Where Have All the Hitch-Hikers Gone?
A letter in The TImes today asks this question and even ponders where drivers carrying trade plates have gone.
When I drove, I always gave people lifts and so did C.
In fact we were of an age, where many more people hitched than have ever since. In one case, C and I actually htched to London from Liverpool to tell her parents, that we were going to get married. Little thanks we got for being up-front and honest, as I was accussed if getting her pregnant. Not that she was as we just got married in time before she was! Or else it was a very long pregnancy!
But I used to enjoy hitching and I must admit, I’ve thought about it lately, as public transport is so bad round here. But then public transport was always bad in East Anglia and I can remember that you had to have a car as as eighteen-year-old as there were no buses or trains from Felixstowe to anywhere interesting. I suppose there were ones that got you there, but the last bus into the town was about seven in the evening.
But even in those days of the 1960s, hitching was not very productive in East Anglia and I can remember spending a whole day getting from the M1 to Felixstowe. Or on another occassion, when C was a mother’s help in the summer before we married in Norfolk with the Wright family, having to hitch or almost walk back to Felixstowe from Hingham.
But these days, there is usually some form of transport, so people don’t give lifts as they feel you must be some sort of low life to hitch. And because no one gives lifts, no-one tries!
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The Anonymous Widower 
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