Elijah Wald: Rides With Strangers
Jun 26th, 2007 by baffledexperts
For this episode, I interviewed Elijah Wald. He wrote a fabulous book, “Riding With Strangers” about his hitchhiking experiences and the history of hitching.
Surprisingly, Mr Wald has a “people’s history” view of hitching, quite different from the “beats and hippies” view I had until we talked.
(I’ve buggered this up. I used to have the credits for this wonderful photo, but I’ve lost them. If it should happen to be yours, please let me know.)
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That was refreshing. I hitchhiked fairly regularly for several years in the 1980s and no harm came to me. Quite to the contrary, I had a lot of laughs with a variety of people, and in a couple of cases got somewhere I needed to be when I had no reasonable alternatives for getting there. The positives far outweighed the minor negatives.
It’s great to do a google search and hear Elijah talking about hitchhiking. I met him hitchiking in Spain from Madrid to Galicia back in 1977 and figured he’d be doing something interesting so I googled him.
I’m glad you liked it. He was a real gent to talk to–and his book is quite good. Donna, he must have made quite an impression on you if you remember him 30 years later!