Mad For the Road: Hitchhiking America in the 60s & 70s

Hitchhiking in America, back when “thumbing it” was safe and fun and you met scads of fascinating people and often ended up getting to know them or having loving intimacy. A time before hard, nasty drugs, a time or trust, peace and love, easily shared. These journal excerpts come from an innocent, straight world of the early Sixties, the world of long-haired hippies, easily getting rides from other “freaks” or being scorned by redneck truckers, then the trailing off of the hip era as “my generation” ended up going back to the land and finding marriages, children, careers and, with the coming of an unsafe world, the end of hitchhiking. It was a magical world in which I traveled many tens of thousands of miles all over the US, Canada, Europe and even a relatively safe Mexico of the times, saw amazing vistas and natural wonders, had so much time to think, reflect and develop a philosophy during my late teens and twenties. It was an altered state in a parallel dimension. It was essentially “part 2” of Kerouac’s “On the Road,” but in a vastly more interesting and exciting time in which a whole generation turned the rudder on modern civilization and created spiritual depths that probably saved the world. We shall see. The full journal is “Young in the Sixties, on Kindle.