You've got large spheres!

Do you think there will ever again be a generation who thought of
hitchiking as public transportation?

Spring, '69, Kevin (subject a several stories I probably won't pass on
to my children) and I were hitchinking back to Fayette Iowa...probably
from Cedar Falls, you know, where the women were...about 3:00am.  Its so
desolete that we stand in the middle of the highway and answer natures
call.  A State trooper picks us up.  We figure we're gonna spend the
night in some jail.  Try as we do, we can't get ALL that hair under the
hat.  But he's bored and has nothing better to do, so he drives us to
the next county line and warns us that the locas don't appreciate guys
like us.  (We already knew that, but probably were polite about it.)  So
realizing we were close, but not close enough tohome we called a friend
hoping for a ride.  While we are in the phone booth...three cars show up
and start driving around the phone booth...sort of like the indians and
the wagon train!  We report this to our friends on the other end of the
line and suggest that if we aren't in the booth when they arrive they'd
better look for the pieces.  As I recall, the locals worked themselves
up into a hippie eating frenzy...but did not stop, get out of the cars
and head for us before a half dozen pairs of head lights could be seen
coming down the highway at a high rate of speed.

Damn near thirty years!  Those guys...both sets, have been wandering the
earth changing things.  Mostly for the better I suspect.  We did no harm
that night, but we gave each other stories to tell.  Lessons.  I really
don't have a lot of police stories, for a guy of my generation, and both
of my trooper stories are about decent guys doing good things.  It tends
to color my view of troopers favoribly.  But I digress.

Wait!  Robert Whitlam!  He drove to our rescue in that little Morris
thing!  He led the rescue party!  He became an archeologist in Brittish
Columbia!  He's out there somewhere and we're in the same profession
now...sort of!  Anybody seen or heard from him?