I didn't get my first car until a couple of months before my wife and I were

married in June of '68. It was an MGBGT (a hardtop MG), a neat little two seat

sports car. We were living in New Jersey at the time. I was still in the army,

stationed at Fort Monmouth.

The sports car seemed like a good idea at the time, but I eventually came to the

realization that it wasn't a practical choice. This realization struck me

somewhere between exit 10 and 12 on the New Jersey Turnpike. It hit home when I

looked over at one of the many trucks that were passing me and noticed that it's

wheel was taller than my car. I was driving along at 70 miles an hour in a car

where my butt was about a foot off the asphalt. My legs stretched out under the

car's engine. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt (nobody did back then). In reality my

car was a coffin on wheels.

On top of that I was usually driving back to Baltimore after working a 12 hour

shift. I would usually find myself dozing off in the vicinity of the Delaware

Memorial Bridge. I still don't know to this day how I made it home some of those

nights.

I often try to think if it was my future wife's father who talked me into

purchasing that little car. We didn't see eye to eye on most things. He didn't

think I should be dating his daughter, and I thought I should. He was big and

Italian (I swore he was in the mafia) and never smiled, save for the time I told

him I was going to Vietnam, then a large grin split his face.

Anyhow, I made it through a couple of years with that car. Turns out it was

pretty dependable. It really didn't start acting up until a day or two after

the warranty ran out.

Before that, when I was in high school, I had five ways of getting around:

borrowing my father's '58 Chevy Wagon, catching a ride with a friend, walking,

thumbing a ride, or taking the bus.

I'll tell you truthfully that the last three options were worst case scenarios.

Unfortunately, more often than not, I ended up using one of those modes of

transportation.

 Until my last year in high school, when my brother and I were lucky enough to

acquire a friend who had a Volkswagen Beetle,  I was very much at the mercy of

the public transportation system or the general public.

I know of grandfathers who would tell their grandchildren tales of walking miles

to school in the most horrendous weather conditions. That wasn't me. Oh I walked

to school, and home from school, many days (my high school was two and a half

miles away). But only under favorable weather conditions. If the weather was

lousy, I'd either thumb or take the bus.

Hitching a ride was easy going to school. I'd simply walk across the street by

my house and stick my thumb out. Usually within five minutes I had a ride. I

should add that thumbing a ride in the '60s was an accepted practice. Lots of

kids did it without incident. In fact the only incident I'm aware of was when a

buddy of mine was touched on the leg by an older male driver. My friend told me

that he proceeded to punch the guy in the head, then jumped out of the still

moving vehicle. My pal was alright, and he never ran into that man again.

Hitching a ride from school was harder because of the competition. On most of

the traffic lights surrounding the school you'd find as many as twenty guys

angling for a ride. If someone pulled over, at one of those lights, it was much

like the paparazzi and Britney Spears. The vehicle would be swarmed with bodies

all grabbing for the door handle, or even the hood or the trunk.

I would often walk a block or two up the road to a less congested intersection.

Or sometimes, after walking those two blocks, I'd just say the hell with it and

keep walking.

The worst part about walking home was carrying all those books. We didn't have

backpacks then. Some kids had them, but they'd get beat up for it. Backpacks, or

book bags, were, for a reason I can't explain, taboo at our school. So, if one

liked an unbruised face, they would keep their notebook, and classroom books

under their arm. The only saving grace we had was a large rubber strap with

hooks on each end. The strap secured the books together until it either

stretched out  until it was about six feet long or wore out and snapped at an

always inappropriate time.

For me, the public bus was the last resort for two reasons. One, it was always

packed with kids. Where all the kids came from I'll never know since our stop

was the first in front of the school. The driver, who I suspect was sadistic,

would never close the doors on a potential fare. The problem was when you yanked

the cord for your stop, you usually couldn't negotiate the crowds to get off.

The driver, always impatient, would only wait a few seconds before he shut the

doors and took off. I remember once, by the time I exited the bus, I didn't even

know where I was. Two, I had usually spent my quarter for the bus on snacks in

the cafeteria. Thereby leaving me penniless and walking.