[quote]Otep wrote:
or Wonderful Riding Companions?
I was on my way back from Houston earlier today when I saw a dude walking along the interstate, sticking his thumb out at passing traffic. This wasn’t near a prison, and was about ten miles from the nearest town. I did what any self-respecting American would do.
I ignored him and kept driving.
Looking back, he didn’t strike me as particularly dangerous. Scruffy maybe, but the two aren’t exactly correlated. I’m scruffy. I guess I just didn’t pick him up out of habit. As a child, my mom got to me with stories of weird axe murderers passing themselves off as hitch-hikers and even engaging you in conversation before they knock you unconcious and rape you to death. I’m starting to question that perspective.
I’m in my early 20’s, I’m getting a little wander-lusty, and I’m seeing plenty of road trippin in my future. Is picking up hitch hikers a good idea, or a bad idea?[/quote]
I would imagine it is a pretty bad idea.
I live in Houston and see the bums quite a bit. Granted, they usually are on the corner of a street hustling for money at a red light and I just turn the radio up and look busy so they leave my window.
But in some parts of town where new development is overtaking old slums and crack dens, you see bums intermingling with the general public. They scrounge through parking lots of retro and consignment clothing shops that used to be boarded up and dingy abandoned buildings where they lived, punk rock bars, what used to be rough and tumble tattoo parlors etc. They are mostly looking for drug money and the crazy ones(literally) who have survived know they are at the parking lot they called home since the 80’s and can’t figure out why all the strange people are around. They sit and mutter and stare and it’s really kind of creepy.
Also, normal people are not homeless. They are either on drugs, retarded or literally crazy. They are also desperate and while an amicable retard could seem endearing, he is hungry, tired, high and sees a target rather than a person like the others.
I have a friend who works as an emergency room nurse on the night shift at a large hospital downtown. She sees bums all the time. Many come in with self inflicted wounds for a free night in bed with meals and pain medication.
She says it isn’t uncommon though for business men and women to come in, or be brought in, after staying at the office late. They leave after downtown has “shut down” and get jumped by gangs of bums who beat, cut and mutilate before taking a wallet, watch or what have you.
Rapes occur semi occassionally too. And they are usually pretty brutal gang rapes. She says it is really pretty alarming how high emergency room activity levels are and it’s much worse than you would sensibly guess.
Long story short, a hitch hiking bum knows a chop shop or ten that would take your car and provide him with a month worth of crack money at least. If a bum would gouge himself with a knife for a hospital meal and a dose of morphine (which has been described to me the rule more than the exception), he’d kill you for your car.
There are crazy, schizo bums who don’t have a support structure so they wind up un-medicated on the streets.
Bums don’t give a shit. They are just surviving as it is. Jail is literally a good place for them. You are a target with money and assets, not a ride.