Sir,- I’ve greatly enjoyed your correspondent, Frank McNally’s recent musings on the disappearing art of hitchhiking. My memories go back to the halcyon days when the Naas Road (before the roundabouts) and that northside stretch just short of the Coachman’s Inn were awash with optimistic thumb-ers waiting for a generous motorist or a truck driver keen for the diversion of a friendly chat.
However, my thumb exercises became international during the summer months when friends and I would “hitch” quickly and safely (now that I come to think of it) through England to one of the Channel ports and on to France.
There hitching speeds slowed dramatically. That gave plenty of time for the thumbing fraternity to sit around in youth hostels swapping our hitching yarns. One brazen thumb-er swanned into the bar one night and told us that he’d thumbed a “decent bloke” down in Marseilles who took him all the way to Paris. Even using modern motorways, that’s an eight or nine hour trip, and a lot longer in the early 1960s.
In the 60-odd years since I heard that claim, I’ve often wondered if that was a big fib, or is it a hitchhiking record? – Yours, etc,
RM Block
MARTIN FITZPATRICK,
Raheny,
Dublin 5.
Sir, – Frank McNally’s recollections (An Irishman’s Diary August 11th) stirred my own memories of student days spent hitchhiking from Galway to south Sligo in the early 1980s.
One miserable Friday morning I spent two hours in Ballindine with thumb extended. Unlike the Saw Doctors 10 years later, I just wished to be off the N17. I was eventually rescued by a member of the travelling community who safely dropped me off at a halting site outside Swinford 30 minutes later. – Yours, etc.
KEVIN NEALON,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.
Sir, – I enjoyed Frank McNally’s diary on hitchhiking. Many years ago I was driving along in my little second-hand banger when I spotted this young man on crutches with his thumb out, looking for a lift.
Feeling sorry for the poor man I stopped and asked him to get in. He very sprightly threw the crutches into the back seat and jumped into the car. I asked him did he not need the crutches to get out later?
“Not at all, the auld crutches trick always works,” he laughed, mission accomplished.
I complimented him on his ingenuity. I am sure he went far in life. – Yours, etc,
FRANK KILFEATHER,
Delgany,
Co Wicklow.
