Category Archives: hitchhiking

TOO LATE FOR THE HAIGHT by Peter Nolan Smith

May 30, 2021 – 6:49 am

The bus from Sacramento crossed the bay in light traffic. Most people in the Bay Area had off Memorial Day. The uniformed driver veered off the bridge and entered the TransBay Terminal. Once he parked in the depot, I grabbed my bag from the underneath storage compartment and entered the station. Holiday passengers were forming […]

By Peter | Also posted in 70s, California, fights, semi-fiction, The West, Travel | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

VALLEY OF POT by Peter Nolan Smith

April 17, 2021 – 10:33 am

August 1972 was five years past San Francisco’s Summer of Love. A college friend from Crane’s Beach and I had hitchhiked from Boston to the West Coast in 45 hours. A mutual girlfriend, Marilyn, was working as a topless hostess on the Barbary Coast. Three months’ tips paid a year’s tuition. After a few hugs […]

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LAX-SFO – SUMMER OF 1973

April 15, 2021 – 4:49 pm

Back in August 1973 I hitchhiked across country to Tulsa. My friend Neil was staying with a woman there. We had planned to drive to the West Coast in his BMW 2002, however prior to my arrival the Staten Islander had been distracted by a State Fair roller coaster and rear-ended a truck. The car […]

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Map for Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD

October 13, 2020 – 9:02 pm

This map from Jack Kerouac’s diary detailed his hitchhiking across the USA in 1947. His itinerary included more stops than the classic hit ROUTE 66 sung originally by Nat King Cole. New York City, Chicago, Davenport Des Moines, North Platte, Cheyenne, Denver, Laramie, Salt Lake, Reno, San Francisco, Madera, Fresno, Selma, Los Angeles, Prescott, Albuquerque, […]

By Peter | Also posted in 50s, america, Books, myth | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

CHAPTER 17 – FREE AS A BIRD

September 3, 2020 – 1:46 pm

A humid dusk blanketed the air over Amarillo. The passing semi-trailers dragged diesel fumes on 75 mph slipstreams. AK and Sean stood on the eastbound shoulder of I-40 and a murder of crows clutched the top wire of a barbed wire fence, regarding the two hippies as future carrion. Off in the distant several dirty […]

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