Roadside Americans: The Rise and Fall of Hitchhiking in a Changing Nation

by Jack Reid

Between the Great Depression and the mid-1970s, hitchhikers were a common sight for motorists, as American service members, students, and adventurers sought out the romance of the road in droves. Beats, hippies, feminists, and civil rights and antiwar activists saw "thumb tripping" as a vehicle for liberation, living out the counterculture's rejection of traditional values. Yet, by the time Ronald Reagan, a former hitchhiker himself, was in the White House, the youthful faces on the road chasing the ghost of Jack Kerouac were largely gone--along with sympathetic portrayals of the practice in state legislatures and the media.

In Roadside Americans, Jack Reid traces the rise and fall of hitchhiking, offering vivid accounts of life on the road and how the act of soliciting rides from strangers, and the attitude toward hitchhikers in American society, evolved over time in synch with broader economic, political, and cultural shifts. In doing so, Reid offers insight into significant changes in the United States amid the decline of liberalism and the rise of the Reagan Era.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Travel, Sociology, American History

264 pages, Hardcover

First published February 14, 2020

Reviews

[Edwin Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

ROADSIDE AMERICANS, by Jack Reid, chronicles the rise and fall of hitchhiking in the Unites States from the Great Depression through the 1980's. A well researched and detailed history, Reid looks at hitchhiking from the rider/driver perspective, to a community perception, from city planning considerations, to national and international ruminations and opinions of hitchhiking across the aforementioned era.
Reid begins describing the origins of hitchhiking: limited automobiles, surviving by working anywhere and limited public transportation. It evolved during World War II, waned during the economically thriving 1950's, then resurged through the 1960's and 1970's from a general uprising of helping out the fellow man coupled with a desire for adventure and connecting with the unknown (people and places). Reid constantly reminds us that until the 1980's, whatever feelings of the inherent danger that comes with hitchhiking rarely outweighed the desire for those who chose to hitchhike. The feeling while reading this book is that no stone in the study of hitchhiking has been left unturned, but there is an large amount of rephrasing the same point and redundancy throughout the book. Some really fascinating facts are frequent and interesting, but the reader could grow weary of the repetition of the same point.
Being born in the 1970's, I missed the age of hitchhiking and only every understood it as an extremely dangerous and kind of pointless venture since most everyone has a car or someone in their family does. ROADSIDE AMERICANS illuminated a lifestyle I was never really versed on until now. Hitchhiking being part of the fabric of our country for a good part of the 20th Century I didn't not fully comprehend until after reading this book.
Thank you to University of North Carolina Press, Jack Reid, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahhh, a forgotten pastime of my youth! I used to love hitching rides around the country. Many of my friends did, too. Some even thumbed their ways around the planet! Times began to change in the mid to late 70's. Police were cracking down on us, towns were making it illegal, it was crazy. Well, the book covers lots of stuff I hadn't even thought about. Good trip down memory lane. We were young and we wanted to explore the world! Great book for those of us who remember those days.informative and entertaining. Thanks Jack Reid!

I received a Kindle arc from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Roadside Americans Jack Reid looks at hitchhiking and how it reflected the American culture at the time and how it changed over the years. He starts in the 1920's around the time of the Great Depression and follows the trend through the late 1980's when it mostly died off. Interestingly at some times, especially during WWII, hitchhiking was actually encouraged by the government as a way to share resources during wartime shortages and rationing. But, at other times the government pushed the view of hitchhiking and dangerous or lazy. While it was an interesting book, it was pretty repetitive both within chapters and overall. I did like that pictures were included. I also found it odd that the author repeatedly calls hippies "freaks" which was never a term I ever heard associated with 1960's counter-culture/hippies/whatever and it seemed odd that it was used so much. Overall, it could have been shorter, but did have some interesting information about how hitchhiking reflected on our overall American culture.

Some quotes I liked:

"Ultimately, these critiques suggest that within the increasingly modern 1920's, many Americans perceived the growing popularity of hitchhiking as an unsettling symptom of broader cultural changes that were threatening traditional understandings of morality and virtue." (p. 35)

"...the federal government appealed to Americans' sense of sacrifice and put forth a propaganda campaign urging motorists to [carpool and conserve gas and tires]...Asserting the grave nature of this issue, one poster warned careless motorists, 'When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler!'" [picture of the ad included] (p. 75)

"Although the country experienced a dramatic increase in economic security during the 1950s and 1960s, pockets of the country remained in poverty...In Hazard, Kentucky, for example, the local police force was too underfunded to afford police cruisers and at times even uniforms for officers. In fact, as the sheriff explained, 'It wasn't unusual to see a deputy sheriff hitchhike a ride to answer a complaint.' Although this example is extreme, low-income Americans throughout the country similarly relied on hitchhiking to hold down a job." (p. 177)

"On her five-thousand-mile hitchhiking trip in 1964, eighteen-year-old Jo Freeman, for instance, 'calculated that roughly 90 percent' of her rides were with middle-aged, single males, and despite her conservative dress about 90 percent of these men made sexual passes at her of varying directness." (p. 180)

[After a rash of newspaper stories about serial killers targeting hitchhikers - especially women]
"For many in the media and society more generally, the message was clear: hitchhiking, especially for women, was too dangerous and needed to be stamped out...Although these concerns for the safety of women on the road were obviously warranted to a degree, this fear and propaganda was also, in part, a response to larger anxieties regarding the breakdown of traditional values and patriarchal authority. Rather than decry the sexual aggressiveness and criminality of some male motorists, critics of the counterculture and women's liberation used these crimes as fodder to argue that women did not belong on the road and should instead conform to traditional notions of femininity for their own safety and protection." (p. 225)

"High-profile crimes as well as a close association with the hippie lifestyle and the women's liberation movement led hitchhiking to become more controversial than ever. Indeed, private citizens, municipal governments, and law enforcement agencies sought to regulate the practice as part of broader efforts to protect the nation's traditional values and the lives of young people, especially women. Remarkably, though, these systematic efforts did little to stem the popularity of hitchhiking." (p. 235)

"By the late 1970s, the youth culture had in many respects changed...most young people still absorbed a conventional worldview - one that embraced the comforts and pleasures of the modern consumer marketplace. In this context, going to the mall with friends or, better yet, owning a fancy car carried far more hip cachet than hitchhiking." (p. 243-44)

"According to the Network of Runaway Youth Services in Washington, D.C., the number of individuals under eighteen on the road skyrocketed during the early 1980s, jumping from 500,000 in 1974 to 2 million in 1981. This spike was likely fueled by economic dislocations that translated to high unemployment and funding cuts for social services - such as programs placing youths in foster homes - as well as to declining funding for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Faced with difficult circumstances, some youths took to the road." (p. 250)

"Still, as a CNN report noted in April 2018, ride-sharing apps do not always equate to safety for users. More than a hundred Uber drivers (known so far) were accused of sexual assault or abuse between 2015 and 2018 - and in many of those incidents, drivers were charged with raping intoxicated women who pass out in the vehicle. In response, Uber and Lyft began more rigorous criminal background checks on drivers. Still, as of 2019, critics argue that the companies have not gone far enough in addressing issues of sexual harassment, and this sentiment has inspired many to turn against ride-sharing. Ride-sharing apps nevertheless generally offer a safer experience than the sheer randomness of hitchhiking." (p. 279)

[Emily Greenblatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Reid is a true historian. In Roadside Americans, Reid’s intersectional dive into hitchhiking brings in stark relief the racism, sexism, and class division that is woven throughout the history of the United States. Reid shows that in many ways, hitchhiking is a metaphor for the health and values of a society on the whole. Anyone interested in the intersection of history and culture in the United States will gain much from the full and well-crafted pages of this book.

[Yenta Knows · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author’s brilliant insight is this, in his words: “Because ride solicitation intersects with so many aspects of American life, we can see the rise and eventual fall of hitchhiking … as a manifestation of wider social, economic, and cultural transformations. Hitchhiking blossomed when automobility was limited and the political and economic climate favored … cooperative individualism. The liberal sentiment that grew out of the … Great Depression — and later the sacrifices of World War II — blended the nation’s historic individualistic impulse with … an interest in … the civic whole …Yet once the nation grew more affluent and regimented … this sense of social cooperation weakened.” (Pages 180-81).

The author does devote a paragraph to the only form of hitchhiking still somewhat common. I know about slugging because I live in the Washington DC suburbs. Slugging is, or at least was, common along Interstate 395 in northern Virginia. I met at least one person who slugged routinely. I’m not sure if slugging is still active or if it disappeared during the pandemic.

The book caused me to think back about my own hitchhiking adventures, 1971-73, which the author calls “the golden age” of hitchhiking. My longest trip was from Grinnell, Iowa, where I was a student, to Richmond, Indiana, where a neighbor from my hometown of Silver Spring, Md, was a student. I can hardly believe I hitchhiked 500 miles each way. And yet when my companion, a male friend and enthusiastic hitchhiker himself, proposed the trip, I readily agreed and gave no thought to any danger. I made the “large investment of informal trust” (the author’s words) without even knowing that I was making such an investment. It was just getting away from the somewhat isolated campus for an interesting weekend elsewhere.

It may really be true that God protects innocents. We made the trip safely with only one bad ride. This occurred in Indiana, when two 20-something blue collar guys mistook my long haired companion for a girl. They were, let’s say, disappointed to find that Neil was a man. They were rude, crude, and insulting, but I didn’t feel endangered. Two girls might have been in danger, a single girl might have been raped. But they thought of me as Neil’s property and their “respect” kept me safe.

The author doesn’t include any personal tales but does mention, in the acknowledgements, that he heard many tales of hitchhiking. He might have expanded on this theme: one of the joys of hitching was that you had experiences you could craft into stories. And, in the same way that fishers exchange fishing stories, you could exchange hitching stories with other hitchhikers. The stories fell into predictable categories: longest wait, worst weather, worst ride, best ride, longest ride, most memorable driver. There was no way to check a story’s accuracy, so exact truth never trumped the story arc.

Although this is a sociological study of hitchhiking, I still think the author was remiss in never even mentioning rule 1 of hitchhiking: make a sign with your destination written in it. Sheesh. Hundreds of pages and this critical hitchhiker trick left out.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides an insight to economic conditions and sentiments towards self-reliance, leisure, community versus individualism, within the context of hitchhiking.

I must admit I was surprised at how the author connected the overall sentiments of the country with hitchhiking, but the premise is valid and certainly explains the rise and fall of the popularity.

During times of economic scarcity, many people relied on hitchhiking as a valid mode of transportation. Drivers understood the need of hitching and in the cooperation of social good, picked up strangers standing by the side of the road. During WWII some towns built stations for soldiers looking for rides to and from base, so they could get rides without violating the military policy of not hitchhiking.

Even during times of prosperity college students and well dressed men were the most likely to be picked up. During the turbulent 60s more women attempted to get rides, but frequently found unwanted sexual advances, particularly when travelling alone. The 60s also brought in a new style of dress from the younger aged hitchhikers that resembled the itinerant travelers that a typical driver would avoid picking up. But the thumb trippers often found rides from fellow hippies, so the practice was common.

The 1980s brought in more self-reliance and individualism with a strong focus on materialism, which meant young people were more interested in owning their own car than the unreliability of hitching rides. Combining law enforcement curtailing the practice with new laws against hitchhiking, and a strong focus on the danger aspect of strangers, hitchhiking was nearly stamped out.

This was a good book on the rise and decline of hitchhiking. There are personal stories along with newspaper accounts of individual’s experience of getting around for free. The chapters were arranged by time periods, starting out with the Great Depression era of 1928–1940. The epilogue dealt with today, comparing ride sharing with hitchhiking as people jump into cars driven by strangers.

The biggest disappointment for the book was the repetition. The introduction could almost have stood for the entire book, while each chapter goes into more depth. The book is an academic overview of a nearly lost mode of transportation. If anyone has any interest in the topic, the book is recommended.


3.5 stars, rounded down for all the repetition.


Thanks to University of North Carolina Press and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

[Aaron James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It made me want to stick out my thumb and make my way across America. Here are some of the thoughts and notes I wrote down while reading:

When did mobility become a virtue? Clearly it did at some point, but exactly when?

"You're only as good for as far as you can go, principally, on your own."

Idle wandering is perceived as a bad thing now and it was perceived as a bad thing then, but many of those wanderers were literally wandering from job to job seeking employment. It's kind of odd that we view them, and they were being viewed as, being lazy when in fact they were literally going from job to job. They just didn't have a car or public transportation, so they had to walk. Of course, the only time anybody would ever see them was when they would be on the side of the road. The only time these jobless people would be in the public eye is when they would be on the side of the road. Of course they wouldn't be seen performing their jobs once they got them.

"Hitchhiking is evil because you don't have to figure out train station timetables."

Hitchhiking allowed anybody to vote with their feet, and that angered anybody in a higher class that wanted to control those below them.

Crust punks are only truly anchored by their dogs. If they didn't have dogs, they'd have no reason to stay on the road.

Overall, this was a great read that offered a handful of 'behind-the-scene' stories of other authors who have written about hitchhikers or told their own hitchhiking stories. In a way, this was a bit of a literature review as well. It's a shame we don't hitchhike as we once used to, but who knows, maybe one day we'll start up again.

[Andrew Breza · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of hitchhiking in twentieth century America. Hitchhiking emerged among with cars and became popular in the Great Depression for obvious reasons. During the privation of World War Two, soldiers and civilians alike used their thumbs to get around the country. During the postwar era, hitchhiking became associated with hippies. The practice fell out of favor at the same time that the culture of the United States was moving toward a greater sense of individualism.

Overall the book makes a convincing argument and is a surprisingly interesting read considering the narrow topic. Strange at it sounds, the history of hitchhiking makes me think of social networks. They rely on enough of your friends being members that you want to participate. This kind of network effect can rapidly unwind as people leaving the network encourage others to do the same. One reason for the fall is hitchhiking is the fact that the college students and other middle class people stopped doing it, which made hitchhiking seem less respectable, which led to a vicious cycle that ended with only the most desperate relying on the kindness of strangers for travel, which discouraged drivers from participating.

[Madis Kreem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jack Reid has done a phenomenonal amount of research to write Roadside Americans! Bravo...imagine 50 pages of research credits for a 200 page book. The evolution and decline of hitchhiking in deferent periods in the 20th century is well documented on why it happened and then evolved into something sadly totally different like ride sharing apps. Each chapter very deep but I found myself glossing over repetitive concepts and social evolution or political commentary. I found overall a slog to get through though not really a long book. Since I had done some youthful cross and intercountry hitchhiking it was great to be reminded of those trips, each with their own stories and camaraderie. Uses the word "freak" a bit too much, which means Mr Roth probably also wasn't in that group. Perhaps a bit short of opinions of non-Americans hitching rides in the US. Still a good read on a unique subject many of us lived, while others just drove by cautiously and didn't.

[M.J. Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

The truth behind hitchhiking!

This book is a history about the rise and fall of hitchhiking in the United States. I read about how unemployed men and servicemen relied on thumbing for rides out of necessity. I also read about the gruesome crimes that have been committed against hitchers by drivers. I do NOT recommend hitchhiking to anyone today. It is a very dangerous sport.

[John Machata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hitch-hiking rose and fell- aligned with socio-economic necessity and political inclinations.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Repetitive and reads like a college paper.

[Jeff Savage · Rating 2 out of 5]

An incredibly redundant book. It could have been edited down to a quarter of the size.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over 3, but not 4 stars. This was a fun, but somewhat dry and clinical, read. It brought to mind all the times I hitched a ride, which were 100% vehicle breakdowns leaving me in need.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was interesting in places but, in my opinion, the author tried to paint this history with far too wide a brush. While I was looking for interesting stories from the point of view of individuals who both picked up hitchhikers and were picked up as hitchhikers with a bit of background on the social conditions of the time. Best of all if the stories themselves could illustrate those conditions. Instead, I got a vast social history that had to explain exactly why conditions became the way they were for hitchhikers. Often the history went off on such long meandering side roads that I was starting to forget what all this had to do with hitchhiking exactly. When the reader starts to lose touch with the main theme of the book, something has gone a bit wrong.

Also, did you know that a lot of Americans believed hitchhikers were bums who were sponging off hard-working drivers? This point was repeated for pretty much every decade of hitchhiking history as if it were an idea unique to that time. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that things got a bit repetitive.

The whole thing is a little too clinical for my liking, though I won’t say that I got nothing out of this book. It gets 2 ½ stars rounded down.

It wasn’t too long, which was good.