Risk-Reward Ratio

I am violently jolted awake out of a sound sleep. I struggle to get my orientation. I find myself in the middle of an Illinois cornfield 100 feet from US Hwy. 66. I’m still in the general area of the back seat of a vehicle whose driver somehow failed to react to the sharp left turn sign. Part of the huge danger sign has been knocked off, the front end of the car has some new dents, but the vehicle is upright. The driver puts the car into reverse, backs onto the highway, changes into first gear and we head back down the road toward Mexico. It’s another hitchhiking experience in the late 1940’s.

Hitchhiking was a generally accepted mode of transportation for young men then. I started doing it when I was in high school, just short 40 mile trips between home and prep school. Then in college we hitched between Texas and Illinois. Later there were trips across the Midwest and once to New York. Most trips provided at least some small addition to hitchhiking lore. There was the driver who kept bragging that he was a top representative for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation which paid for everything and anything he did: travel, food, accommodations, expensive women, and the “buttermilk” he sipped continuously from the brown bottle he kept between his feet. After he took careful aim and still just barely made it between the abutments on the sides of a bridge, I decided that the next crossroad was my destination.

There was the flashy young woman (I still remember her electric yellow blouse and shimmering green slacks) who stopped in response to my extended thumb. She opened the door, invited me to sit in the front seat, concurrently very visibly and deliberately moving the cocked Colt 45 from the passenger seat to her lap. She said she was just looking for a little conversation. Nothing more. I talked.

There are other memories: three a.m. along Lake Erie outside Cleveland trying to get a small fire started to keep me from freezing. The two young women from Mena, Arkansas who sincerely invited me to their home for dinner and a good nights sleep. I chose to decline. The trucker who locked me into his trailer atop empty beer kegs and bottles and who kept his word to let me out at my destination.

Hitchhiking was a way of saving money. It provided adventure and, of course, just enough risk to add value to the experience. Since then, the hitchhiking risk-reward ratio has gotten out of balance (and Interstates do not allow pedestrians).

Yet, this I know, a life without risk is flat and dull. Irrespective of age, one needs to keep taking risks - in making friends, in investing money, in sharing one’s beliefs, in dreaming dreams and in creating visions. The trick is to keep the risk-reward ratio in proper balance