Hitchin' A Ride  

November  20, 2025

The hippie movement swept the world like a tidal wave, cresting with the Summer of Love as young folks migrated to San Francisco in 1967. A large portion of those kids would have gotten there using the popular ride share service of the day. No phone, no apps required. Long before Uber, Lyft or Waymo, the best way to get around was by simply standing by the side of the road with your thumb out. Sometimes a cardboard sign might have been used, but for the most part, the thumb was sufficient.. I’m sure there were risks, but for the most part it seemed to work and remained popular well into the 1970’s.

Growing up, I hadn’t traveled much. Other than semiannual trips to Calgary to visit relatives, my travels had ranged no further than a couple of trips to Banff and one family vacation in 1959 when we visited Calgary, Banff, and Jasper. I was only three years old then, so I only had dim recollections. Then, in the spring of 1972, my world opened up like a ripe plum.

My older brother, Bruce, came up with a wonderful idea. He and I would board the train in Edmonton and head east. Our ultimate destination was Miami. And not only that, the plan was to hitchike back home! Needless to say, my mother wasn’t too enthusiastic that Bruce would be taking her precious baby (all of 15 years old) on such a long journey. And when she heard the part about hitchhiking, she was mortified.

But Mom’s protests were ignored and early one morning in March, we boarded the CN passenger train in downtown Edmonton and headed east on the Yellowhead route. It was all so wonderful. Soon we were passing through such exotic places as Vegreville, North Battleford, Saskatoon, and Humboldt. It was my first journey out of Alberta, and I stared wide-eyed at the open prairie. We were too poor to purchase a ticket that included a sleeping berth, and I do recall that those wide eyes began to droop. Sometime in the night, we dropped off to sleep sitting upright in seats that by that time had become cramped and uncomfortable.

It was early in the morning of the next day that we reached our destination. “What?” I can hear you ask. “I thought you were going to Miami?” My reply would have been, “Yes, that’s correct; we were going to Miami. Miami, Manitoba!” Wikipedia tells me that Miami, Manitoba, is an unincorporated community in southern Manitoba, about 100 km southwest of Winnipeg. In 1972, it was also the hometown of my big sister, Maureen, and her husband, Bob, who farmed nearby.

We had a wonderful visit for a week or so, and then the time came for the real adventure to begin. Fortunately, the last evening we were visiting, a neighboring farmer, Ray Moocher, came to visit. We learned that Ray would be getting up early the next morning to haul a semi-truck load of potatoes to the town of Carberry, which was a couple of hours west, located just off the Trans-Canada Highway. We politely asked if we could get a ride with him. At first, he seemed reluctant to allow a couple of scruffy-looking kids into his truck, but by the time the visit was done, he agreed to take us along. I don’t remember too much, but I remember being impressed with all the shifting and gears in his big truck. By the time we reached Carberry, we were no longer strangers. Bruce had a gift for engaging almost anyone in conversation, and soon we found some common ground with this Manitoba potato farmer.

Ray dropped us off at the junction of the Trans-Canada Highway and the road leading south into Carberry. For two reasons, that corner will remain cemented in my memory. One is that from where we were standing, we could see the morning traffic coming out of Carberry. Much to our surprise, we recognized one of the cars and its driver. A few years earlier, we had hosted a couple of 4-H exchange students from Manitoba. We got to know one of them quite well, a young man named Barry Gosnell, and he and Bruce became good friends. So, we were quite astonished to see Barry come up to the corner and turn east toward Winnipeg. Sadly, in spite of our waving, he didn’t see us, or if he did, he didn’t recognize us and kept on going.

The second reason that I won’t forget that corner concerns a much more recent, and disastrous, event. In June of 2023, this corner was the scene of a terrible accident when a bus full of seniors was struck by a semi-truck, leading to 17 deaths and 8 injuries.

This, of course, was far in the future as we waited for a ride with our thumbs out. With one exception, I don’t recall the exact details of the rest of the trip other than the fact that we never had to wait long to get picked up. Somehow, we made it west to Regina with one ride, then north to Saskatoon with a university student. The last section from Saskatoon to Edmonton went by especially quickly, as we were picked up by a French Canadian with a “lead foot.” I was in the front seat, riding along and enjoying the speed. Looking back at Bruce's white face told another story, as he was able to see the speedometer!

We were quite astonished to arrive back in Edmonton on the evening of the same day we left Manitoba. We had a great time, and if you had seen me back at school a few days later, you might have noticed that I walked a little taller than my fellow students. For who among them had been to Miami!