One of the things I did if I sensed trouble was use an alias.

They were generally reversible like the one Yossarian used in Catch-22. Yossarian censored letters using the alias 'Washington Irving'. When he got tired of that he started using "Irving Washington.

Sometimes when I was hitch hiking and in a town I was going to be in for a while if I was asked my name I would say I was Robert Thomas. In the next town I would use the name Thomas Robert.

Another name I used to use was Joseph Lewis/Lewis Joseph. It worked reasonably well as far as not being trailed. At the time not all states had picture IDs and I managed to get a driver's license made with the name Lewis Joseph on it from a college dorm somewhere.

This came in handy once when I was in a rural county when I got picked up for hitch hiking out in the middle of nowhere. This was long before the internet and instant communications.

I got hauled before a justice of the peace type and fined the or fifteen bucks for the high crime and misdemeanor of hitch hiking and it never showed up anywhere.

I suppose if one were to dig through the bowels of a county building somewhere in one of the flyover states (possibly Iowa) they might find a record of one Lewis Joseph being apprehended by a brave county sheriff's deputy and fined. Then again, maybe not because I'd bet that the deputy and the JP probably split my fine.

Then again it may be Joseph Lewis was the one that got pinched.

The only thing that was scarier than a city situation for a hitch hiker was dealing with the rural county sheriff system back in the day. One had to be careful because it was often easier to pin a crime on an outsider than a local and it happened all too often.






  





To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY