Hitch Hiking

Hitch hiking Part 1. Jerseyville road, Summer of 1981, Jerseyville, Ontario.

From 2625 Jerseyville road west to Ancaster Public Library.

I'd lived in Jerseyville since I was Eight years old and I'd never really needed to go far from home to see my friends. They'd all lived in, or around the village and were close at hand. That started to change when I turned 13 and was in grade 7. I had since started making friends at school, that lived in Ancaster. At least six miles away.

Up to that point, I'd gone to as many different schools as there were grades. Starting with, Jerseyville school for grade four. That was the very fall we’d moved there from Hamilton, Jason and I had been going to Stinson street School while we lived on Burris street. He had been in grade three, while I'd been in grade four. I'd skipped grade three. I got to skip grade three at Stinson school and go directly to grade four, where math was next. Math that I hated and math that I naturally sucked at. But I held my own, until the move... to Jerseyville. Math was different out there...much harder, the fractions that I used to understand at Stinson school, were suddenly done and I was expectd to know long division and decimal places. I lost my edge. No big deal for the most part. I passed and stuff, but nobody said I had to like it. However, because of the schooling system, I would have been shipped off to Lynden School the next September, while Jason and my new friends languished behind at Jerseyville Elementary for another year. So I was given the option to stay behind and remain in the same grade with Jason and our friends, or carry on and take the bus without them to Lynden. Not a hard choice, I opted to stay back with everyone I knew and loved of course. The next year we all went to Lynden together... but only because our teacher in Jerseyville was fired. So in the end we all had to do grade four in Lynden together anyway. She had been something else, Ms.Noorduyn, a religious nutbar, almost militant. A freak. She was in no way nice to us as a teacher. Any chance she’d get, she’d single someone out and make them cry. She’d set out to make an eight, or nine year old cry. She’d menace us with religion. She was unfit to teach anybody, anything...oh no, wait. She could possibly teach other teachers, the wrong way to teach grade three students in a public school system. She could teach that. One of the things I remember about Miss Noorduyn in grade four, was the lesson on God she gave us all one fine morning at Jerseyville school. I lost my spiritual innocence that morning. So did a number of my close friends too I’m sure. She was very serious in explaining to the class that if we, as children, continued to live in sin, no matter what she deemed that to be... God could and would, at any moment “smite the Earth with a giant boulder.” In those words. Thereby, teaching us all a lesson. Us nine year olds. She spent at least an hour, walking up and down the rows of desks, explaining this in all earnestness. The lesson that morning came complete with a diagram on the chalkboard. A large chalk drawing rendition of our pitiful planet of childish sin. Plus, an equally sized boulder, rapidly approaching the Earth, of course she’d drawn arrows to indicate speed. This giant boulder coming to crush us had apparently been chucked by 'the hand of God' himself. This was just one of many reasons she got herself fired, for being a little wacky in class. This also, just one of the examples that I remember her by. Everyone from that class that I know, have their own memories of her. Even Jason has different memories of her than I do, his own memories. I’m sure we could agree on a lot that we remember about Miss Noorduyn. She was the one who would yank you upright by your ear, knowing that it would naturally make your eyes water and then she’d play up on that and belittle you some more. Maybe make you cry. I’d even heard she rapped knuckles with her ruler. Not mine, I kept mine hidden as she prowled up and down the rows of desks. Grade three and four split . It’s wrong of me to say she got fired, she got transferred from Jerseyville school, to Father Loftus in Ancaster. Then she got fired. Anyway, we all went to Lynden public school for the remainder of grade four, as well as grade 5. It was a way bigger school. It Our whole class, all of the core friends from the village and then some. We all started taking the bus into Lynden together too, every morning and back every afternoon. All the kids from in and around Jerseyville, plus a few kids along the way from Lynden, that we made friends with. Sunny weather, rainy weather, winter, fall, we rode the bus together. For two years, out to Lynden school and back. Our next grade after five at Lynden, was grade six at another new school in Copetown. Which didn’t seem like much of a town at all. It more or less seemed to be the cross roads of Highway 52 and Governer's road. Don’t get me wrong, they had stuff. Obviously they had a general store, which sometimes is the center of town. Copetown had a really cool wooden bridge crossing over the railway tracks. It was a big old wooden bridge too, because they had a few sets of tracks. They had some decent ball diamonds up on the hill by their school. They even had a Holiday Park for trailers, camping and fishing, that I’d been to when I was very young, before Jerseyville. Copetown was where we all bussed to now and went to their school, Queen's Rangers. I guess we’d all be twelve years old then. Just for grade six. Then afterwards, off we went to Ancaster for grades seven and eight at Ancaster Senior 'Pubic'...Things moved fast indeed. This is when I began making friends that I wanted to visit outside of school. My parents would have to drive me, or each set of parents would go halves. My parents would drive me to visit the host and their house and afterwards the host would drive me back home. Sometimes, if it was a shared friend of Jason's and I, then they'd drive us both back. On some occassions though, the ride didn't work out. Somebody was working, somebody else was sleeping, or for whatever reason there was no ride. It happens and it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. I'm still too young to drive at thirteen and committing myself to a bike ride from Jerseyville to Ancaster, just to visit a friend was ludicrous, when I already had friends in the village to hang out with. But when I felt like having a lttle bit more of an adventure, or was invited over, I’d want to get there one way or the other. Sometimes, I was bored and wanted to see my friends on my own terms. Unless I got a ride some other way. So if nobody was able to drive me and I wasn't willing to ride my bike for an hour and a half there and an hour and a half back, taking the long way home, which I did. I'd have to hitch hike. Walking all the way there and back was simply foolhardy and nigh impossible...It was about 7 miles depending on where I was heading. According to Google maps these days, it's 2 hours and 20 minutes to walk from my house to Ancaster library...gee the only other way to get into Ancaster was definitely hitching a ride. Sure there had to be somebody from around where I lived, at some point, driving along Jerseyville road, that recognized me. Maybe they were going into Ancaster for groceries, or for a doctor's appointment, or any possible dozens of reasons. I thought the odds of getting picked up were pretty good. So I put it to the test and stuck out my thumb... And got picked up right away. It was my neighbor from directly across the road from us. Her and her husband had two young children. I think he drove a truck and she worked at the big coffee shop at the top of Jerseyville road and Wilson street. She started to slow down as soon as she recognized me and pulled up, leaning over to roll down the window.

“Are you going into Ancaster?” she asked.

“Yes please!” I said and climbed into her big brown Pontiac of some sort.” I settled in and pulled on my seatbelt, big and comfy, am radio playing ckoc. Yay! The sun was shining and we took off down the road and she said. ” Perfect timing, I was just going to work.”

Now in hitch hiking terms, to me at least, this was considered a ‘Save’. Not to be confused with a 'Rescue' which we shall discuss later. A 'Save' happens when you get picked up without having your thumb in the breeze for more than ten minutes walking. You get picked up right away, couldn't have planned it better...and the bonus, is if you also know the person. They could be a neighbor, the parent of a friend, a school teacher, but you know them. So my first time hitch hiking started with a Save. It was safe, quick and friendly. She dropped me off at Fiddler's green where I wanted. And I set off. Thus launching an illustrious career in hitch hiking. To me it seemed so easy, but also statistically viable. Statistics also play a large role in 'hitch hiking management'. So in my mind, the large number of people from the area that I knew, or knew me, who drove, would take the same road. They may have totally random reasons throughout the day to go into town. Randomly speaking, meant a better set of odds that I'm going to be collected. So off I went to meet up with my friends at the plaza where I thought they might be. So I walked up that way and went to the bowling alley first to see if anyone was playing video games. Maybe Galaga, Pac Man, or some pinball! 'Strikes and Spares', or maybe the 'KISS' pinball machine... but nope. Nobody was there. A few lanes of five pin being bowled, some people at the snack bar eating fries, but noone that I knew. So I left, crossed the parking lot, crossed Wilson street, crossed another parking lot, just to check out the sub shop. But nobody was there either. Yeesh! Then I remembered they sometimes gathered behind Ancaster library, in the park, or at the tennis courts. That meant I would have to walk about 20 minutes down Wilson just to see. So I did and it was worth it. There were at least five people from school there. Just hanging out on the swings and benches. It was nice to see them and they were surprised to see me. I told them I'd hitch hiked in and nobody thought it was that big of a deal. Huh. Maybe it wasn't. We sat around for a while talking and joking around. It was a lot of fun to have done that and get a change of scenery. But I tell you, the way home was nowhere near as easy as the way in. I walked all the way down Jerseyville road, past the highschool. Half the time walking backwards with my thumb out. I walked all the way to Shaver's road maybe seeing a total of five cars between the high school and Shaver's road. Which turns out to be a pretty good stretch of road. But even past there and in through the 'S' bends in the road, which was suicide for hitch hiking, especially at night, in the fog. Over the hills and on to highway 52 intersection I went without a ride. It wasn't until after I'd crossed 52 that I got picked up. This time by somebody I didn't know. Someone from the area, in a muddy pick up truck, old guy. I didn't know him. Dropped me off at Sunnyridge road out front of my house. I started wondering about my theory regarding the statistics involved, but concluded they were good. The math seemed fairly solid. Odds were FOR me. The fact that I got picked up after walking for what seemed like hours, could qualify as a 'Rescue'. A Mild Rescue. I was hot and tired, frustrated and feeling blisters and still turning around to walk backwards while sticking my thumb out, just for a car that would end up driving past. So yes. Getting picked up at such a late stage of the game can be seen as the same thing as being Rescued. There is a big difference between five minutes in a pick up truck cooling off with the window down and another hour and change of walking along the hot dry road with bleeding blisters. So on my first day of hitch hiking and a whole new level of self sufficiency, I experienced a Save and a Rescue. Both of these terms took on whole new meanings in the future.

Because I thought hitch hiking was such an ideal method of getting back and forth I started to get to know my neighbors a lot better, as they drove me there or back. I met people I didn't know, from the outskirts, people from Lynden and Brantford. It was pretty safe, I only had a couple of scary moments, mostly with people driving drunk. But I always pictured myself grabbing the wheel and ditching us if things got weird. I Was never worried about my capabilities to get out of a moving car if the driver pulled a knife, or even a gun...I had also calculated that the odds that I might be forced into a hostage type situation like this, were Very slim indeed. Almost nil.

So I carried on hitch hiking. And you know what? I honestly do not Ever remember asking my parents for permission to do this, to hitch hike off to 'anywhere' in Ancaster. In fact I think how it happened, is that word probably got back to my mom from some one that had picked me up, they were concerned and did she know I was out there, (no pun intended). I don't remember getting punished for it either, but if I did, it didn't deter me. My mom probably added at the end of our debate, "As long as your careful." Either way I continued for years, but it didn't take that long at all for me to realize a huge flaw in my theories concerning 'Hitch hiking and the stastical analysis thereof'. What I had failed to take into account, were the life habits of myself, versus the life habits of the driving population. They were largely different, and I'd failed to realize that. The data cluster my theory was based on, was 'during the day habits' of myself and everyone else. It was my 'Night habits' that proved to be the 'outlier'. As I started to get older, I also started to come home later and later. The rides themselves at night also became fewer and fewer. So it was a matter of timing my hitch hiking, which I was not willing to do for my rides back to the village. This meant I'd often end up leaving Ancaster well after midnight and walking for quite a while without getting picked up. I've walked home a few times. Usually at worst I'd get a ride part of the way, but over time I recognized other factors at play too. Not only was the time of day a factor, but so was weather. Weather was a big factor on whether somebody would, or even COULD bring their car to a stop in time, for me to run up to the car and ask them for a ride. Winter time along a country road was tough. It can be dangerous to walk at the edge of the road in deep snow during daylight. The driver has to steer out of the tire grooves onto fresh snow without sliding and at night it's even worse. So although I didn't like doing it, I did anyway. I always imagined each driver that drove past in a blizzard just a little irritated with me. I pictured them bitching to themself, like, "What the hell is this guy doing out here at night? Is he crazy?" It felt crazy at times yes. But I was a teenager and these buddies of mine I was going into town to see, were becoming well established friendships. I just had to do it and on my own schedule. That meant a lot of night hitching. I had a very generous curfew to work with. If I weren't going to be home before 1am. then I was supposed to call to let my parents know I was going to be late. Then upon returning home I was required to 'check in'. Which was lightly tapping on my parents bedroom door and whispering to them, "I'm home now..." My mom would usually mumble, "Okay, goodnight." It could be any time of the morning, like 4am. but I HAD to do it, or I would lose my priviliges. It worked out fine for me, it was a great deal, because if I did have to walk the whole way home, it most likely would be 4 or 4:30am. All that I'd ever hear from my mother about the late hour, is she'd ask, "How come you were home so late last night?" I'd just say, " I had to walk the whole way home." Invariably she'd say something like, "Oh Jim, I certainly hope you are careful." I'd always reassure her with. "Of course. I'm always careful." Which upon hearing it now, sounds like famous last words...

Fog was really bad for hitch hiking in. I had the opportunity to experience all the different seasons, for several years in a row I did, walking along the soft shoulder of Jerseyville road. There are no street lights out there and when there's no moon either, it's very dark. When you're walking by yourself late at night in the pitch black and the fog, your senses adjust to the environment. By no means is it any great improvement though. I could hear wild dogs and coyotes packing in the distance, but I could never tell how far away they were. Sometimes the barking and yelping sounded as if the pack were getting closer from the right, then instantly the sound would shift and it would seem as though they were still a long way off, miles away... Occasionally, I would startle something in the ditch right beside me and it would take off with a lot of rustling and crunching of dry weeds. Then I'd shriek and take off running too. There was never anyone there to laugh at me for this, but myself. So I would. I'd be panting and laughing with relief. I was a little jumpy maybe, but when the fog was so thick that I couldn't see what was snorting and crunching through the ditch three feet away, my imagination would get carried away with me.

Drivers could never see me until the last second either. I knew this well from watching all the cars that approached without slowing, just barreling along the road doing a hundred. Then right when their headlights picked me out of the fog, they'd lift off the gas and swerve a little bit, sometimes they'd hit their horn too. Which would also scare the shit outta me. Rarely, would I get a ride under these conditions. It's funny, because as I write this, I'm remembering that on most foggy nights I'd have to walk the whole way home. Only a couple times I got picked up by my neighbor across the street, on her way home from her shift at the doughnut shop. Those nights are all classified as 'Rescues'... each time I'd be at least two thirds of the way home. Exhausted and frustrated. I'd probably started out drunk from a party somewhere in Ancaster, maybe even staggering a little at first, but by the time I was a couple miles into it though, the alcohol would start to wear off. That meant that by the time I'd get home I would be pretty much sober, having walked everything off. Which was good when 'checking in' and going to bed, no bed spins either.

I always had my walkman with me and a few good tapes. I went through more than a few Walkmans in my time and lots and lots of batteries. I think I wore a few of my favorite tapes down to faintness, playing them over and over. To this day I associate those albums I brought with me, to hitch hiking and nothing more. I found that some of them worked better during certain seasons than others. Here's a few for instances... During the winter I listened to Pink Floyd Meddle, 'One of these days' and 'Echoes' in my headphones while winter winds whipped snow all around me, carried from empty fields on every side, it just worked! Then during Springtime I might listen to Kim Mitchell, hearing on my Walkman 'All we are' and 'Cameo Spirit' as songs of hopeful renewal in the coming warmer weather. Summertime heat saw a few different favorites, 'Creedence Gold' for one and Max Webster's 'Mutiny up my sleeve' with 'Waterline' and 'Here among the cats'... While in the fall, for some reason I tended to listen to Zeppelin 2, 'Ramble on' of course, or Zeppelin 4, 'When the levee breaks' and 'Stairway to heaven.' I don't know why these albums worked so well for me during these seasons of hitch hiking, but they did. Now these songs carry all kinds of good memories for me, as well as meaning. Obviously that's the case for most people when it comes to their favorite music.

Some days it felt like I had no luck at all. Hitch hiking into town, I always felt more relaxed than I would on the way back. This was only because on my way in, I was fresh and feeling 'Gung ho' and it was still early in the day. Even if I weren't getting any rides, I was still happy enough to just be out and walking, walking towards my end goal, Ancaster and my friends. Since I've always been kinda 'outdoorsy', you might say, I liked walking down this country road. Ever since we'd moved to Jerseyville, I liked being able to explore the countryside, the woods and ponds and creeks. One of my earliest friends, just outside of the village, lived on a cattle farm of Holsteins. Holsteins are the black and white ones, the Milk cows. The first few times he invited me over to his house for dinner I was probably just nine years old. My mother drove me there so I could play with my friend and afterwards my friend's father drove me home. It was just less than a five minute drive. Not far at all by car. I didn't think it was that far for walking either. So as is my style as a lone wolf, I started taking the intitiative by calling him up to see if I could come over and play. Rather than trying to arrange rides, I would just walk there. I remember his mother asking how I got there. When I told them I'd just walked there, his mother seemed surprised. "That's a long way, isn't it?" She asked me. I chuckled and said, "Not really, it wasn't that bad. Honest." I smiled and shrugged. Then she said this, and it stuck with me for years after. "It's just a hop, skip and a jump for you then?" I laughed at that, it was good. "Yeah, I guess so."

From then on after, every time I walked over to play with my friend and have lunch, or dinner and sleep over. As soon as I kicked my shoes off in the mudroom, she'd look in and say, "Just a hop, skip and a jump. Right Jim?" I always laughed and said, "Yep. That's right." Cuz after the first couple times, it pretty much was.

Walking was just part of exploring, part of getting to the creek, ponds, or wherever it was I wanted to be. Some places were quite a bit further than others. Something you had to do if you wanted to get anywhere without a driver's license, or public transit. So my friend's mom was right. Walking to their milk farm WAS just a hop, skip and a jump, compared to some of the other all day hikes I went on, including hitch hiking. They lived on Jerseyville road, so often while I was hitch hiking into town I'd end up walking past their house and then some. If I reached their house on the way back, that meant I was almost home and may as well give up trying to get a ride. That was never good. One of the first times I failed to hitch a ride home, I remember how put out I felt. I started getting upset after the first mile and a half. Feeling badly that no one had stopped yet and hoping somebody would soon. As car after car passed me on the shoulder with my thumb out, I got frustrated and then angry. How come nobody was stopping. It's hard not to take it personally. One of the first lessons that I learned in the 'Art of hitch Hiking' though is, "Do not take it personally." Not everyone knows who you are, not everyone will recognize you either, even if they do know you. There are many reasons that they may not recognize you. The sun could be in their eyes, they may not even see you until the last second. They could be thinking about something important and not even looking to see who you are. It's kind of presumptious to expect a ride from anybody in fact. Basically you're a beggar at the side of the road begging to share their automobile with them. It wasn't as if I walked with a sign saying, "Will pay for gas." either. So yeah, they had no obligation whatsoever to pull over and offer me a seat in their car. It took a while for this to sink in though. For every car I watched whip past with only the driver and no passengers, I'd think to myself, "Oh come on! You've got room." I could understand if there were kids in the car, or if the driver were elderly or a woman. I'd be reluctant myself, to stop and pick up a stranger on some back, country road, if I had children in the car. So I got it, but still, it's hard to watch all kinds of four door cars and pickup trucks go by, with no passengers at all and a male at the wheel. That's when I started to get a little irritated. Selfish maybe, of who though? Me? Expecting them to stop for me? Or selfish of them for not picking me up when they have no other passengers. Heck, obviously I'm a kid from around there. There's no way a crazed killer or escaped convict is going to be out in broad daylight, hitch hiking and just waiting for a cop to come along. Get real.

I always walked while hitching, it's what you have to do. That way, if in the worst case scenario, you don't get a ride, you at least get to where you want, under your own power. This is important in the long run. If you stand still and don't get picked up, then you don't get anywhere, that's quite a gamble. I liked to hedge my bets by walking.

It was still daylight, late afternoon in fact and there was plenty of traffic. Nobody was stopping however. A couple of cars had slowed and flashed their brake lights, but then continued on their way. When you're hot, tired and your feet are blistered, those ones are the worst. I was always hopeful when I heard a car. Out there you can hear a car coming from a couple miles off. The hiss of tires on the ashphalt is loud enough... I was at the point that when I heard a car coming, I'd turn around with my thumb out and be saying to myself, "Please stop, Please stop, Please, Please, Please, Please stop..." It'd just whizz past without slowing. Defeated I'd turn around and carry on, trudging through the gravel on the shoulder, my blisters painfully rubbing against my ankles and heels of my sneakers. I was so tired and sore and just plain fed up, I didn't even want to bother anymore. Now I WAS embarrassed, for being foolish enough to put myself into this situation. But I couldn't give up yet either. I was still too far from home to just quit and resign to walking the last three miles or so. So whenever I heard the familiar hiss of tires on pavement miles off in the distance, I was then compelled to at least try. I'd spin around and see the car approaching, as it crested the rise of each hill, getting closer and closer. The sunlight glinting off it's windshield as the sun sank lower in the sky. Out would go my thumb, whiz would go the car as it sped past. Denied again, but not quite defeated, I still had miles to go. So I kept walking, every now and then I'd take a deep breath, straighten my back and do my best to ignore the stinging blisters that had long since burst, Just raw skin now. I walked up hills and down hills, luckily for me, I wasn't one to suffer from cramps, or I'd be truly screwed. I finally got to the first creek to pass under Jerseyville road, what I called, 'Koeppe's creek'. After the name of the Dutch family that owned the pasture there where Jersey cows grazed. Some of the last remaining Jersey cows, brought there by Dutch settlers. I was getting close to my friend's Holstein farm now too. When I walked up the hill after crossing Koeppe's creek, the Holstein farm property started just past the top of the hill on the right and it was then that I decided I'd give up. Cuz now, it was just a hop, skip and a jump away from Jerseyville proper. I'd walked all this way after spending the day walking about town with my friends, and apart from being exhausted and sore, I saw no point in hitching the last mile. So that's how it was, as I passed the pasture full of black and white cows on the right. Not even trudging anymore, shuffling would be a better description of how I was now walking. I had used up the last of my strength somewhere past 52 highway and found it more painful lifting my feet and putting one in front of the other, than if I just shuffled along the gravel shoulder. Shuffling was easier on my burst blisters. Now when I heard a car coming, I didn't bother to turn around and stick out my thumb, save myself the embarrassment. So when I heard the car slowing as it passed and then pulled over and stopped, I hardly believed they were stopping for me. They had though, so when I walked alongside the car and they leaned across the seat popping open the door and said, "Get in. Do you wanna ride?" I was temporarily stunned, but managed to say, "Oh my god yes. Thank you." I didn't know who they were, but they said they'd seen me walking as they'd driven into Ancaster going the opposite way and saw that I was still walking on their way back. so they thought they'd offer me a ride. If I hadn't been so close to home by then, it would have classified as a 'Rescue'. Since I'd given up at this point though, the only way I could describe it was a 'Gift of mercy'. The first in my career of hitch hiking, but by no means my last. I had barely settled into the seat, enjoying the breeze from the open window drying my sweat, when I had to say, "Right here at the stop sign, at Sunnyridge road." I thanked them and climbed out of the car, just in front of my house. I walked up the driveway to our side door and let myself in to the coolness of our dining room. Home at last. It'd be a few days at least before I attempted hitch hiking into Ancaster again. It took a few days for my blisters to heal and to recover my strength, before I set out on my next adventure, hitch hiking from Jerseyville to Ancaster. I never complained to anyone about not getting a ride, just like how I never asked permission to hitch hike to begin with. It was just something I got used to, the same as how my parents got used to the idea of me sticking my thumb out anytime I felt like going 'into town' to see my friends from school. Some things you get used to, others though, you never quite get used to them at all... It all depends on where you want to go and the time of year you want to get there.