It struck me when the year changed to 2023, that this April I would have been married to Linda, my first wife, for 50 years had she not been struck down by cancer seven years ago. We were married at 18.
In recent years, if a curious person found out that I married as a teen, the question of how we met would come up. When I’d say, “She picked me up hitchhiking,” I’d hear a gasp, or get a shocked look.
Hitchhiking isn’t generally done today, nor has it been the case for several decades. On the rare occasions when someone puts a thumb out along the road, people speed by. But in my experience in the 1960s and 70s, hitchhiking is how young men (and some women) without cars got around.
But it was much more than a ride, it was an adventure. You’d get to meet people, hear their stories, and enjoy a conversation while heading to your destination. A lot of times, the driver would be tired and wanted someone for conversation and to keep awake. Others picked up hitchhikers because they also hitchhiked. For me, using my thumb on the side of the road was a cost-free way to see my cousins in Scranton, head to the beach on a hot day, make my way to concerts, anti-war demonstrations, and the Nixon counter-inaugural, or just visit friends.
Occasionally, I’d go on long trips. A friend and I wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before heading to college. When the state police in Kansas kicked us off the interstate, we wound up having an amazing adventure moving across the state on a two-lane highway, stopping at various towns, finding the pubs with watered-down beer for 18-to-21-year-old customers, meeting the locals, and getting someone to allow us to sleep on the floor of their living room.
At one point, we were picked up by three Black men in an old car who thought we were on the road looking for work. They stopped at a few places to show us mills that were hiring until we explained that we were only passing through on our way to see the Pacific, which we never saw because it took so long to get across Kansas.
Once, I hitched to Florida to visit a friend who I feared was suicidal because his father had died suddenly while they were estranged. That trip resulted in my arrest for “soliciting a ride,” but really for being a northerner with long hair in Florida’s Duval County. They kept me in the holding cell of the jail for 14 hours until they released me on bail. I still remember the cop’s threat, “If I wuz you, I’d get my northern ass across the state line as soon as you get outta here. You come back for trial, the judge will put you on the prison farm, just to cut your hair!”
I left the jail, visited my friend, arranged to pay the fine, and wondered what would have happened to me if I were Black. It was quite an education for my 18-year-old self.
Yes, there were occasional scary rides. I remember jumping out of a car once while it was moving slowly when I sensed a scary driver, and I learned techniques for getting out early (“Hey, there’s my exit!”) if needed.
But back to how I met Linda. I was in my first month in Boston after arriving in September 1972 for college from my childhood home in New Jersey. Two of my fellow graduates from St. Joe’s High School also wound up in the Boston area for college, and we decided to check out Cape Cod. While we never actually saw the water, we did see, as Patti Page sang, “quaint little villages here and there.”
On our way back to Boston, a U-Haul van pulled over to pick us up at the Weymouth exit on Route 3. In the empty van were a dog, a teen male, and two young women. They had rented the van to pick up furniture for their new apartment on Lyndhurst Street in Codman Square. Being nice Catholic boys from New Jersey who wanted to meet local girls, we offered to help them move. They invited us back for an apartment-warming party a few weeks later.
I started dating Linda some weeks after that. Both of us got involved in the effort to support Cesar Chavez and his United Farmworkers Union as they organized Chicanos who picked lettuce. Our dates were standing in front of the old A&P grocery stores handing out fliers asking people not to buy iceberg lettuce. In the winter, we were asked if we wanted to help organize the lettuce boycott in Colorado, so we both dropped out of school and got married at St. Gregory’s Church before heading to Colorado.
About 8 months later we came back to Codman Square. I’ve been involved there for 50 years.
A few years ago, I recruited a pro bono lawyer who offered to help the Codman Square Health Center with a real estate deal. He pulled up in a Mercedes convertible. His license plate read “Aug75,” so I asked him what happened then. He said, “I met my wife.” I asked, “How did you meet her?” He said, “She picked me up hitchhiking.”
Those of a certain age will probably be able to tell you about hitchhiking. I can’t imagine that the practice will ever make a comeback, but in my youth it was fun, an adventure on which you could meet really interesting people, and get a broader sense of life in America.
Now, in my late 60s, I often think of how random life can be. If my friends and I arrived just a few seconds later, or that U-Haul a minute earlier, I would never have met Linda, we would never have had our son and daughter, never found our way to Codman Square, or lived our lives in our wonderful Dorchester community. That ride changed my life.
Bill Walczak is a Dorchester resident and former CEO of the Codman Square Health Center.
