Way back in the distant past, before I ever drove a car, I heard a tale from a sales representative at work (where I was a spotty maker of merchandising display stuff), about how he’d picked up a young woman hitching in outback Queensland, only to have her demand lots of money. The alternative was that she would cry rape in the next town.
Of course, this was the late Triassic period, and DNA swabs weren’t invented, but Salesman Bill did the best thing he could under the circumstances: he pulled up with her at the cop shop and insisted she accompany him inside. Result: Girl nul points.
Now when I got wheels, I quickly graduated by means of accidents and trade-ins to the kind of vehicle with a less-than-euphemistic nickname.
There were, in those days, onerous duties that go with ownership of such a prestigious conveyance:
Proprieties to be observed in musical taste;
A dress code involving lots of fraying and saltwater immersion;
Hair (see dress code above); and
Incense pong to cover weed odour (or in some cases to mask absence of weed);
And of course, the Code Of Conduct.
As one who had hitched to the coast on one or two occasions, I felt the urge to repay a little of my karmic debt. There were hitchers, always male, so Salesman Bill’s problem never arose. It was a more innocent world back then, anyway.
Skip forward a few years. Gary Numan and Plastic Bertrand have replaced Creedence Clearwater Revival. While my tastes run more to prog rock, even Yes have belatedly given a nod to punk.
Your humble bloggist is now a home-owner bloody fool with an easy-in, punitive-later type of mortgage, and a regular, nondescript type of car. He needs the car, because he has a sizeable drive to do every day from NearbyTown to his office in CapitalCity.
(Always think: if I can afford to buy a place out here in the CheapBurbs, can I afford the commute?)
Still, out of some misguided sense of my faded cheesecloth-clad youth, I picked up a hitcher on the highway, headed toward the city one sunny morning.
Property, he told me, was theft. The world should be fixed up. Nobody should have money, and most definitely cars should be banned.
You bet I let him have the courage of his convictions. Rather than aid and abet such an act of hypocrisy, I just pulled over and said, “Well, we’ll all be walking then, like you will be now.”
***
The real clincher, though, happened a few months later, outbound from town, late in the evening. I’d spotted a bloke with a gallon petrol tin, thumb extended, standing near an overpass, close to a steep road embankment.
You would probably feel the tug on the ol’ Strings Of Compassion too, right? There but for the grace of the Schadenfreude Fairy, and all that? Yep.
I pulled over, but for some reason I looked in the rear-view mirror a little more intently then I may normally have done.
There were four more blokes, running down the embankment toward my stopped car, and I didn’t like the size or manner of any of ‘em.
Exit me, in shower of small stones from the verge.
There we go. I’ve spared you from religious diatribe for yet another day.
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