From TONY HILLERMAN's SELDOM DISAPPOINTED a Memoir
C 2001 by the author
HarperCollinsPublishers
page 66-67
"The Depression had made it socially acceptable to be out on the road without bus ticket money. With the unemployment rate about 30 percent, those fortune enough to be driving certainly had friends or relatives uprooted and homeless drifting around in the hope that they'd find work over the horizon. Then came the war, further uprooting, gasoline rationing, jam-packed public transportation, and millions of men trying to get home or back to camp. Failing to pick up someone with his thumb out was antisocial. Passing up one in uniform was akin to treason. For servicemen hitchhiking became so common that a protocol was developed. if others were seeking rides on your stretch of highway you moved down the line past them. They we4re expected to suggest to the driver who picked them up that you, too, would appreciate a ride. The point to the above being that hitchhiking was easy, orthodox, sometimes exciting....."
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