Stuff that people give

Hitchhiker Red Ford (see previous post) wears a hand amulet on a chain around his neck. A truck driver gave it to him.

  
“People give you stuff,” he says, shrugging and looking as if he can’t believe his blessings.
 

He shows me bracelets on his wrists: silicone rubber wristbands, braided string, a chain. He got the [...]

“Heads, I go north …”

Red Ford, also known as Frank Redford, stands out. Literally, he stands 6 foot 7 inches tall. “Two meters if you’re from Canada or anywhere else in the world,” he says.
He fashioned his road name after his first car, a red Ford Mustang. “I like Fords,” he says with sort of a shrug and tee [...]

THUMB! mail art

I interrupt my vicarious hitchhiker stories to announce a call for “mail art” on the theme of, what else, the pollex, the primary digit, digitus primus. The thumb. The more I natter to friends about all things thumb, the less odd they find the subject. In fact, several phone and e-mail regularly with ways to appreciate [...]

Left at the blue porta

Daylight of Dec. 30, 2007, at the hitchhikers’ blue porta porta:

From www.salvationmountain.us:
“Salvation Mountain is Leonard Knight’s tribute to God and his gift to the world with its simple yet powerful message: ‘God Is Love.’ Leonard’s passion has lovingly created this brilliant ‘outsider art’ masterpiece resplendent with not only biblical and religious scripture such as the [...]

Left at Salvation Mountain

Every woman should wander the desert at night with a man (or woman) she loves, looking for a slab on which to rest her bleary-eyed head. It might feel as if the breeze shimmying the tinsel-strewn creosote bushes has blown her onto the pages of a romance novel. Or even a Bible.
 
“Take this road here,” hitchhiker Morgan [...]

The Range

Ausum Construction. That’s what the van in which we are riding says. In the spirit of the moment, we have hopped a ride to The Range. No backseats mean our butts are on the floor of the van, and we’re so packed into the vehicle that we can’t see the people next to us, let alone where [...]

Outskirts of the outskirts

I find out about the Hitchhiker Happening easily enough. I google “hitchhiking,” and digihitch.com flashes No. 2 on the list of 1,570,000 results. “Join us for our 5th Annual Hitchhiker Happening in Slab City at New Year’s,” the homepage announces. “190 miles southeast of Los Angeles and 129 feet below sea level is the off-the-grid [...]

thumbing through Thumbing Through

I confess. Even though my blog title is Thumbing Through, I am not a
hitchhiker. It scares me. I’m a woman, not a particularly tough woman,
and if I’m going to rough it when I travel, I’d just as soon be
schlepping a backpack over a wooded mountain pass than from one
stickity-stink truckstop bathroom to another.
So, most of [...]