Month: May 2020

A little back story: One of the things that I am most afraid of is being stuck on the side of the road. This fear goes so deep that I am a very nervous traveler and I grew to dread long trips in our old cars (it’s not so bad since we bought our Subaru). If the “check engine” light, or any of those warning lights, comes on, I have to actively fight against panicking. Because of this fear of mine, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone that is stuck on the side of the road. If I see a person walking on the road I feel compelled to stop and ask if they need help. I try to stop if I see a car broken down on the road to offer my help. I do all this because I know that if I were in that position I would be freaking out a little. I’ve helped push several cars down the street for a stranger, I’ve changed a few tires (and plugged one), and I’ve also picked up some hitchhikers that needed a ride. By “some,” I mean I’ve probably given 20 to 30 people a ride. Some times we were going the same way, some times they only needed to go a couple of miles in some direction. My second to longest drive with a hitchhiker was something like 30 minutes. Now, I do have personal rules with hitchhikers. I never give someone a ride when any family member is with me. If I’m riding with a friend, my friend has to agree before I even ask the person if they would like a ride. And, my last rule is no smoking in the car. I also would never want Emily to pick up a hitchhiker, it’s far too dangerous. =)

With all the people I’ve given a ride to, all of them were thankful, all of them only needed a little help to get a little farther down the road. They have all been courteous, respectful, and generally pleasant. We’ll talk and swap life stories, and, when we get to where they need to go, they’ve said “thank you” and I’ve left feeling like a did a good thing for my fellow man. This is true of all the hitchhikers I have picked up, all but one.

Emily moved to South Carolina before I did. She moved there to start her first veterinarian position after having just completed her internship at UGA. I was still living in Athens, trying to pack up all our things and sell our house (still technically own that house). I was working at the vet school during the day, packing and cleaning at night, and I would take a truck load of boxes or furniture to our rented house in South Carolina every weekend. To get from one house to the other was about a three hour drive, and this was well before the time of GPS on our phones. GPS devices were totally a thing, but we didn’t have one. I had some printed off directions that I would follow. I held on to these printed directions like crazy for the first few trips, but by the third or fourth trip I thought I knew exactly how to get where I was going. I didn’t even bring the directions on the fateful “hitchhiker” trip to Newberry.

I had been driving for about an hour and a half. I was in a fairly large town in South Carolina when I lost my confidence in my mental map. I made a few hesitant turns down streets that looked right, but they weren’t. And I was lost. I pulled my truck into a parking lot and started to look for the printed out directions that I knew weren’t in the truck. I only looked for a minute or two until a nice person came up to me and asked if I needed help. How great! I told him I was lost and where I wanted to go. Luckily for me, he knew how to get there and it was, as he said, “In the same direction that I need to go.”

“Fantastic!” I said. “Hop in, I’ll give you a ride.” So, this nice man threw a heavy looking backpack into the truck bed and climbed aboard. He just needed to go down the road a few minutes, and it would put me on the path to Newberry. He started giving me directions, turn at the light and go down two blocks, that kind of thing and then I asked him where he needed to go. He said Greenville. That didn’t mean anything to me, I didn’t know where Greenville was in relation to where we were. We drove in a generally northern direction, which was odd because Newberry was basically east of Athens and I was pretty sure I wasn’t so lost as to be way south of where I needed to be. We started to leave the town, driving distinctly north now. Me and the hitchhiker were chatting, mostly sports stuff (sports are an easy icebreaker) and he seemed like a nice guy. And then I saw the road sign telling me how far Greenville was. Greenville was 50 miles north.

I told the guy that 50 miles was too far, I had to get to Newberry to see my wife. I told him that I would drop him off in the next town no problem, but I had to leave him there. I couldn’t drive two hours out of my way. He listened to me, he let me explain that I was sorry but I had to get to Newberry, I said Greenville was just too far; and then he pulled a knife out of his pocket. He never held it up to me, but he did hold it up so I could see it. It was a big knife. Bigger than I thought would comfortably fit in a pocket. (It might have looked bigger because of the threat it implied.) Then he said, “No, I think you can go all the way to Greenville.”

After he made it clear that Greenville was going to be our destination, he calmly put the knife on his lap and started trying to have conversations with me again. He talked about t.v. shows he liked, and other trivial topics. I tried to act cool, I tried to be comfortable in the situation, but it was so hard to stay calm and simply drive. We got to the south edge of Greenville and he had me pull into a fast food parking lot where a friend was waiting. I have no idea what I hauled in that backpack he had, but that is the only thing he took when we arrived. And, to his credit, he told me to get on I-385 to get back down to Newberry.

That was the only truly terrifying experience I’ve had while simply trying to help out another person. And I haven’t let it deter me from picking up hitchhikers. I know most people are good people. Even my one “bad” hitchhiker only showed me that he had a knife. It could have been so much worse. He didn’t rob me, he didn’t steal my stuff. He could have, but he only took a ride. I’m not blind to the problems of the world. I know that there are some people out there that would have robbed me or worse, but I truly think those people are few and far between that it is worth the risk for me to lend strangers a helping hand when I can.