Category Archives: hitchhiking

AMONG THE REDWOODS by Peter Nolan Smith

October 2, 2022 – 2:42 pm

The noon sun shimmered off Monterey harbor. The moored sailing boats bobbed with the light breeze and hundreds of pleasure craft wavered on the wake of a departing fishing boat. A middle-aged man took a photo of his wife before a large trawler tied up to a forlorn dock, while I walked toward Cannery Row. […]

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DOWN THE COAST By Peter Nolan Smith

October 1, 2022 – 2:43 pm

Skyline Drive crested a hill and the bright California sun crowned the hundreds of identical houses snaking up the streets of Daly City with a golden nimbus. Smoke from sizzling meat floated above countless backyards, as suburban families celebrated Memorial Day with holiday barbecues. I longed for a seared hamburger and a beer, but tramped […]

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HITCHHIKING PROHIBITED by Peter Nolan Smith

July 8, 2022 – 12:12 pm

In late-August of 1972 my college friend Ptrov and I were bound for Boston to start our second year of university and we crashed a night with a trio of carpenter gypsies constructing a rest stop on the new interstate through Montana. Bulldozers had churned the dirt highway into a muddy bog for the passing […]

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George, Washington 1972

February 21, 2022 – 6:08 pm

Back in late August 1972 my college friend Ptrov Sinski and I hitchhiked west from Seattle. A rancher left us off at exit 149, serving George, Washington, a small farming community surrounded by endless fields of ripening wheat. The two of us ignored the sign forbidding hitchhiking, but within ten minutes a Highway Patrol car […]

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AMERICA – Simon and Garfunkel

February 5, 2022 – 1:51 pm

We have all gone looking for America. The land is all around us from Sea to Shining Sea The people are here there and everywhere. E pluribus unum. Out of many one. We are we. Like it or not. Get and your car and drive from Coast to Coast. The car won’t be there forever […]

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