The

The You know, The

The Close your eyes in 2025 and imagine, if you will, the idea of routinely relying upon a complete and total

stranger to give you a ride to school, work, or any other destination. Well, in a sense,

we already do that with the advent of rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft, but those companies at minimum have some type of guardrails built into their business model, however weak they may be in reality.

In the 1970s, there were no apps or cell phones or any services such as these.

So cash-strapped individuals, primarily students and young people,

frequently relied upon another age-old method to get where they needed to go.

Hitchhiking. In the United States,

hitchhiking first entered the zeitgeist in the late 1920s,

due to the economic hardships of the Great Depression.

It remained a common mode of transportation in the 30s and 40s.

After World War II, thumbing a ride became an economical means for soldiers to return

to their loved ones, as well as an opportunity for motorists to perform a patriotic duty

by giving them a lift.

The youth movement in the 1960s saw a revival of this mode of transportation.

The 1970s would emerge as the golden era of hitchhiking in the United States,

with students, workers, travelers, and sometimes even minors, seeking the cheapest mode of transportation by using

their thumb to catch a ride. Despite warnings from parents, police, and other authority figures,

the hitchhiking is not always safe and in fact can be very dangerous, folks, especially young ones, were regularly getting

into a vehicle that they may have never seen before, driven by someone that they have never

met. This included young women and girls who felt the risk of hitching a ride to be very

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