The thumb came in handy, back then

Hitchhiking was my frequent mode of transportation

Lately, I’ve had the opportunity to sit back and reflect on some of the events of my life - thanks, Substack. It’s been a lot of fun. There remains one area of exploration that puzzles me, still. As in, why in the hell did I do that?

Generally speaking, most of my friends would agree I’m a pretty cautious guy. Never smoked, never did drugs, never been drunk. One thing I did do - which still sort of blows me away - was hitchhike.

When a kid had to get around, sometimes I used the ol’ thumb!

Growing up in Brookline, a small one-light (blinking yellow) town, we didn’t have a high school for the 24 of us who needed an ed-u-ma-cation. Since our Town Fathers were unable to convince nearby Hollis (6 miles away) to take us, we were bused to Nashua High, which was more than twice as far away, a school that was probably four times the size of Hollis. (Tough to make athletic teams, too! But I made it!)

Since I had to stay for baseball and football practice and both my parents worked, often not really close to Nashua, I had to find a way to get home. The good thing was many Brookline residents worked in Nashua so if I got to the highway at the appropriate time when they were coming home from work, generally a few minutes after five, I’d get a ride with them. If I missed them for some reason, or they had some errands to run or whatever, I had to stick out my thumb and beg.

Sometimes, it was after practice. Once I started college in Nashua at Rivier and got a part-time job at a grocery store near the college, I had to find a way there just about every day. My friend Mark’s father, Matt worked nearby. So sometimes I’d ride with him. He was a great guy and we’d talk boxing and baseball (he hated Muhammad Ali, loved Carl Yastrzemski, so we had disagreements and agreements and there was a lot of “Christ-ing” as in “Christ, they could pitch one day and come back and throw the next…” Mark used to occasionally nag on his dad. “Stop Christ-ing!”

But he was always reliable and would carefully drop me off right across from the Rivier campus. That was especially key in a New Hampshire winter.

Another guy who was a savior for me was Al Blaisdell, a manager at the Nashua Bradlee’s. I used to call him “The Blazer.” Bradlee’s was still a good healthy three-mile walk to Rivier for me but it was a lot closer than the 15 miles from Brookline. He was a wonderful, patient man who used to ask me to read whatever assignment I’d written for my Rivier classes and then, we’d talk about it. He was just a great sounding board for me. That was something he sure as hell didn’t have to do.

There were some weirdos, of course. Once I got a ride with a guy who was a gambler and went into great detail about his theory that in a horse race, one of the horses will instinctively know which one of them should win. The key, he explained, was figuring out which horse that was. Since his car had a rusty door, I think he was still working that one out.

Once, my first girlfriend, Julie Heaney, who lived in Mont Vernon, which was about a dozen miles away, called me on a Saturday afternoon, just as a World Series game was about to start. She’d had a fight with her parents and needed to see me, she said. She knew, of course, I didn’t drive - she had to on all our dates.

This was a challenge because there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic from Brookline to Mont Vernon, especially on a weekend. But I had my duty. Fortunately, I got a ride with a kid who was just driving around. I told him my story and he brought me out to the Heaney farm. Sometimes you get lucky.

When I look back, I don’t think any of my friends hitchhiked. So why did I? Still not sure about that one. Nowadays, it seems like an incredibly risky thing to do. But I had to get to Nashua, didn’t drive or have a car. What choice did I have?

Once one of my Nashua friends found out that I had to hitchhike back and forth between Brookline and Nashua, they let me stay up on top of their garage in a family playroom. Mahlon and Dorothy Artz were so generous to me. I was friends with their son, Jeff and his sister, Cindy. When I had a late shift at the store or had to work all day on a Sunday to get time and a half, I’d stay over.

That a family would be that kind and considerate seems almost impossible to believe in this highly charged political world. Mahlon and I would have epic, half-the-night chess games, chatting about President Nixon. He loved him, I hated him. We’d chat and play chess. He was a hellacious player but one night, I played like a Master and beat him three games in a row, even took his queen. And he STILL let me stay over. (I think I slept about three hours after the chess.)

As I look back at it now, how in the world my parents LET ME DO THAT is beyond me. I wouldn’t have let John hitchhike across the street. But, in fairness, you have to remember it was a different time, it was a small New Hampshire town, it was only a few miles and it seemed innocent enough. Plus, my folks had major issues in their own lives at the time (en route to a divorce) and I was always a pretty independent kid, “the kid upstairs” they called me.

It wasn’t like they never gave me a ride, they did plenty of times. I suppose I could have hassled my father to buy me one of his $100 bombers but frankly, it didn’t seem worth the bother. I was working 38 hours a week, taking three challenging classes (that I loved!) at Rivier and I had to get places. I didn’t have time to wait for that. So, for a good year or two, the good ol’ thumb did the trick.

And now, I suppose I should thank the Good Lord for protecting me on all those jaunts from Brookline to Nashua and back. I was very lucky.

One of the great lines I remember from that period came when I’d had an overnight stay at the Artz’s when they were actually out of town. (That’s how nice they were!) So as I was walking down their driveway to walk to work on a Sunday morning - I’d manage the store the whole day for time and a half - a neighbor spotted me walking across the driveway.

“Who’s that man leaving the Artz’s” a neighbor asked?

“That’s no man,” came the reply. “That’s John Nogowski.”

Great line. Still makes me laugh.