Hitchhiking through Montana

When I was 18 in 1975, I moved from Rhode Island to Montana to go to the state university in Bozeman. I majored in English and studied Beowulf, the Beat Generation, Montana History and glass blowing. I received a broad education. I also learned how to make deerskin moccasins in an adult ed course. Brought up to be self-sufficient, I didn’t like to ask for anything. But I couldn’t suppress my appetite for travel. Rather than stay put, I started hitchhiking. It began with my friend Lana and me hitchhiking with separate drivers and seeing who’d arrive in Missoula first.

The first weekend I went to Missoula to see my brother Bill, I took the Greyhound bus.
It was expensive and dull. The only time it wasn’t dull is when the bus slipped backwards downhill on an icy street in Butte. That was slightly terrifying. I knew from Montana history class that Butte was a mile high and a mile deep. That had been a long slide backward down the steepest street in town.

Hitchhiking, I found, broadened my education. I learned how to change a tire from a driver with a broken shoulder. One time when I put my thumb out to get to Missoula, 3 guys in a yellow state truck picked me up. Right away, they let me know that they were no threat at all. They were going as fast as they could go to get to a ball game in Spokane at 6 pm. I knew I had nothing to worry about. Then one of the guys asked if I knew what their load was. Well, I hadn’t a clue. It was under wraps. Turns out it was dynamite to blow out the landscape to put in a new highway. It was a beautiful sunny day and the 3 guys let me jump out quickly in Missoula.

I had a good weekend with my brother. We went skinny dipping in the Clark Fork River and rode the cold current upstream, then ran through a path in the bushes to our original spot where our clothes were hanging from a branch and started all over again. Billy said it was perfectly safe. On our 4th or 5th trip back through the shrubbery, a train went by with several workmen hanging out the windows waving and whistling. Oops. I’ve always realized you only live once. You might as well do it with gusto- I waved back!

Sunday about noontime my brother and I walked to the bus station. After he left, I sneaked off to the highway and put my thumb out. A little old lady in a very old Plymouth picked me up. It was such a faded black that it was the color of a plum. The old lady started telling me stories about bad guys, people who were crooked and disrespectful of their fellow men. The most memorable of her bad guy stories was about a lawyer, a very crooked lawyer. He was sitting in his Lazy Boy recliner one night in his home in the foothills of Missoula, watching television and someone shot him dead through the window. One bullet. She said people in Montana had no patience for bad guys.

Well, all of a sudden she takes the exit for Deer Lodge and Warm Springs off of I-90.
I need I-90 the whole 180 miles to get home to Bozeman. What I know about Deer Lodge and Warm Springs is not any good. The 2 main things going on are the state prison and the state mental hospital. She told me she was going to see her sister. I wondered which institution she was in. Then the old lady told me she carried a gun and she asked me to retrieve it from under the seat. It was a big heavy pistol. Her son had given it to her because he knew she picked up hitchhikers.

She didn’t want the gun for herself. She wanted me to know how to use it. We were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even a sheep in sight. She told me to aim it up out my window, pull the trigger back and fire it. I obeyed. Never underestimate an old lady. My right shoulder reverberated. That pistol packed a punch.

As we neared Deer Lodge and Warm Springs, I spotted a big sign which read, ‘No Hitchhiking within 15 miles of city limits’. I thought I was sunk. She left me off right in the middle of town. I looked around quickly and put my thumb out again. Within a minute a trucker picked me up and brought me all the way to the supermarket in Bozeman. He was delivering a big load of groceries.

I moved back to Rhode Island in 1981 and hitchhiked one last time, from Vermont back home to Rhode Island. A couple of Boy Scout leaders delivered me almost to my door. I decided that would be last hitchhiking adventure. I’d had a good ride with God on my side.