The stupidity of this article boggles the mind

So once upon a time, it was seen as a great pasttime to spend many hours and days hitchhiking. Baby Boomers look back on those days with fondness. But now, people just aren’t standing in the middle of the road, hoisting their thumbs and accepting rides from strangers. What happened?

Robert Thompson, popular culture expert and professor of media and culture at Syracuse University, believes three things are responsible.

“The interstate highway system took over as the principal route of long-distance travel, and hitchhiking was forbidden on these well-patrolled throughways,” Thompson said. “Law enforcement in many communities began taking a less casual approach to hitchhikers.” Finally, he said, “a generation of paranoid horror tales of what can happen if you hitchhike scared the ‘bejesus’ out of most people who might otherwise have taken up this unique form of ad hoc carpooling.”

Gillian Christie, the hitcher who once shared a ride with an elk, has her own horror story. While thumbing from L.A. to San Francisco, she was picked up by a man in a restored truck painted bright yellow.

“I complimented him on his truck, which I guess he took as a compliment of his maleness,” Christie said. “He pulled off on some old back road in the middle of nowhere and tried to attack me. I hauled off and hit him in the face and told him never to do that again to me or any woman and to take me back to the main road.”

This unique form of ad hoc carpooling??? Oh man, that’s a phrase if I’ve ever heard one. And as for why it died out, hmm, let’s see, all I need to do is hit The Doe Network and read up on hordes of missing girls, known to be hitchhikers, who managed to disappear and whose bodies haven’t been found yet, also because society attitudes back in those “glory days” meant that missing adults weren’t taken seriously as they were all assumed to be runaways.

Enough ranting. Time for the next cup of coffee…