Today’s guest post was written by Jim Casada.
One meaningful and enjoyable aspect of my later youth which continued on in to early adulthood has to a considerable degree vanished not only from the mountain scene but from the country in general. That was hitchhiking or, in the terminology far more commonly used at the time, thumbing a ride.
Thumbing, especially among teenagers and young adults, was quite commonplace in the 1950s and 1960s. Relatively few folks making up that age group owned or had steady access to a car. I don’t think there were more than a half dozen folks in my senior high school class (Swain High class of 1960) who owned an automobile. There were almost a hundred of us and I’m certain of precisely three such individuals. All were boys.
That situation changed some, but not a great deal, in college. A few day students owned vehicles but I don’t recall a single member of my class who resided on campus owning a vehicle. Personally level, I got my first car the summer after my graduation from college when I had a job and would be able to make monthly payments on the vehicle.
Since most young folks lacked a car, they rode the bus to and from school, perhaps borrowed a parental vehicle periodically for dates, double dated with some friend fortunate enough to have transportation, or did without. Otherwise to get somewhere you rode “shank’s mare” (walked) or thumbed.
For some situations, special arrangements were made. Daddy and many other local men, for a number of years, drove football players to their homes in scattered locations all over the county.
For the most part though, and this was especially the case during summer and daylight hours, boys just thumbed. I worked in Cherokee for all or portions of three summers and never had a truly regular ride. My daily routine was to walk to the upper end of Main Street above St. Joseph’s Catholic Church about 30-45 minutes before I was supposed to be at work. Seldom indeed did 10 minutes pass before I had a ride. Sometimes it only took me to where Highway 441 turned left at the main intersection in Cherokee and headed towards the Park. If so, I’d walk the remainder of the distance to my workplace if I had time. Otherwise I started thumbing again.
In the afternoons I could usually “bum” a ride with some adult who working in a nearby motel or gift shop, but if not, my thumb would invariably get me back to Bryson City in good order. Catching a ride after dark was more problematic, but other than a few evening visits to one or two girls who lived in that part of the county, that wasn’t a factor.
I do remember once walking and jogging home from the Birdtown area around 10:00 p. m., cutting off a bit of distance by taking the old River Road on the north side of the Tuckaseigee where the bridge at what is today Darnell Farms is located. That trek probably involved six miles or so, but I didn’t give it a second thought.
Only once ever did I experience real failure connected with reliance on thumbing for transportation. The second semester of my junior year in college ( spring of 1963), a friend and I decided, more or less at the last moment, to thumb from Bristol, TN to Bryson City for a long weekend. We set out on a Thursday afternoon and made it to Maggie Valley in pretty good order. One ride took us to Johnson City, a second one to Asheville, and a third one to a Maggie Valley.
By that point it was late afternoon, with light fading fast, and there wasn’t much traffic heading up the mountain towards Soco Gap and on to Cherokee. To make matters much worse, after a half hour it started snowing hard.
At that point my buddy and I realized we were in trouble and, after a bit of discussion, I phoned Dad in desperation. He came to get us, missing his regular Rotary Club meeting and decidedly unhappy with the whole situation, but even then he said nothing about the folly of thumbing. Indeed, come Sunday and time to return to Bristol we set out thumbing again. Apparently, since I have no recollection of that return trip, the snow was gone and we caught rides without trouble.
In today’s world the idea of a teenager out thumbing seems completely out of the question. Safety issues come immediately to mind, and I doubt if anyone reading this is likely to pick up one of the rare hitchhikers you see today. Yet thumbing was commonplace three generations back, especially when it came to getting around the local area, and since everyone seemed to know everyone else, getting a ride wasn’t usually a problem. It was a simpler, safer, and dare I say it, saner time.
—Jim Casada
I hope you enjoyed Jim’s post as much as I do. I’ve never hitchhiked before. I used to pick up Danny Wilson when I’d see him walking in Brasstown but he’s the only person I can remember picking up and that was only because I knew him. Now that I think about it, I think I picked up Tommy Teems once or twice too. Again only because I knew him. Both Danny and Tommy are gone from this ole world now.
Like Jim, Pap thumbed his way around. Once he hitchhiked all the way back from California where he’d been working with his uncle.
Another time Pap was hitchhiking that same section on Soco that Jim was. His buddy Harold Kernea was with him. I can’t recollect where Pap said they’d been, maybe Canton. On their way back across Soco the rides got scarce and they were walking way up in the middle of the night. He said they finally had to go off the road into the woods and build a fire to warm by till they were rested enough to go on.
Now that Tommy Teems has come to mind, I remember he told me when he was a boy he could remember Pap’s grandfather Jule Elliott “laying a corpse” in his parents house. Jule was shot and the funeral was held at Tommy’s house.
Last night’s video: What’s For Supper: Baked Fried Chicken, Butter Beans, Fried Squash, Cornbread & Granny’s Salad.
Tipper
This is something I really know about. As a kid, about 14 to 15, we’d occasionally thumb about town just to save time. At about 16 to 17 my parents would actually let me hitch up to our summer camp in winter to use the snowmobile and stay in our camp trailer on my own. There was usually lots of walking too. After graduating high school I asked them if I could thumb to California from Boston, with a good friend they knew well. They gave us an address of my uncle and away we went. For the next 5 years, I hitchhiked from Boston to the Silicon Valley in CA back and forth at least twice a year. Every time I tried to take a different highway to visit more states. Also, many side thumbs into the northwest and Canada. Never really stopped adventuring and after living in many, many different places, we chose right here in Culberson.
Johnson City ( J.C.) and Bristol is right above us. I was going to work the
other morning, when i saw this woman/girl had her thumb out , hitching a ride. She was I think going the other way. I thought I haven’t seen that in yrs. You can’t be to careful now a days.
I was a day student at UNC in Chapel Hill from ’60 to ’64 traveling in my 1950 Ford sedan. After classes on Friday, I would always find a dozen or more fellow students on Highway 54 East with thumbs outstretched. I always picked up as many as would join us and took them back to Raleigh with me. Most of the hitchhikers were headed to Eastern NC (Wilmington, Morehead City, etc.) or Virginia. I would take each one to the edge of town on the highway they were taking and drop them off. I must have ferried hundreds of them during that period.
Many years later – in the ’80s – I took some graduate courses related to my employment. I was driving a Mercedes then, but there were never any hitchhikers wanting a lift East on Friday afternoons. One can only speculate about why the practice stopped, but I think it was because most students had their own cars . . . that, and hitching had become too dangerous. I think freshmen were still barred from having cars in Chapel Hill, but I knew a few whose families had bought co-op condos for them who kept cars and used commercial parking lots to commute from Durham to Chapel Hill. It’s amazing to observe how much has changed in 60 years . . . until I realize that 60 years before my matriculating at UNC was 1900 when cars were few and horses many. A daily commute from Raleigh to Chapel Hill – even by bus – would have been impossible in 1900. To my knowledge, there was never any train service from Raleigh to Chapel Hill, although there was a line to Durham; and there might have been a connection to Chapel Hill from there. Even so, train schedules would probably have made commuting impossible.
The last time I drove the “old River Road” was just after the river had flooded and receded enough to get through. There wasn’t a lot of road left but I made it. It was just a one lane gravel road and rough in good times. It washed out at least once a year.
I have already wrote too much but “laying a corpse” makes me think of my youth when it was common to bring the corpse/body back home. I mention on Memorial Day of having a cousin killed in Vietnam in March of 1968. Mine and his grandmothers were sisters. My grandmother died in February of 1968 and her body was brought home. Alfred came buy to visit the family and shipped out to Vietnam the next morning, he was only there for 6 weeks. I often think about this, I was 14 at that time.
Alfred was your 2nd cousin.
Thank you, Tipper, for sharing Jim’s great post with us today. I truly enjoyed reading it.
I have never hitch-hiked. I have, however, stopped many times to pick up those who were “thumbing.” I recall only one time my ride-sharing practice resulted in the very real threat of harm. Fifty years ago I, a timid woman in my early twenties, stopped my car when I saw a well-dressed, fully adult male standing by the side of the road. I asked where he was headed. He told me. Since where he was going was on my way, I invited him in.
After two minutes of riding in silence, the man turned toward me and put his hand on my knee.
I don’t know why I did it, but I immediately turned on the radio. Full Blast.
After about thirty seconds of listening to ear-shattering Christian music, the man shouted, “Stop the car!”
I did.
He got out.
I drove away. Music still blasting.
For years afterward, the memory of that brief encounter made me shake like a leaf in a gale.
Truly, that man was not the only one who had a hand on me that day.
I can’t understand why either Jim or Pap would have chosen to cross through Soco Gap when the road through Waynesville and Balsam Gap was easier. Crossing over Soco is more scenic but also is much more dangerous. I never would have ridden across that stretch of road with someone I didn’t know, and a lot I do know!
Good grief, Tipper, reading you is like listening to my great Aunt Hazel. She was big on picking up folks on the 30 mile stretch from town to town in her yellow ‘65 Ford Falcon. I was a visiting city kid and I would say, “You sure you know them?” Before they got in the car. It was especially thrilling on the way back because they could be escaped convicts from the McAlester penitentiary. She would say something like, “Don’t you worry none, Johnny boy, they just want to get home to their folks.” Sometimes her driving made even a grown man clutch the dashboard.
It was very common to see folks thumbing when I was young. If I was with Daddy on the truck and someone was thumbing, he would have them get in the back. Most always we knew who they were. Mama and I use to pick up a nice old man that went to our church and on Saturdays if we were headed to town and saw him thumbing, we would always pick him up. My, how times have changed. These days, it’s just not safe and most folks have a cell phone. Thank you Jim for a wonderful story that brought back some fond memories and thank you Tipper for sharing it.
I “thumbed” rides many times when young – and foolish – and also picked up some who ‘looked’ safe enough – but back in that time, giving and catching rides was popular and safe. Until it wasn’t. I recall a young mother in her early 30’s picked up two twelve-ish aged boys – it was in a rural country area not far from my community – so kind of isolated – anyway, they ended up overpowering her -they both had concealed knives and a small pistol type gun and a rope, and they killed her after torturing her. Tipper, that was quite a sudden change of thought with how you ended this blog on hitch-hiking!!
I thumbed rides until I was almost 20 years old. (Early 1960’s) I could always get a ride in daylight but by the time the movie was over or the pool room closed there was very little traffic on the way home so that six miles was walked or run. I still picked up hitchhikers until I got married in 64. I still stop when I see people stopped on the roadside with the hood up. Sometimes I offer the use of my phone or a ‘jump’ start. I always stop for women alone especially if my wife is with me.
I never did any “hitchhiking” where I stood on the side of the road with my thumb out and was picked up to be transported “on down the road”, but have accepted rides from people as I was waking or one of my old cars had “took out” on me and broke down somewhere. I do remember seeing people with their thumbs out when I was growing up and this usually occurred on the way to the Gulf Coast (4-lanes such as U.S. 31 or I-65). I rarely saw anyone “hitching” where I was raised. I do recall a memory that has always stayed in my mind of man who rode my school bus to town every morning for a while when I was in the first grade. The man was probably in his late 40’s or early 50’s. He was clean and dressed neatly in pressed Liberty overalls, an ironed shirt, and shiny black lace up boots. He carried an axe and even at that young age, I could see that it was sharp and well cared for. Right before the bus turned into the school, my driver would stop before turning and let him off the bus. I have no idea who the man was or how he got back to where he came from as he did not ride the bus in the evening. In those days (circa 1970) people still lived somewhat “primitively” and many older ones did not own a car. I can remember that my mother’s mother never got a drivers license and didn’t have car until late in life and then, hardly ever drove it. This “hitching” of a ride on the schoolbus by the stranger only went on every day for about a month. Today, I know almost every family (at least by name) or a part thereof, but in those days our bus crossed the county line into Lawrence and I suppose the man was from up that way and didn’t own an automobile and had taken some job near town that required an axe. I pick up distressed motorists or stop to assist as most does everybody where I live that was raised around here, but hardly ever see anyone anywhere hitching anymore.
We teenage boys did lots of local thumbing, just as Jim described. Most such experiences were unremarkable. Only two went sour. Both involved alcohol. I accepted a ride from Oconee State Park to Walhalla on a motorcycle operated by a drunk. Never got on another one. On an even more dangerous occasion, I was hitchhiking from Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Walhalla to my home in Anderson. Just out of Seneca, two men picked me up, then a second boy a few hundred yards down the road. The driver was a drunken fool who enjoyed swerving into the oncoming lane to scare us. Then his companion took a swig, passed the bottle to the driver, and started waving a revolver around. Thankfully, the one with the pistol soon had to pee, and when that car stopped, I mouthed to the other kid, “Let’s go!” and hit the woods. He froze, scared stiff, I guess. He stayed put. As I studied my predicament, I decided I could safely thumb southbound traffic, but I’d duck back out of sight of anyone northbound, for fear the drunks would come back and maybe shoot at me for fun. I eventually got another ride, for which I was very grateful. I always wondered what happened to the other boy.
Hitchhikin is scary busy to me, and to many others I guess, nowadays……bc this past winter on a main two lane highway in our area, an accident victim nearly froze to death tryin to get a ride, in the middle of the night, after their car had went over a ravine and crashed. The victim finally started dangerously waving cars down in the middle of the highway and someone finally called the police, and the police rescued the accident victim. The tv report said the victim had been out in the below zero temps nearly an hour trying to stop ppl for help. We have the usual hitchhikers in our area, but every now and again I’ll spot an unknown hitchhiker.
My ex-husband was known to pick up hitchhikers since we dated until we divorced. He hated to drive and would often turn the wheel over to any of the strangers he picked up. One pair of hitchhikers still give me nightmares when I think about them. My ex-husband got in the back seat and quickly went to sleep while I listened to their whispers and watched the body language of the two I quickly decided were escaped convicts or felons on the run. My daughter and I had an angel watching over us that day and it wasn’t my ex-husband.
Tipper, Jim Casada’s story was a real glimpse back in time!
My Dad and his cousin fancied themselves to be singing cowboys when they were young and would thumb from Tennessee to Virginia a lot, working for kinfolk in the fields up there some and making music with them. They always had such good stories to tell! Those were definitely more innocent days.
Whoa, bucko! How in the world do you end one story on “thumbing” by stating that your friends grandfather got shot and killed?!? I enjoyed your article all right, but, what an ending!
Jule wasn’t a friend’s grandfather. He was Pap’s grandfather. Tipper’s great grandfather! I enjoy Tipper’s writings too! Especially when there is history involved. Someone ought to write a book based on the murder of Jule Elliott.
Tipper, I haven’t heard the term “laying a corpse” since Buck was a calf.
Nuff said about that then.
I have never hitchhiked. I would have been to afraid to, even in my youth. My hubby used to just walk or run everywhere. He told me that one time, when he was pretty young, he and a buddy were walking, and decided to try to thumb a ride. A man and woman in a car pulled over, and he and his friend got in the back seat. He said the man was out of his mind…maybe drinking or drugs…but he was driving so fast and crazy that he was scared they were gonna die. His buddy quickly said they needed out here—which was only about two miles down the road—and lucky for them, the man pulled over, and let them out. That was the last time he thumbed a ride with a stranger. He said a couple times, people he knew just picked him up while walking, but never again did he hitch with a stranger. His dad bought him a motorcycle later on, and I enjoyed many rides with him. Then, when he was a senior, his older brother gifted him an old car. He spent many hours working on it and got it running. He picked me up for school a few times, but we still mostly rode the bus. I still see hitchhikers occasionally…and I feel bad…but I would never pick up a stranger.
Never hitchhiked myself either. It always seemed like a risky proposition to me. By the tome I was old enough to do so it was beginning to be frowned upon as not being very safe.
Plus I hate to think what my parents would have done if they found out.
In 1959 my brother in law was in the Air Force stationed at Homestead,Fl. He hitch hiked from there to Water Valley, Ms in two days. He wore his military uniform which he attributed to being able to get rides easily. I picked up one person, about 1963. He was standing beside his car with a flat tire and no spare. My wife was very uncomfortable with giving him a ride and asked that I not do that again. One other time( 2016 ) I picked up a fellow who had run off the road who had been drinking. I carried him home before the highway patrol got there to keep him from getting a DUI charge, right or wrong. Here in west Tn I hardly ever see anyone thumbing.
Jim’s (mostly) fond memories of “thumbing” rides bring back many of my own teenage experiences from the ’60s, when both local and long distance hitchhiking were commonplace. In one memorable adventure I thumbed from Central Florida to Washington, DC in two rides. We got there faster than the Greyhound bus, though I did have to drive through the wee hours while the Buick owner slept in the back seat! It’s my recollection that hitchhiking died out during the early 1980s.
Fully understand the concept. Daddy would let me and my sister drive his old Mercy sometimes on weekends. We had to jump start it with a screwdriver. Never were we allowed to be separated. There was 13 months between us. we dated boyfriends together, worked the same places, had our kids weeks apart, got married weeks apart and still today at 76 and 77 we are close. There were 10 of us kids and we all love and care for each other to this day. God bless. Enjoyed the reminder.
This is such a good memory, and absolutely would not pick up anyone unless I knew them. Last night’s video was very good. I never used that recipe for chicken bit sure will try it now, seems like it would be easier. Continued prayers for Granny and for Cities upcoming birth! God bless you and yours. ❤❤
Yeah, that’s not a safe thing to do these days. I remember people out thumbing a ride when I was a kid in the 70’s. My dad would always let them ride in the bed of his truck.
Jim is sure a good storyteller.
Thumbing a ride was common in my youth…with the boys. The girls never did unless it was a girlfriend that picked you up (or your brother).
I remember when it was common to see “hitchhikers” on the main highway. Daddy would often times pick them up. Out in the country where I lived you didn’t see many people “thumbing”on the back roads. As a teenager, I either walked or rode a bicycle to my friends homes. I also remember when in high school, 1968-1972, not many kids had cars to drive and most of the ones that did drove “junkers.” Some of the boys at age 16 would start working full time 40 hours weeks on either the second or third shift at a local cotton/textile mill while still going to school to buy a better or even new car. Go by a high school now and the large parking will be full of cars better/ newer than I drive. I laugh and tell people when I turned 16, I started driving a 60 passenger yellow heavy Chevy for two years. In today’s world it is sad to me to not be able to pick up someone walking or stop and help someone that might be having car trouble, it is too dangerous. It especially bothers me to pass by a women, the only comfort I have when I pass by someone with car trouble is that most people now have have cell phones.