a statistically trustworthy sample (see [[Hitch-Hiking_by_Mario_Rinvolucri/appendix-1|Appendix I]]).
  All that I intend to show by presenting these figures is that the parent-child conflict over hitch-hiking
  is a widespread phenomenon in families where teenagers suddenly take it into their heads to hitch-hike.
</p>
<p>
  The likelihood of conflict depends on a great number of factors, how authoritarian or otherwise the parents
  are, the age it occurs to the child to try hitching, the sex of the child, the child's own personality and
  capacity to cope for himself etc.... Without knowing these factors and many more in each particular case,
  not much more can be said about the above figures. All they show is that conflict exists on a reasonably
  large scale&mdash;it is not confined to a fringe of families.
</p>
<p>
  In order to get more of a picture of the ways parents and off-spring interreact over hitching 186 people
  picked up in my van were interviewed in more detail than the hurriedly questioned M.1 respondents (see
  [[Hitch-Hiking_by_Mario_Rinvolucri/appendix-2|Appendix II]]). The parents fall into various categories, ranging from those
  strongly for to those violently anti. To start at the positive end of the scale:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    18 year old theatrical props maker, son of a tax collector:<br>
    <strong>I first hitched when I was 11. My father did a lot of hitch-hiking. I used to go with
    him.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    20 year old student, son of town clerk, first hitched at 13:<br>
    <strong>My mother's attitude was: "Go away and be independent," and my father was the same.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Sometimes parents disagree about whether their child should be allowed to hitch-hike. One parent may foist
  the burden of making a decision onto the other:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    15 year old apprentice mechanic, son of a bus driver, first hitched to away football matches at 13:<br>
    <strong>Mother didn't want me to go. Father was all for it. She is still against it and he is still
    for.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    17 year old typist, daughter of a lorry driver, first hitched at 16:<br>
    <strong>Mother doesn't mind as long as I'm with someone. Father doesn't approve at all.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  A small minority of parents who have children who hitch apparently feel violent antipathy to the idea of
  their own flesh and blood standing by the roadside thumbing. Two examples of this extreme group will
  suffice:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    22 year old machine shop Worker, son of a <em>civil engineer</em>, first hitched at 18:<br>
    <strong>My mother was quite horrified&mdash;I don't know why&mdash;Father thought I had gone mad&mdash;he
    identified hitch-hiking with beatniks.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    19 year old window dresser, daughter of an architect, first hitched at 17:<br>
    <strong>Mother hit me when she found out. She was frightened unless</strong> (sic) <strong>we ran off for
    good. Father hit me too, when he heard. They still feel the same now, but they let me go.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  It may be relevant that both the civil engineer's son and the architect's daughter have got themselves jobs
  of lower status than their parents' presumable ambitions for them. This and the imaginable resultant
  tensions in the families might explain the violence of parental riposte
</p>
<p>
  Quite a number of virgin hitch-hikers seem to fear strong negative feelings at home and avoid facing them
  by not telling their parents. What the eye does not see .... Sometimes the deception goes on over quite a
  period of time during which the teenager hitches regularly. The most extreme case found was that of a 26
  year old, lah-di-dah, outwardly self-confident art dealer's assistant. She was the daughter of a rich
  farmer. When she was 16&frac12; she lit off to Europe with her boy friend of the moment. Neither her father
  nor mother knew she was hitching. When her mother found out she was: terribly upset, she thought it
  degrading and dangerous. The father was never told by either her or her mother. Ten years later he still
  did not know his daughter had been hitching round Europe at 16&frac12;, and regularly thumbing for several
  years after that. Presumably he was never told because both women feared his anger.
</p>
<p>
  The above is an example of total concealment. Several of the 186 respondents spoke of partial deception:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    20 year old student, son of stock-checker, first hitched on holiday in Spain at 17:<br>
    <strong>My mother thought I was going with two friends-in fact I went alone.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  A sizeable group of parents opposed their children's hitching not on principle or because the very idea
  seemed to them outrageous, but because they did not like the thought of their children having to face the
  difficulties and dangers of the road. Imaginatively they lived through the accidents their children might
  get involved in, the lifts with bad drivers, the morally dangerous lifts and so on ...:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    21 year old student, son of a labourer, first hitched at 17<br>
    <strong>She didn't like it when she found I was doing it regularly, didn't think it was safe, thought I'd
    get soaked.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    18 year old student, son of company director, first hitched at 13:<br>
    <strong>My mother didn't like it at first. She didn't like me going in cars with strangers at that
    age.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    20 year old student, son of a design engineer, first hitched at 15:<br>
    <strong>They were both very annoyed, because of the accidents on the road, frightened I might get a bad
    driver.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Some of the parents of the 186 respondents questioned in my van didn't make any fuss about their children
  wanting to hitch. They took it completely for granted. It seemed natural or even unimportant to them. A
  sizeable fraction of the parents of the nearly seven hundred M.1 mouth respondents fell into this category
  (about one fifth). Are they perhaps the most successful and mature parents? One of the students I
  interviewed in Cambridge was certainly surprised at his parents' equanimity:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    Student: <strong>I started when I was 16, I think, I was very surprised because my parents didn't bat an
    eyelid when I said I was going to Greece with my brother and a friend and they didn't mind at
    all.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    Interviewer: <strong>This suggests you perhaps thought they were going to mind?</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    Student: <strong>Well, judging from my contemporaries' parents' reactions ... um, you know, nobody went
    off at the age of 16 just like that ... and especially to ... Greece wasn't quite so opened up as it is
    now.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Whether this man's parents and the others like them are the most mature in their attitudes towards their
  offspring is perhaps a moot point&mdash;they are certainly the least uptight.
</p>
<p>
  Children whose parents fail to grant them adult status as they are gradually growing into it have no
  alternative but to seize it for themselves. Hitch-hiking, which makes possible escape from the home and all
  that implies in terms of parental surveillance, and which allows for almost free mobility, without the
  humiliation of needing to rely on parents for financial support, has an immediate attraction to the young
  person in an incipient phase of the revolt that may be necessary for the afirmation of his own separate
  identity. When the paren tries to disssuade a child, especially a son, from thumbing he is probably
  reinforcing the desire to try it. The father says to the son: <strong>It's difficult, it's risky, you won't
  be able to get lifts</strong> etc.... This kind of paternal reaction immediately turns hitch-hiking into a
  challenge to the boy's courage and virility. If the boy has backbone there could be no more
  counter-productive way of dissuading him:
</p>
<p>
  A boy may also, like Gibben's joy riders in [[Hitch-Hiking_by_Mario_Rinvolucri/chapter-6|Chapter 6]], be reacting against the
  over intimate protectiveness of the mother. In the case of the 19 year old technical college student below,
  this is probably one of the factors pushing him to hitch&mdash;his mother certainly comes through as a
  personality who still over-shadows, even half submerges him:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>When I'm hitching she's anxious. I don't know where this anxiety stems from, whether she's scared
    for me, that something might happen to me, but she still is fairly anxious .... It could be anything ...
    a car crash ... and if ever I have a long time to wait then as soon as I walk in the door I can feel this
    immense amount of relief coming out, you know: 'Thank God he's home'. But this is probably because we're
    a very close knit family, and she feels for all of us, of course, but I think this is ... she probably
    feels a great deal . . . I mean I never get worried to that extent myself.</strong> (He can't quite bring
    himself to admit to a specially close relationship between her and him.) <strong>It's a feeling she's
    still in charge of me as a person, you know ... caring for me. And this automatically comes over her when
    I'm doing something on my own, that she wants to be with me, to make sure that I'm doing it O.K. and I'm
    fine.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Lucky for this man that he does hitch-hike all the same!
</p>
<p>
  In so far as hitch-hiking turns out to be a conflictual issue between parents and teenagers attitudes to
  hitch-hiking on the part of young people often tell one quite a lot about their rapport with their parents
  and evolution in attitudes to hitching about changes in this relationship. There are certain family
  situations in which thumbing is more likely to become a bone of contention than in others. Parents tend to
  be more apprehensive over girls hitching than boys. Their anxiety is greater over young children hitching
  than older ones. The smaller the family and the more protective the parents the more there is likelihood of
  a clash. On these criteria certain types of middle class and professional homes would seem more likely to
  witness conflict than larger working class families.
</p>
<p>
  Acting on these hunches I got girls in a fee-paying part boarding school in the North West to write essays
  on <em>Hitch-hiking</em> They were given no further guidance&mdash;the teacher simply told them the essays
  were wanted for research and asked them to write anything they felt like for half an hour.
</p>
<p>
  20 fourth-form girls, aged around 13, came out as in the main congruent and acceptant of their parents'
  negative feelings about hitch-hiking. As a group they appear firmly entrenched in the particular prejudices
  of their parents' part of the previous generation. Only 3 or 4 of them state their parents' aversion and
  then point out that other points of view do exist. In other words, in early puberty, under the influence of
  small, tight families and an authoritarian, maternalistic, minor public school, they maintain obedient
  attitudes, and therefore very similar ones. Here are two examples of 'obedient' essays:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    14 year old doctor's daughter:<br>
    <strong>'Travel by begging lifts from passing motor vehicles.' This is how the Concise Oxford Dictionary
    describes hitch-hiking. There have been and still are incidents where young children, or young girls,
    have been found cruelly murdered as a result of accepting a lift from a stranger. Supposing I ever did go
    on a hitch-hiking holiday I would certainly never go alone, but with a group of four friends.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    14 year old dentist's daughter:<br>
    <strong>I personally would not hitch-hike because I think it can be dangerous if you accept lifts from
    the wrong type of people. It has been banned in some countries on the continent because of the dangers
    involved.</strong> (See [[Hitch-Hiking_by_Mario_Rinvolucri/chapter-8|Chapter 8]].) <strong>Even if I did want to go
    hitch-hiking my parents wouldn't dream of allowing me to, because most 'hitchers' are lay-abouts that
    could not be bothered to pay the fare on public transport.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Even the 3 or 4 girls in whom there is a nascent glimmer of disagreement with their parents' views very
  quickly hedge their shy movement towards approving of thumbing with a massive exposition of the dangers and
  disadvantages. So for instance this 13 year old, civil engineer's daughter who carefully puts everything in
  the conditional:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>If my parents would let me hitch-hike (which they would not) I would not mind hitch-hiking if I
    had the right clothes and if I was with a friend. I would not like to hitch-hike by myself unless it was
    absolutely necessary, because of the murders that have been happening to children, especially girls who
    accept lifts from strangers in cars. I would not feel very safe when I hitch-hiked even if people looked
    nice. I would not trust a man by himself, or a man and a woman by themselves</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  The 7 essays written on the same subject by sixth form girls in the same school were radically different in
  tone and attitude. Out of 7 only I was firmly anti-hitch-hiking, 2 were on the fence and 4 were in favour,
  <em>despite</em> parental objections. The girl who was anti was interestingly from a skilled working class
  home, presumably a socially 'rising' one:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    18 year old master decorator's daughter:<br>
    <strong>I have never been hitch-hiking, and <em>have never met anybody who really has, or at least
    mentioned the fact</em>.</strong> (My italics.) <strong>The reason why is simple enough&mdash;Parents! My
    mother is the worrying type, and due to all the murders of young girls her mind would not be at rest at
    all during my absence. The actual send-off, as you could call it, would be terrible. My parents would be
    giving no end of advice such as: 'Be careful and for goodness sake do not accept any lifts from people
    you do not know,' which in the situation would be stupid advice to give. If we are in the car and happen
    to pass some hitchhikers thumbing, my parents are very disgusted and think people should catch a bus or a
    train like everybody else.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  The most interesting thing about this essay is that it gives the key to the change in attitudes evident in
  this school between the fourth and sixth forms. The girl says: <strong>I have never been hitch-hiking, and
  have never met anybody who really has</strong>. She is the exception in her form&mdash;most of the other
  girls are beginning to come into contact with other teenagers outside the narrow confines of their
  sheltered school life. From new friends outside the mental 'clausura' they suddenly learn that you can go
  thumbing and not be automatically raped and strangled by the first man who picks you up. Given their
  curious, earlier conditioning this comes as a surprise to some of them. Their change of attitude brings
  them into a state of mental conflict with their parents. The change of attitude to thumbing and consequent
  stretching of the umbilical cord is excellently put by the 16 year old daughter of a Coal Board clerk:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Hitch-hiking is a thing I never dreamt of doing, having been taught from childhood never to
    accept lifts from strange men. But recently a girl from a nearby training college came to live with us. I
    naturally became very friendly with her and hitch-hiking came into our conversation quite frequently. It
    seems to be the done thing at college.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>My friend and I went to college one night with the student and from there we all intended to go
    straight to Warrington by bus. The student suggested we hitched, and I, despite my upbringing thought
    this was a good idea, in a 3. My friend was dubious but we persuaded her to join us. We went across the
    road and stood on the curb and started thumbing. I at first felt embarrassed and burst into a fit of
    giggling. I finally stopped and recommenced thumbing. Then a lorry stopped. My next worry was being seen
    and recognised by any family friends and relatives. We reached our destination quicker and more cheaply
    than we would have done normally .... After hitching the first time it's far easier to do it
    again&mdash;one is more confident and it's easier to stand on the curb thumbing without laughing. The one
    fear I do have is thumbing anybody my parents know.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  While the decorator's daughter did not hitch because she had never met anybody who had, in other words
  because no one had introduced her to the idea, the clerk's daughter had the idea suddenly thrown at her for
  the first time by a 'student'. She was still a mere schoolgirl and here was a college student willing to be
  her friend, though she was only 16, willing to take her into college society. When she found that
  <strong>hitch-hiking seemed to be the done thing at college</strong>, she naturally didn't want to be out
  of step. After all most of her training both at home and at school had probably been directed to making her
  accept group values. The college group was now the one she aspired to join and so she easily accepted the
  idea of hitching, despite her earlier reservations.
</p>
<p>
  You might object that the difference in attitudes to hitching between the fourth form and sixth form girls
  is simply due to the fact that it is less imprudent for older girls to go thumbing and so there may have
  been a common sense relaxation in parental policy. This does not seem to be the case. The sixth formers who
  come out in favour of hitching report just as much hostility to the habit on their parents' part as do the
  fourth formers.
</p>
<p>
  So for instance this 16 year old commercial manager's daughter:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Hitch-hiking to me is one of the best ways to have an inexpensive, exciting holiday. I think most
    people go hitching for the thrill of it and for the chance of meeting lots of people. One can travel a
    fantastic number of miles by hitching one or two lifts. I myself know some people who by hitching three
    lifts travelled along the coast of Wales in one day.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>My parents disapprove of hitch-hiking. They think it is a way that many people, especially girls,
    can be murdered or bodily assaulted. Perhaps this is true but not every person you hitch a lift from
    would dream of murdering you. It's a risk one has to take&mdash;you have to take a risk in life
    sometimes.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Poor parents, how negative they seem to these 16 year olds:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Hitch-hiking like almost everything else these days, causes a lot of opposition, usually from
    parents. They like to know with whom you are going, and to see if they approve of the person, and also
    where you are going.</strong> (Violin teacher's daughter)
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  To young people thumbing isn't always just a question of narrow conflict with their parents. Often it is a
  means of broadening out of extending horizons to achieve a kind of human freedom it is very difficult to
  evoke with words. It's an emancipation in terms of place and time. You no longer feel bound by these two
  factors which in ordinary life hold you to the board as firmly as pins do a butterfly. It is an
  emancipation from your role in society, be it as a child, a brother, a sister, an apprentice, a student, a
  worker or whatever. It is release from ordinary responsibilities. In a way hitchhiking is a kind of long
  drawn out, pleasurable fantasy&mdash;this is what makes it so attractive to young people, what makes its
  relative hardships seem so trivial and unimportant to them.
</p>
<p>
  Many people who have hitched long distances speak of the sense of liberation it gives them. So this Mexican
  Indian girl:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>I think it's a nice feeling ... a feeling of freedom. I remember being way out in a country, a
    long road I could see for miles and miles, miles away in the distance and no one in the world knows I'm
    here except me. It's a good feeling. It's a nice way to see the land because you can stop off any place
    you want and go climb a mountain, play by a river ....</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Nobody has tabs on her, she can go where she likes, when she likes, for as long as she likes. This kind of
  hitcher avoids planning and thus lives the fantasy of freedom to the full. In <em>All The Time In The
  World</em> Hugo Williams tells how he got himself a lift across the desert from Jordan to Kuwait on a huge
  truck:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p class="c6">
    Chazi seemed to live on curds and bananas and he shared everything with me. He said if I gave him a pound
    in Kuwait, we would pay for what we ate along the way, though in fact it was all put down on the slate. I
    never once saw any Saudi currency. I set out without any currency or supplies. But not entirely by
    accident. I prefer it that way. I hate landscaping my life as far as the eye can see. I like arrival to
    be something more than the result of my calculations. I like it to be a sense of bonus satisfaction ....
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  In an odd sense, though, Williams' feeling of freedom from planning is calculated self-conscious and very
  Western. He plans not to plan, and he is not the only one to do this. Maybe as a civilisation we are so
  tense and overwrought that this is the only way we can let go, short of using chemical means, like drugs or
  drink.
</p>
<p>
  The heady falling in love with hitch-hiking seems in most 'addicts' lives to be a stage passed through but
  which gets naturally sloughed off. This is precisely what happened to the amazing Barbara Starke who in the
  late 1920's hitch-hiked alone across the USA, from her home in the East and back. She did it to escape the
  pressures and the narrowness of her environment, her protestant Yankee family and the obscurantism of her
  college education. In her book <em>Touch And Go</em> she describes the psychological point of her journey:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p class="c6">
    A bus roared powerfully up the hill, choking me with dust. I rose and left the trail, walking back among
    great headlands and red rocks. I was elated at the tremendous isolation. Something which had always
    oppressed me had become ridiculous, I waved a hand to the tall cliffs and they smiled grimly back at my
    laughter. For almost the only time since I had left them I pictured vividly the fussy little principal
    who had guided the desperate clamour of the business school and the thirty three meek girls working at
    their typewriters. Something left me which had never allowed me any peace before; perhaps because of the
    self I had been forced to be. The desperation with which I had started this pilgrimage seemed
    unbelievable .... To be sure I knew my family could still have thrown me into a guilty panic, but after
    many weeks of making my own decisions and not listening to correction and criticism I was beginning to
    feel that I might hold my own in the world at last, and still do things with my own particular flare.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Though she didn't feel very happy about <strong>going back into the net</strong>, after a time on the road
  she <em>wanted</em> to go back to a more normal life:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p class="c6">
    The idea of competing with people on the ordinary conventional basis of everyday business frightened me
    more than anything that might happen as I jogged precariously across the country dressed in corduroy and
    hitch-hiking. But when I decided I had had enough of wandering and it was time I went to New York and
    tried getting a job and living like other people, I became impatient to start ....
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Barbara Starke went back to ordinary life with potent regrets. She had partially worked through the
  emotions triggering off wanderlust, but not by any means completely. To some extent she had to force
  herself back into the net. She still saw life in New York as a net. Most people who have lived through a
  prolonged 'hitch-hiking fantasy' find leaving it, coming out of it, hard, yet at a certain stage in the
  development of the personality the abandonment of hitching seems to impose itself. I was lucky enough to
  catch a Cambridge undergraduate in the middle of the sloughing period, a time of <strong>consolidation, an
  inevitable but very sad part of the growing up process.</strong> He spoke first about the freedom he had
  found in thumbing and then about the fall-away period:
</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>The reason I went out, the reason I hitch-hiked, was to be free, as free as possible from any
    sort of civilised ideas.... You're free from any timetable, you're free from anybody, except the people
    who are giving you lifts. Your travel is independent, time is independent, you're dependent on nothing
    really. if you don't want a lift you just sit there and stew&mdash;you can go where you like, do what you
    like.</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>But now ... um ... the sort of interest of hitch-hiking has grown less and less, and now I only
    hitch-hike when I have to, so to speak. Now it's a means of getting from A to B as opposed to being a
    pleasure. This change goes hand in hand with various other changes ... a complete sort of different
    outlook on life, sort of things no longer sort of seem fresh and appealing, and everything dries up. I
    consider it a change for the worse, ... as far as I can see there's nothing I can do about it. It's a
    sort of growing up process. For the last 19 or 20 years impressions are flooding in upon you and then you
    get to this stage where you have to consolidate and so naturally things don't seem so fresh and so
    terrific ....</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Why do people stop hitching? Usually they don't suddenly consciously stop&mdash;one day it dawns on them
  that they haven't been hitching for a year and maybe wonder why. The two practical events that most often
  mark the end of a person's thumbing career are the acquisition of a car or the arrival of a baby. It is
  extremely strange, but I have never seen or even heard of a couple hitching with a small baby, at least not
  in Britain. You often get young marrieds thumbing but not once they have a baby to cart around. Having a
  baby or getting a car seem to be much more often the end of hitching than leaving college or finishing an
  apprenticeship. (None of this, of course, applies to the 'industrial' hitchers, the car delivery men.)
</p>
<p>
  Cars and babies get more frequent among people in their late twenties, which perhaps explains why, platers
  apart, most hitch-hikers are under thirty.
</p>
<p>
  The end of hitch-hiking is clearly most often determined by practical factors, but it is rare for emotional
  elements not to be involved behind the scenes. When hitch-hiking loses its attraction, and from a pleasure
  turns into a bind, then a man is much more likely to want to buy himself a car. When two people, whose
  hitching started off as adolescent rebellion against over protective parents, marry, establish themselves
  and push their parents into grandparenthood, then the emotional need to hitch is likely to be on the wane.
  They don't need to make gestures of independence, or live out mile after mile of freedom fantasy; they are
  factually, economically, and if they are lucky, psychologically independent. Hitch-hiking has played its
  part in stretching, if not slicing, the umbilical cord.
</p>

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[[Category:Books]]
[[Category:Hitch-Hiking_by_Mario_Rinvolucri]]

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