Don't Pick Up Hitchhikers

Oh, they look nice enough, fun, but don't do it!

When people share their family travel stories they generally tell about the trip to the destination (“Are we there yet?”, “Momma, he’s breathing my air!”, “She’s using up all the red crayon on purpose!”, “Are we there yet?”), or deal with some outlandish turn of fate once reaching the destination. The story in my family, the story that is told at every family gathering, the story most requested deals with a family trip; however, it deals with the ride home.

Daddy was old school about most things, especially travel. Stopping was what wimps did, and we weren’t wimps! His travel credo: We must make good time! So, when he announced that we were stopping at a little West Texas eatery for lunch, it was 2:00 pm and we had made good time, we were ecstatic! After our fill of burgers and fries, our parents let us go outside and explore the parking lot with the explicit instructions to run off all our pent up energy because, we weren’t stopping "until we hit the driveway.” Mom and Dad talked over pie and coffee and the three of us ran out to discover the secrets that lay under the hot West Texas sun.

All too soon, Dad whistled us in and we reclaimed our traditional territories, except, my little brother was already in the car. That was odd, none of us ever returned to the car before we were called. In fact, Dad usually had to whistle twice to get us within sight and then threaten to leave us as coyote bait before we finally relented. But there he was sitting in his accustomed spot in the middle, grinning. When the trip resumed and our parents were deep in some boring, grown-type, brain numbing conversation my older brother and I began the interrogation.

“What’s the big deal about bein’ in the car first?”

“Nothin’ “

“It’s somethin’ and you’re gonna tell us”

“I was tired, and hot.”

“Hot? It’s eleventy hundred degrees in here!”

That’s when I noticed he was clutching a paper sack, the one that held our snacks.

“Let me see what ya got in the sack.”

“It’s nothin’ and it’s my sack!” He clutched it tighter as both my older brother and I grabbed for it.

“Mooooooom! Willie and Susie are trying to take my……”

He didn’t finish. The sack tore and given the force exerted by the three of us, well, I think a whole new Law of Physics was discovered. What happened next is not an exact retelling because, to tell you the truth, none of us are absolutely certain but between the five of us we think we know what happened. Something took flight from inside that little sack and it wasn’t chocolate chip cookies. The object went flying toward Mom who, screaming like a wild banchee, swatted at it and sent it flying toward Dad, who was trying to drive and ascertain what was happening in the car. PJ was now crawling over the back of the front seat trying to reclaim his treasure; Willie and I were trying to help. Somewhere in the middle of the cacophonic circus the car went into a spin and finally stopped in the middle of an open field. I opened the car door to throw up and out from under the seat ran a horned toad. It hopped out the door, looked back at us, bobbed its head, and took refuge in the myriad of wildflowers never to be seen again.

Dad got out of the car to assess any damage to the car, deemed it was drivable but he wanted a mechanic to look at it and we resumed our trip in silence. My Dad’s steely blue eyes were framed in the rearview mirror, we were in for it now!

“And that, kids, is why you never pick up hitchhikers.”

We laughed and settled back as Dad started one of our favorite travel songs.