I was wrong. Last time I was there was in 2006. I cancelled the Pioneer UAS program and we bought Army Shadows. I spent three days with the Army training folks there o make sure all was well for both the Navy and Marine guys going through training.

I went to Captain Whitside Elementary School (long gone). The officer housing we lived in was also long gone. I drove up to the water tank overlooking the Fort and could see the old O'Club where I used to fish as a kid.

We were only there a year, but I have a lot of memories of the place. My Dad resigned his commission after that tour, he was a Major at the time.

Whitside Elementary might be gone, but we still have Whitside Hall (where all our personnel actions take place). The street I lived on when my ex-wife and I were stationed here in the late 90's is gone, absorbed into the new housing development. It's a little surreal...that house is where my oldest daughter was concieved; where she lived the first few months of her life (we PCSed when she was 4 months old), and yet not only is the house gone, but the street itself has vanished. It would have been nice to drive by now that she's a teen and show her where her life began.

My dad would not have survived as an officer. He was not exactly a model soldier, even. Great warrior, earned many, many awards for bravery; got written up in the papers back here in the States, etc. But he didn't "play the game." He went through the enlisted ranks several times...both up AND down, lol. Highest rank he attained was E-8, but he got out of the Army as an E-5. He never talked much about Vietnam, but once I was in the Army and had a couple deployments under my belt, he started opening up to me--telling me more about what it was like for him. I appreciated that.

I was hitchhiking to driver training class at my high school and got picked up by a couple of girls going there- classmates!

Around 1969 I was hitchhiking home from junior high and a friend offered me a ride home with his mom as soon as they finished shopping at the grocery store nearby. I said no, my ride is right here. Stuck out my thumb and a Lamborghini Espada stops to pick me up. My friend's jaw was hanging down. It was Ed Daly, the owner of World Airways who lived nearby.

Nova Scotia is small, fewer than 1 million people, so it used to feel like an extended neighborhood.
Fall of 74, I was hitching home from university and had a ride about two thirds of the way with one of my profs and his family. He dropped me off when he pulled off the highway and I stuck out my thumb. A big old AMC Ambassador with three guys in the front bench pulled over and I jumped in the back. The first thing I noticed was the half empty 24 of beer in the back (of which I was invited to help myself) the second thing was the view of the road surface I was getting through the rusted out holes in the floor.
I got the guys to drop me at the next exit, waited until they pulled away and stuck out my thumb again. As a car with two girls pulled up beside me, I heard a car horn and looked to see a sister in law of one of my sisters (this was an hour and fifteen minutes from home). I thanked the girls for stopping and got a ride with the folks I knew to the town nearest home, where I saw my sister and her husband, who gave me a ride to the dooryard.
Every now and then, I wonder where the girls were going.;)

Best
Les

I was in Floriduh at a bar....they had hermit crab races.....mine won.....bought a round of drinks.....was going home by braille and I saw a thumb attached to a hot blonde. Spent three days with her....OI!

Yep, I pick up hitchhikers.....

When I was in the military stationed at Ft. Bragg in NC, I would hitch rides up to my home in New Jersey all the time. It was about 550 miles, and I would always be travelling overnight and wearing my uniform. It usually took 3 or 4 rides to get me there, and I and never had any problems with the folks who picked me up. More than once, the last ride even went out of their way to drop me right at my door.

When we were kids, my friends & I thumbed around town all the time...always hoping to get picked up by someone in a cool car. My best ride was in a '64 GTO convertible, which was fairly new at the time. Still remember it...maroon, w/blk interior & white top.

In the '70s, I traveled all over Canada & the US while living in my van, and I'd pick up fellow travelers from time to time...usually other hippie-types w/backpacks. Sometimes they would stay with me for a couple of days, but I never had problems with any of them. Once, out in the middle of the Canadian prairie, I picked up a young couple who told me that they'd been sitting there on the side of the road for 2 days without a ride!

Even here, in one of the last hold-outs of hippiedom on the West Coast, I hardly ever see hitchhikers any more.

Here in Colorado it's pretty common to see hitchhikers. Free public transit is prevalent in the resort communities, so many locals don't need cars unless they're headed down to Denver or over to another valley. So it's not unusual. Backpackers also tend to pop out of the trail miles from town. If I'm headed their way and they don't look too malicious, sometimes I stop. I usually tell them I'm just headed to whatever town is next. That way if they're super annoying or something I have an easy out. Then once I've determined where they're headed and if I enjoy the company, I fess up to my fib.

That reminds me of my brother and I giving two skiers a lift two years ago. They really were not thumbing but did need a ride. My brother and I had come down from cross country skiing up Shriner pass out of Redcliff and managed to get his 4WD Toyota stuck in the snow (don't ask how). The two guys got lost skiing the back bowls at Vail and came down the wrong side of the mountain, miles from any lift. They helped push us out so we offered them a lift back to Vail.