It’s not a thing that happens anymore but how I loved it. Choose a destination in your head. Walk to the side of the road. Extend your arm out and raise your thumb like the symbol on Facebook, then wait. As in learning to play the drums the fundamentals of hitching are easy to pick up but once you get into the subtleties it gets far more complicated. The contract is simple, someone gives you a free ride and you fit in around their personality. If they are chatty and effusive then you must regale them with stories and find common ground. If they are quiet and inattentive then you should dissolve into the background just a shadow presence. Getting a ride depends on how you look, non-threatening is best. Girls will get more lifts than boys so let them take the lead. Choose a collared shirt over tye-die, short hair over long, hide any tattoos, remove any challenging piercings, (read: any that are not in your ears).
I came to hitching while it was moving into its final days but I rode the wave until it was flat. The second last ride I ever got was on the road outside of Port Elizabeth trying to get back to Makhanda, a distance of about 120km. We had been partying in the windy city over the weekend. There was a nightclub we liked to go to that played alternative music. Patrons would arrive wearing every shade of black, except for their Doc Martins, which could be any colour. They would stand around looking unfeasibly cool or, if the mood took them, they would sway slightly to the beat of the drum.
When the doors finally shut it was late enough that the first birds were singing but early enough that the sky was still dark. We were a group of six. My best friend Chris and I decided that we wanted to hitch home right then. Why I could not tell you. The others decided to get a motel room for the night. The highway home was a short walk from the club so we enjoyed the night air, a breeze off the ocean made everything just fine. We spent the next hour on the side of the road trying to get a ride as cars blasted past us taking advantage of the early hour to smash the speed limit. Eventually a truck stopped and gave us a lift about 20 kilometres down the road. This put us on the edge of the city, which, hopefully, meant it would be easier to get a lift.
Two hours later we were still on the side of the road with all hope lost and joy banished from our hearts. We were just about to give up and go and sleep in a ditch when a yellow bakkie (pick-up) pulled over. We hopped into the back without questioning and the vehicle bombed off. Riding in the back of a bakkie is its own special pleasure. We lay back and enjoyed the hum of the engine. As we lay there, we noticed that the back of the car was littered with empty bottles of beer that were rolling back and forth. We peered in through the back window and saw that the car had no gearshift. Instead the driver had rammed a large knife in the place where the stick should have been and he seemed to be moving the gears up and down with it. In unison we understood that we had been picked up by two car thieves who had just stolen a car. There wasn’t much we could do until the car stopped so we just sat and waited, silently.
About 10 minutes later the car lurched to the right and crossed into the oncoming lane and then the engine cut out and the car slowly coasted to a stop on the side of the highway. The two guys in front opened their doors an bolted off into nowhere without looking back. We climbed out the back and started walking down the road thumbs raised. Waiting for what would be the last ride I would ever hitch. It was an old flatbed lorry that smelled of cattle manure and had a top speed of 20 km/h. It took us home as I drooled on my friend’s shoulder, exhausted and tired, the romance of the open road.
I wish I could ask those two thieves why they stopped for us.
