Hit the Road!
For generations, Americans have "found themselves" by hitting the road and discovering America, and many of them did that on Route 66. It's time we hit the Mother Road again.
In the early 1970s, I decided to hitchhike across America. I was discontented with college and had decided to be a missionary for awhile. I had a couple of months to kill before my training started, so I decided to spend them on the road seeing America.
I wasn't the first in my family to do this. Back in the 1920s, several of my granddad's brothers and cousins decided to drive from North Carolina to California, working their way across. Keep in mind that Route 66, the first interstate road in America, did not exist until 1926. Even then, it was just a patchwork of backroads and main street,s loosely joined together, that meandered from Chicago to LA. It wasn't until later that the "official" route was built. So my great uncles were setting out on a true adventure.
My adventure started in Lenoir, NC, my hometown, with my dad letting me out on the highway to hitch to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where I was going to hook up with my high school class for a couple of days and then head out for California. Dad had done his best to talk me out of my trip, but my mind was made up. His eyes were filled with tears as he let me out on the side of the road. He thought he had lost me forever. What he didn't realize was that I had been hitching back and forth from college in Chapel Hill for a year, and thought I had a pretty good system down for getting rides. Just that little bit of success emboldened me to take the plunge and head west.