I’m not making this up. It was 1977 and I was hitchhiking from NY to the Canadian Rockies. A trucker dropped me off on I-90 outside Pierre, SD. After baking in the July sun for a couple hours, I started to assume that my appearance, large backpack, and probable odor were dooming me to take the bus.
Then a car stopped. The driver was a blond woman, maybe 20, in a bikini top and denim cutoffs. Ohmigod: a Penthouse Forum moment. I got in, and she set off at 100 m.p.h. for Rapid City, 220 miles up the road. She was a stripper, she said, and commuted between clubs in each city. Her boyfriend, a policeman, lent her a car with a police radio — she tapped it proudly — so she could avoid tickets.
Ooo-k. Making chitchat, I asked her if she thought it was a good idea to pick up scruffy-looking strangers on the side of the road. She reached under her seat and pulled out a large pistol, one of the very few actual guns I have ever seen. She said: I’m not worried, because we’re not going to have a problem, are we?
You meet the most interesting people on the road.
over 7 years ago