Hi, Marion,

I posted a story on Mudcat a year or so ago told by one of the folks who passed through Seattle back in the early Sixties. I couldn't find it on the 'Cat or I would just link to it, but since I saved what I wrote on disk, I'll repost it here for your enlightenment and amusement.

        Back in the late Fifties and early Sixties, a number of folk singer types were doing what they considered to be the mandatory pilgrimage: picking up their guitars or banjos and hitch-hiking around the country. Sort of doing the "Woody-Wander" I guess you could call it. They seem to feel that it legitimized them as "folk singers" or "wandering minstrels." Anyway, when they hit Seattle, they'd usually make their way to the University District and mosey into a music store there called "The Folklore Center" and ask if there were any gigs in town. A few of them had some pretty good stories about their adventures "On the Road."
        This guy's name was Pat Foster. He actually had a record out, on Riverside, I think. He'd hitch-hike up from California. He said that one night he slept in some guy's field, and when he woke up in the morning, he was ravenously hungry. He hadn't had anything to eat the night before. There was no place around where he could get breakfast. He noticed that there were collard greens growing in the field, so he ate a bunch. Then, to provide for his near future, he stuffed a bunch of them into his guitar case, filling all the gaps. He rolled up his sleeping bag, strapped it across the top of his back-pack, and hit the road.
        It was hot and dusty, and although a few cars had passed on this road, they just ignored his thumb. Not a good day for getting rides. Finally, a car did pulled over. Black-and-white. It was the local police or sheriff's department. Two burly bully-boys in uniform, with .357 Magnums strapped to their donut-padded hips got out and gave him the full Gestapo treatment.
        "What's your name? Lemme see some ID. Where you from? Where you goin'?" The usual.
        Then came the gem: "Whatcha got in the guitar case?"
        Apprehensive, confused, and fully aware that he'd stolen some farmer's produce, Pat decided to make a full confession. He answered, "Collard greens."
        Certain that Pat was trying to pull his leg, one of the cops ripped the guitar case out of Pat's hand and wrenched it open. Conceive his dismay when what met his eyes was a guitar resting in a nest of collard greens.
        "Then," Pat said, "they rummaged through the string box. They decided that my spare set of strings would make very effective garrotes. Then one of them found my finger picks. He put them on his fingers—backward. He snarled and made slashing, clawing movements with his hand. But when he found my capo," Pat said, "he went really insane!"
        Pat said he sang 'em a couple of songs. They finally concluded that he was nothing but one of those smelly Berkeley hippies. They put him into the cruiser, drove him to the local bus station, and told him to get the hell out of town.

Apparently dumb questions are the order of the day when you run into the authorities while on the road. Once when Walt Robertson was hitchhiking from Seattle back to Haverford, Pennsylvania a week or so before college started in the fall, he had rolled out his sleeping bag in a farmer's field somewhere. He woke in the middle of the night with two guys from the sheriff's department standing over him. He immediately recognized the glint on the barrel of the shotgun aimed between his eyes as he blinked in the light of the big flashlight in his face. The question?

"What're ya doin'?"

As sleepy, scared, and irritated as he was, he wisely resisted the temptation to give them a smart-ass answer. No problem, though. Once he satisfied them that he was just a college kid on his way back to school, they left him in peace.

It's undoubtedly just as well to err on the side of caution and safety. You might miss a few good adventures, but better that than have an adventure that you'd a whole lot rather not have.   

Good travelin'!

Don Firth