Hitchhiking Adventures

One of the ways that Americans used to get around over distances was hitchhiking. Certainly out of favor today, in the earlier days of automobiles, particularly during and following the Great Depression in the early 1930s, people traveling who could afford cars often generously shared rides with those who could not. Trains did not go everywhere.

It didn't end in the 30s, and hitchhiking was common in the west through the 1960s. Before WWII it was associated with "hobos" and workers following harvests, and it became common for soldiers on leave during and following WWII. My father had tales of hitchhiking on trucks to follow the wheat harvests, riding in the beds, much like one reads in Steinbeck stories of the Great Depression.

In the early 1960s, I had a few of those experiences. I was a broke enlisted army Spec4 from Kansas studying at the Department of Defense language school in Monterey, California. No money to spend on tickets, but I wanted to see San Francisco. I tended to be a selfish traveler, impatient with interests of companions, so I actually preferred traveling alone. Military basic training gives one confidence, physical fitness and personal fighting skills sufficient for self defense if necessary. I decided to stick out my thumb near the base, and readily wound up in The City, about 100 miles away.

It was my introduction to managing on the margins. I found a tiny cheap junky room with cheesecloth sheets on a narrow lumpy bed, a window to an airshaft and quite a bit of noise, as I found out. I toured the city core on foot for two days, Lombard street and all.

I saw a Dizzy Gillespie set at a club, which was a tiny dark cellar with a dozen tiny tables and a hog wire screen wall separating bleachers for the under-21 crowd - which I was. That underage area was jammed well above any modern fire code. It was interesting, but I really didn't understand jazz as much as I wanted to, not being a musician. I left after one set, quite bored. I also went to a Dave Brubeck concert, but he had moved on to more esoteric jazz than I liked.

The next day I stuck my thumb out for return to Monterey. I walked a lot, dodging cops on the expressway - a few hours of walking before I caught a ride - with the same guy, a sad older gay guy, who had given me a ride in. Apparently cruising, but he was kind enough when it was clear I was straight. This is 1963.

I returned home to Kansas for Christmas that year. No transportation money, but I caught a ride with a fellow serviceman as far as Laramie, and then stuck out my thumb again toward Denver. It was late and a trucker took me to Cheyenne, where I caught a ride south to Loveland. Standing along the road about midnight in winter with my thumb out, I caught the attention of some early 20s girls from Denver who put me up on the floor of their apartment. The next day I took the bus home, 300 miles east of Denver.

I had arranged to meet a return ride in Salt Lake City, but when I got off the bus a clerk told me my ride had called and cancelled. I didn't have the fare, so once again I stuck my thumb out, and managed to pick up rides west, back to Monterey. I was on the shoulder for a few hours, joined by one or two others, and we managed to catch rides through the night that are no longer memorable because we slept.

I later was transferred to Maryland and Fort Meade, where I also tried to hitchhike, but the east coast lacked the body of clear long route traffic that benefits a distance hitchhiker. I walked a long way out of Washington before I decided to find a bus. When I was later stationed in Germany, hitchhiking wasn't tolerated.

It was an interesting period, and a real adventure. I made many mistakes I had to walk my way out of. I walked miles out of San Francisco and Salt Lake City and Cheyenne and Washington, D.C. As many solo explorers and travelers find, you revel in applying your own resources - intelligence and knowledge, judgement, energy, endurance, patience, and resourcefulness. You come away knowing yourself and your capacities much better.

The times have changed immensely. Transportation has changed, and the webs of trust are frayed today. I wouldn't do it again, but I know I did it and learned a lot about myself. One of those life passages.

Scenemaker, 20 June 2017

Trusting Dates in Family Research

One of the problems for genealogists is sorting out conflicting stories and references.

Many official records exist and are being made available online, but the character and condition often is problematic. Courthouses burned with shelves of ledgers, and town meeting notes and ledgers in New England are barely decipherable today. Nevertheless, the family history industry is expending huge efforts to make existing records available.

This entry is about history and genealogy in conflict, and the need to inspect the history behind reported dates.

The first documented person in my Woods study is Jeremiah P. Woods, born 26 May 1797 in Dayton, Ohio, according to his tombstone in Missouri. We have no reason to doubt the date, but the location is curious. The city of Dayton lies fifty miles up the Miami River from Cincinnati in today’s Montgomery Co., created in 1803 from Hamilton. The first settlers arrived to establish Dayton in 1796, the year before Jeremiah’s birth. Travel was quite challenging for the founders.

< Dayton in 1800, fancifully portrayed about 1880.

In March, 1796, Dayton's founding enterprise left Cincinnati in three parties, led by William Hamer, George Newcom, and Samuel Thompson. Hamer's party was the first to start; the other two companies left on Monday, March 21st, one by land, the other by water[Miami River]. Hamer's party came in a two-horse wagon over the road begun, but only partially cut through the woods, by Cooper in the fall of 1795.

"The sixty miles from Cincinnati to Mad River was a tedious and exhausting journey. The road was merely a rough, narrow, unbroken path through the woods and brush, except that part of it which led to Fort Hamilton, which, as it was used by the army, was kept in tolerably good condition. They suffered from cold and dampness in camp, as it had rained and was spitting snow."

The Woods name is not listed among those settlers. By these accounts and date, and given the date of Jeremiah's birth, it seems the family arrived within weeks or a few months after the founding and built among the first dwellings in the city. The absence of the Woods name in early accounts and available records is confounding. It is possible and perhaps likely that Jeremiah’s birth in Dayton is self-reported and subject to some error. And yet the later known character and occupations of the family show they were builders who pioneered towns.

The census records for Ohio before 1830 have been lost, making the task of tracing Jeremiah Woods’ family quite difficult. The estate of a possible father or uncle of Jeremiah, Samuel Woods of Dayton, born probably before 1786, was probated in 1807 in Montgomery Co., confirming a Woods family, perhaps this one, was established in that town in its first decade. Jeremiah (1797) named his ninth child Samuel in 1840, but other evidence of his parents’ names has not been found.

The take-away here is the need to be thorough about dates and places. It always is helpful, if not mandatory, to attempt to understand the history of the moment regarding dates. They may be from reputable sources, as from a grave marker, but it's helpful to know the life of the time.

Opportunity or Exploitation

Two recent rule changes will bring some adjustments to some theatre production considerations. One involves the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, and the other involves theatres employing unionized performers, with emphasis in southern California. They're related in that both are forcing accountability and reality checks for exploitive arts employment.

A European theatre, actor's view.

A major part of ART continuing from its inception under Robert Brustein has been its Institute. Fundamentally, it is an actor-training program. I'm sure students receive some great instruction in their experiences with performers, but the relationship may appear to be exploitive to an outside observer.

The Department of Education has concerns about the debt-to-expected-earnings. Students can become trapped into hefty loan repayment without realistic employment opportunities.

The second complication is a set of new rulings by Actors' Equity Association (AEA), the national union for professional stage actors. In Los Angeles, Equity actors can work for non-scale pay on a performance basis for a non-union, non-commercial theatrical production. But next year the AEA will require actors to be paid for all time spent on set, including rehearsals.

Both of these rulings battle the exploitive aspects of theatre employment for actors. Directors, designers and technicians are in a little stronger bargaining position or have union representation. Actors are more susceptible to exploitation because their employment is more contingent. Equal opportunity employment has little consideration where artistry and skill are in the balance, and very specifically competitive, as in theatre, music, and visual art. Yet, opportunities for under-represented groups to compete on a level field often are constrained and unconsciously limited.

Students in a training program promising employment deserve a reasonable expectation of finding employment. Actors who make a living from their work deserve to be paid for the work required.

All of the art forms use people who are willingly used because their work is fulfilling in some way. And yet it remains their work life and if it has value to us, we should be willing to reward it. Let's quit exploiting people because they love their work. It's not a functioning mantra in the current political climate, but for the health of our civilization, we should endeavor to compensate people for their work for us rather than exploit them.