Thumbing.......a dead tradition

[Beast Man]

No, nothing like that, take your minds out of the gutter, for these were simpler times. For there was once a time when our broke teenage asses could traverse the country with relative ease......for free. Gone are those days, due to better transport and generally an abundance of more sick/evil pedestrians and drivers. Anyone seen thumbing now is presumed to obviously have mental health issues. But it was not always like this. Below are the cornerstones to a life spent thumbing....

1. The Look: facially a kind of half smile with slightly raised eyebrows as if to say, 'I'm so happy and friendly, I'm totally safe and have not a care in the world'. This was increasingly hard to do as the hours went by and you were pissed on. Over do the smile and your into psychotic territory. Oh and clothes wise, metal tshirts a big no no, cover that shit with a jacket bro, no upstanding driver wants to see that.

2. The Etiquette: You arrive first, 'thats your spot'...any other fucker comes sniffing, he goes behind you full stop, and I mean well down the road behind you. Same respect applies the other way round. Last thing you want the driver to think is that you are together, then your never getting a lift.

3. The Reliable: Farmer joe see's you and he's always given you a lift.....your sorted, 100% every time...you'll just have to listen to silage talk and put up with it.

4. The 'Shock' Wanker neighbour: Ah here's your man from up the road...sorted...drives past uncaring.....you fuckin wanker, I always thought you were daycent!!!

4. The Drive Off: Only happened me a few times but that was enough...pulls in, you run..nearly there..takes off at speed....cunt! (or cunts)...may be accompanied by a triumphalant beeping of the horn...take the cunts number...you might see him again.

5. The Truck: not ideal, but he's stopped so I'll have to get in, getting up that ladder is a cunt...this lift could be a security risk (truckers are weird having spent too much time on their own)...hope he lets me out cause this would be some jump if I have to abandon ship.

6. The Taxi: Yes, this bizzarely happened me once. Jump in, he puts the fucking meter on...whoa mate, I was 'thumbing'...i've no money...back and forth of 'fuck you'...then 'get the fuck out mate'

7. The Once in a Lifetime: Yes it did happen, no one can take that away from me and don't care if anyone believes it...car pulls up, four hot young wans, two the front, two in the back, I'm squeezed in the middle with the back two...nothing happened only shite talk but what a coup, silly girls, I could have been anybody

8. The Pervy Aul Lad: Once again, only once, few mins into the journey, jaysus your a grand young fella.....hand on the knee, ...what? stop the car mate or I'm breaking your jaw..out I go, shaken but not stirred.

9. The Turning Hand: A good neighbour drives straight past....signalling with hand that he's turning soon (meaning I'm no good to you cause I know your going to town)...lying bastard, you look and check, he doesnt turn...and there is no other turn before town

Any other tales of woe?

[Carnage]

I used to got back and forth to Galway (about 40 miles, this was before the motorway opened that stretch), had a few odd ones:

Heading to the arts festival one year, got halfway there, second lift was from a friendly hippy lady in an oul' rattlebox with a goose feather where the tax disc should be. Just made an impression.

Had a farmer bring me all the way home with his jack russell on my lap as he ate a boiled potato like an apple. Got me within 5 mins. walk of the house, suited me - though the detour down a lane to drop off something to a friend had me on edge 'til we were back on the road.

Going the other way, the last lift I got (guts of 20 years ago) was from a lad heading to Limerick, said he'd drop me where he was turning off in Loughrea. This was at 2 or 3 in the morning, I'd come.from a party and one of my cans had leaked in my pocket so my jacket was stinking of beer. Got to Loughrea and he just kept going, I panicked a bit and asked him what the craic was, he said he'd hate to see a lad stuck at that hour, how he was an alcoholic and had been off it for years and that "it didn't take much" to go over the edge. He dropped me at the petrol station at the bottom of my road in Galway, wouldn't take money for diesel or anything. Sound lad, I think he thought I was a right wino.

[open face surgery]

Used to hitch a lot between Westport/Castlebar and Westport/Louisburgh as a kid and quite often with a guitar for the former. The last time I did it was from Lecanvey into Westport after a shkelp of pints, maybe 5 years ago. First car picked me up then proceeded to tell me that you rarely see hitchers anymore because it's presumably too embarrassing. I was happy enough in my drunken shame. I had a lift 

[Kunt 4 Life]

We used to give the thumbs up sign to people when driving. Are we cunts?

[Anvil]

I've only done it once, quite drunk after a night in a pub about 7 miles from home.  Taxi driver stopped, told him I had no cash but he gave me a lift for free as it was freezing and he was going in my direction.  Nice chap.

[Thorn]

Had to do it a few weeks back after leaving the keys to the house at work, the desolation of standing there shamelessly with thumb out while people made a quick assessments of you was not something I miss I tell ya. After about thirty mins some bloke lifted me then proceeded to wait while I got my keys and ran me back out the road. I think he just enjoyed the football chat but man was I lucky to get such a saint, fair play to him.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Hitched through Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe when I was 19, with the girl I was going out with at the time. Her parents had moved to Ireland from South Africa and had no problem with her doing it. My aul wan may have quite literally died with stress if she'd had any idea 

Couple of hairy experiences I wouldn't have chosen to find myself in along the way, but thankfully nothing too out of hand. One funny one was a guy, bodybuilder physique, driving the biggest pick-up I've ever seen. It was hauling a normal size pick-up on the back of it, that's how big it was. He stops, sound, he can take us a few hundred kilometers, sound, we clamber up and onto the seats, pull our seatbelts on, he starts the engine and the CD player starts pumping out Steps. This guy, this vehicle (though it was white all the same), and he's listening to Steps. By choice. Was all I could do not to burst out laughing. Had I been able to conjure up just a hint of the aural pain a few hundred kilometers of Steps was going to cause to me, that task would have been made a helluva lot easier.

[astfgyl]

Thumbed the shit out of it for years but it's definitely dead now. The trust is gone. Sign of the times, not knowing who your neighbour is and knowing their neighbours don't know who they are wherever they're from either. It's a pity but it is what it is I guess.

Last time I thumbed I counted the cars that passed and it was number 148 that picked me up, less than 5 miles from my gaff. That was nearly a decade ago, so it's not a new development either. It did come on rather suddenly though, as a year or two previously I'd have been picked up fairly handy

Have a decent few funny ones as well but the typing them out is beyond me this minute.

Anyone else find the general shift in mindset the last decade or so?

[astfgyl]

So was thumbing one day with the cousin and we were having a hard time getting the lift so I says hey maybe if we show a bit of leg we'll have more luck so there we were pulling up the legs of the jeans and the very first car picked us up - a priest!

[Eoin McLove]

Not exactly thumbing, but many years ago, over 20 anyway, I was down in Mayo for the weekend. A few of us went down to a friend's parents' holiday home. We ended up heading to the local dishca for pints and skirt chasing. Got rubbered naturally and ended up sniffing after some young one. Hopped in a mini bus with her to some town nearby but I hadn't a breeze where I was. She ends up ditching me at 1 or 2 in the morning and I had no fucking idea where I was even going. I remembered the house was beside Caramore Lake so I asked someone which way to go. They said it's about 10 miles out that road there so off I trot. I'm drunk as a mule, jogging up the road with my t-shirt off and cars full of drunk youngsters driving past me beeping and roaring out the window.

After travelling for half and hour or more I see a light on in a house. Middle of fucking nowhere, pitch darkness... but I'm getting a bit worried now that I'm going to get completely lost... loster!

I tap on the window and someone peeps the head out. I explain that I'm lost and looking for Caramore Lake and they say, yeah keep going up the road for a few miles till you see a fork in the road and then go left. Grand job. Off I go.

I eventually find the fork in the road but at this stage in completely banjaxed so I decide to have a little nap in front of a gate. Next thing I'm being woken up by a dude shaking me to see if I'm alive. He's after turning down the road and almost drove over me as I had rolled out on the road in my sleep
 

He asks where I'm going and bundles me in to the back of his little van. I'm in the back, caged in no less, with his dog on the passenger seat in front  He drives me up the road until I finally spot the house. As he parks in the driveway to let me out one of the lads comes out of the house,  scuttered, with a glass of whiskey. Andy, there you are! We thought we lost you!

The old farmer is giving out that he nearly killed me and we are all pissing ourselves. Thanks for the lift dude, see you later! Inside and crack open another beer.

It fills me with horror to think about it now but as a teenager it was just another silly adventure.

[Circlepit]

A lot of thumbing between Ballina and Tuam and onto Galway in the late 90's.

I'd have to thumb from Ballina to Tuam to the girl I was  seeing and then we would thumb from Tuam to Galway.

Nothing that wild ever happened. I had one fella lose his mind all the way from Galway to Ballina singing along to Pink Floyd live.
Music was always the go to for conversation.

I had one old man on a red escort ask me if I watched porn. I instantly became as giddy as school boy and said " loads"
He the came out with my favourite line ever
" where do they get all those fellas with the big baters".

 I remember thinking if I  don't get raped and killed here I am going  to use that line on as many people as possible.

When there was more than one of us we used to see who could come up with the most bizarre conversation whilst keeping a straight face. Juvenile but funny.

[Eoin McLove]

 

[astfgyl]

Did you ever find out where they got all those baters?

[StoutAndAle]

I've never hitched. Living in cities all my life probably means that I never had the need to.

My old man would pick up the odd hitch-hiker cos he'd done it himself in the 60s/70s.

One memorable experience was one morning he was driving to see my grandparents. I was about 8 or so. A few minutes up the road from my mam's house, the oul fella spots a lad with his thumb out and pulls over. The hitcher does a little run and hops in. A powerful smell of stale pub hit the air of the Ford Grenada - even at that tender age, I knew the aroma.

"How's it going, Sam?" asked my old man.

"Ah, by the hokey -Mitch, tis yourself!" says Sam. "Thanks for stopping. You'll take the hill offa me anyway."

About 2 minutes into a conversation discussing this and that, Sam leaps out of his skin and roars;

"JESUS CHRIST, MITCH! There's a chap in the back seat! There's a chap in the baaaaaaaaack!"

"That's my son, Sammy. That's my son!" says my old man trying to steer and pin Sammy to his seat.

"Was he there the whole time?" he asked "Ah, I'm terrible sorry, young fella. I didn't mean to scare you. Here..." and he reaches into his pocket and comes out with a tenner. A tenner in the mid-1980s! And then says "Eh. No. No. I'll buy you a lum'nade the next time" and re-pockets the cash.

"I'm going as far as my mother's house, Sammy" says the oul fella.

"Grand, grand. Once I get near enough work, Mitch. Bit raw from last night."

"Do you work Saturdays now, Sam?" ask my dad.

"No. Is today Saturday? Will you drop me near the Baker's Road Tavern so please?" 

[Circlepit]

Did you ever find out where they got all those baters?

I presume they have some fella with a clip board and measuring tape that goes door to door. If only I had said that back then.

Nowadays if  I thought my kids were going to try out hitching a lift I'd lose my mind.