The Tide has Turned: Reflections on American Negativity

It's amazing how common these sentiments are. There is a transition in personal perspective that parallels the perceived (or imagined) transition in cultural perspective. What was a wild adventure, has become "bizarre and trying" in retrospect, itself a kind of euphemism for "downright stupid". Europe of course is stereotypically seen as less bizarre, and it may well be, for all my doubts (having experienced my fair share of the bizarre on European roadsides). But perhaps that is because the writers from whom I glean thse sentiments are predominantly American? I've a dearth of European writings on America to compare with alas - only informal anecdotes. They seem all the same to be generally convinced that hitching in the States is still an wild and interesting adventure.

I can recall Jacob Holdt's vivid descriptions on my last visit to Copenhagen. He'd hitched the States for many years in the 1970's and today, on his drives across the States would pick them up. Most American hitch-hikers today, he tells me, are either groupies (dead-heads, ferals, whatever you like to call them) or criminals, and he prefers the criminals - they don't smell as bad. It's easy to imagine if most hitch-hiker's you pick up are so beyond the pale that the drivers who pick them up are not your average joes either.

In "The Lost Highway" Jeffery Perso sums it up brilliantly with his interview of James Maclaren:

James MacLaren has been hitchhiking for 30 years. He's 47 now, so that means that for most of his adult life he's traveled by thumb. He considers himself an expert on the subject. In fact, he's written The Hitchhiker's Handbook, published in paperback by Loompanics Unlimited.

"What's different from 1965," MacLaren says, "is that there are not as many hitchhikers out there with you, and that is directly related to the increased number of assholes on television who have sufficiently terrified everyone into believing that you have to hide in the house. The media has done a wonderful job of frightening the populace."

MacLaren takes the line that, counter to popular perception and media myth, hitchhiking is relatively safe. "If you look at a statistical abstract," he says, "the risk- assessment factors for hitchhiking are so vanishingly remote that information on hitchhiking is almost impossible to get, but statistics are there for falling off a roof."

Two summers ago, MacLaren hitched from Cocoa Beach to

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