Jean Andre Vallery
I’m a long time hitch hiker who has witnessed the continued negative reporting of hitch hikers in America. It’s taught from the beginning of a person’s life. It’s put in movies, its told at every level of discussion. This has to get some press. People look at all the hitch hikers like their murderers. People swerve their cars and trucks away when your even a long ways from their vehicle.
The Europeans visiting over here constantly are afraid to hitch hike because of all the negative stories. They travel in Europe from specially designed hitch hiker pickup points on the highways provided for them. America places signs on the edges of highways that it’s illegal to hitch hike. The highway patrol treats us as criminals and threatens to fine and or jail us for hitchhiking.
I should have been taking more pictures of the beautiful landscape to write about. It would show the beauty instead of me trying to describe it
The armchair vagabond. It has a nice sound to it, the title. Maybe just maybe like in that movie with tom hanks someone says why are you doing this? Because I can.
As a fledgling writer I’ve yet to learn the skill to project my thoughts to the reader in a effective way. The results are just a collection of paragraphs.
I hope you see the road as I see it. As a dangerous path filled with a beauty that surprises your senses like a woman walking by, hard to describe.
People riding these roads see the vehicles not the humans standing alongside it. The hitch hiker is remembered mostly from horrible scenes portrayed in movies and tales from detective television stories. We are far from that. We are a mixture of people from all social groups and races.
Most of us have been on the road for a extended time have only the road as a friend, lover and protector. As a friend she talks to you through the many wonderful people you meet. A lover it is passionate, thrilling, electric free spirit that never leaves your side. Protector from a environment that reaches out to embrace you.
Once you step out on the side of the road and start hitch hiking you begin a transformation in your awareness absorbed from your surrounding countryside. You become the season. You become the smell of the earth after a summer rain.
The sweet smell of the wildflower is your lover..
Prior US Army 71-74 Marine 80-83
Jean Andre Vallery Comments are welcome!
thank you for your servíce and great ideas, I can testify how close everyone is to being homeless and my husband’s a vietnam vet and we’ve been thru he’ll and we’re not back up on oír feet yet.
I think you write beautifully… Though i have never hit the pavement the way you have I have been blessed with the ability to see the world differently than most. My eyes see what is there and the true nature of things and if I were to describe what my eyes see most people would believe I see only illusions. when in all reality they are the ones with the tainted view, seeing only what others want them to see in order to appease or what they were taught to see through years of repetitive instruction or simply tainted by the bitterness in their own heart.