The Last Straw: Twenty years ago, when I had to thumb lifts everywhere, I swore that if I ever owned a car, I'd always stop for hitch-hikers.
Okay, maybe I didn't swear that: I just knew I'd stop. Unlike the selfish drivers who kept passing me in the mid-1980s, even though it was raining. Younger readers won't remember, but it rained continuously during the years Garret FitzGerald was taoiseach.
Then I bought a car, and somehow I forgot all about the hitch-hikers. Sure, I'd stop if conditions were ideal. But conditions never seemed to be ideal. You'd be in a big hurry, or the hitch-hiker would be too near a dangerous bend.
Or you'd have just overtaken an articulated lorry with a broken exhaust that you'd been stuck behind for the last 17 miles and you were damned if you were going to let that b****** pass you again this side of Dublin.
Parenthood brought an even better excuse: the state of your car. Children use a car the way adults use a bring centre. Indeed, such is the build-up of waste material - much of it organic - after long journeys, that the floor of your vehicle is often transformed into a compost heap. You can be understandably reluctant to give lifts to strangers when you suspect that new life forms are evolving under the seats.
So for various reasons, none of them - perish the thought! - mere selfishness, I had never stopped for a hitch-hiker until recently.
Worse, I'd found myself making explanatory gestures to hitchers when I had good reasons not to stop: if the car was full, say, or I was turning off just down the road. The implication of such gestures being that if the car were not full, or you weren't turning, you would of course stop.
But even as I made these gestures, I recalled a bitter reflection from my hitch-hiking years. Namely, that if the number of drivers making explanatory gestures about why they couldn't give you a lift this time was an accurate indicator of the proportion who gave lifts any time, you'd never be stuck anywhere for more than five minutes. You'd never have spent that night in Mullingar. And as for Kilbeggan. You don't even want to talk about Kilbeggan.
Now I was making the same gestures. I hated myself. Then, a few weeks back, I had to hitch-hike from Athlone to Roscrea for an Irish Times feature. And while I would hesitate to compare this trip with the one that inspired Jack Kerouac's On The Road, the experience changed my life, at least a little.
Kerouac's drug-fuelled odyssey took him from New York to San Francisco, and later Mexico, over several years. Mine involved Clonmacnoise and Banagher (I had to skip Ferbane but, hey, life's too short for regrets, man) and lasted five-and-a-half hours.
Also, the features editor made it clear that the expenses would not cover drugs.
But my point is that in busy, materialistic Ireland 2005 - which is like 1950s America - I had no problem getting lifts. Ten of them. Ten generous souls were sufficiently unworried by the sight of an adult male in a bad sun-hat to stop and say: "Jump in".
Sure, it would probably have been different in rain. Nobody likes a wet hitch-hiker, which was the big problem in the 1980s. But by the time I reached Roscrea, I felt that all was not yet lost for Ireland. I didn't just feel lifted. I felt uplifted.
Now, finally, I really cannot pass a hitch-hiker, unless he's holding a sign (like "axe murderer") that doesn't match my itinerary. At least I haven't passed one yet. There aren't many hitch-hikers left, so my conversion hasn't been severely tested.
But there was that Polish immigrant in Carlow who loved Ireland and wanted to stay here "forever". There was the student in Monaghan. And there was that old man in Spiddal, who must have been 80. He was standing near a dangerous bend, actually, and I passed him the first time. Then I felt guilty and turned around. This must have looked odd, so I had to pretend I was lost, in case he thought I was an axe murderer.
As I say, hitch-hikers are rare these days. I predict an imminent revival, however, because nearly half a century after it was written, On The Road is about to be made into a movie. Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights in 1979, since when his plans to film it have been stuck in the Hollywood-project version of Mullingar, or possibly Kilbeggan. Now he's handed the job to the director responsible for The Motorcycle Diaries, another story that glamourised hitch-hiking. Mark my words, everyone will be doing it soon.
