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Vachel Lindsay on Hitch-hiking
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was an American poet who roamed the country exchanging poems
for food and shelter. He lived from 1879 to 1931. In 1912 he took a long
walk from from Illinois to Kansas and on Sunday morning, June 23rd wrote
a letter home in which he said:
"When the weather is good, touring automobiles whiz past. They have
pennants showing they are from Kansas City, Emporia, New York or
Chicago. They have camping canvas and bedding on the back seats of
the car, or strapped in the rear. They are on camping tours to
Colorado Springs and the like pleasure places. Some few avow they
are going to the coast. About five o'clock in the evening some man
making a local trip is apt to
come along alone. He it is that wants the other side of the machine
weighed down. He it is that will offer me a ride and spin me along
from
five to twenty-five miles before supper. This delightful use that
may be
made of an automobile in rounding out a day's walk has had something
to do
with mending my prejudice against it, despite the grand airs of
the
tourists that whirl by at midday. I still maintain that the auto
is a
carnal institution, to be shunned by the truly spiritual, but there
are
times when I, for one, get tired of being spiritual."
This is the earliest clear reference to hitch-hiking that I've come across
yet, though it doesn't use the word. It contrasts well with the earliest
citation of the word we have dating back to 1923 (it appeared in The
Nation) providing a gap of some 11 years during which it is easy
to suppose that the phenomenon grew in the public awareness to the point
where a new word was called for. This extract from one of Lindsay's letters
was pulled from Adventures Rhymes & Designs (Eakins Press, New
York, 1968, pp. 120-121) which is essentially an annotated reprint of Lindsay's book Adventures while Preaching The Gospel of Beauty (Mitchell Kennerley, New York, 1914).
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