Hitch-Hiking
9.000 MUes
THE STATE,
A Weekly Survey of North Carolina
1.
193».
>1 lb* P«'«Sm M M*rt*
CaraiiM. un4«f it* A« of U.rct S. 111*.
Vol. VI. No. 34
January 21, 1939
There's a real seienee to thumb¬
ing. says Mr. Stick, anil he gives
you some of the inside facts in
this article which describes a
long trip he took recently.
By DAVID STICK
IT
тми*
i bill every boy ns ho passes
into young manhood sometime
during that interval acquires
я
ease
of that primitive urge referred to by
the poetic minded a* "the wander¬
lust/'
For several year» now I've enter¬
tained half-hearted ideas about go¬
ing to Germany on a tramp steamer,
or hopping a freight and making my
way to the West Coast. But it was
not until the latter part of the sum¬
mer just pa«t that I first got the idea
I'd like to hitch-hike about the coun¬
tryside.
Tlii» plan, unlike my other dream
trip», seemed feasible, and not many
days after the idea first attached it¬
self to Illy mental being I definitely
decided to temporarily forsake col¬
lege as a stepping stone toward a
higher education, and substitute in
its place a hitch-hiking jaunt around
the United States.
Start of the Journey
Thus on the night of September 24
I found myself in Raleigh, with the
first, albeit one of the '«nailer leg* of
my journey already behind me. Fifty-
eight day- later 1 returned to Tnr-
heelia with memories galore of my
nine thnti»and mile hitch-hiking trip
around the rim of this huge nation.
I had visited twenty-six states, Mex¬
ico, and the District <>f Columbia:
had passed through the wheat licit,
the cattle country, and the ‘*Lan* o'
cotton," not to mention the pig. chick¬
en, sheep, horse, grape, orange, rice,
and sugar cane raising «-enters of the
world. I had been to the extreme
southeastern, southwestern, and north¬
western corners of the United State*,
and as close to the northeastern corner
as I wanted to go without first
bundling myself in coats and blanket*
and removing all trace* of having l*eon
associated with North Carolina Demo¬
crats. I had encountered counties» in¬
teresting Mexicans, Creole Frenchmen,
and Indians, not to mention IV White
Trash and Damn Yankee* galore. I
had become an authority "n the con¬
dition of the gutters and curbstone*
throughout our country, simply be¬
cause 1 had -pent a considerable por¬
tion of my time for two months, sit¬
ting in and on them. I had learned
first hand why truck driver* eu«s so
much (drive a truck for a few hour*
and you'll find out, too) and I had at
last come to understand why a man
owning a couple of acres of land in
North Carolina is better off than the
Texan who own* n couple of thousand
acres. In every section I visited when
David Stick, of Kill Devil Hill, down
in Dare County. He is the son of Mr.
and Mrs. Frank Stick and has at¬
tended the University for one year.
i asked the local folks how condition»
were they inevitably replied. "Terri¬
ble." “Lousy," or the equivalent ..f
such. And yet when I followed up my
load by asking these same people how
they liked the section in which they
lived, they answered to n man. regard¬
less of whether they reside in arid
desert land, lush valley, mountain top,
or ocean brink, that it was the grand¬
est place in the country; that the cli-
mat*', neighbor*, and scenery could not
l<e matched.
All Kinds of Vehicles
During the conr-e of my nine thou¬
sand miles of thumbing I caught rid* -
in everything from the running
1м>аг<1
of an antiquated Model T Ford, to the
luxurious l»ack «cat of n IM* mo-h !
limousine. I bad crossed the wid. -t
plains, the dryol deserts, and the
highest mountain rung- - in tin imiiii
