As a student in the late 1970's I did summer work in Wildwood, New Jersey (Howard Johnson's take out window, best hotdogs on the Boardwalk; making beds in Motels, and skinny dipping in hotel pools just ahead of the cops) and in Virginia Beach, Virginia (road construction work in *90 F - phew, never again).

I did the obligatory hitch-hiking around to see more of the USA but stopped just north of the Carolinas because I was told my long hair would be enough to get me lynched - "there tbe monsters down there, there be ..." - and as I was acting as involuntary protector for two fellow female hitch-hikers at the time, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour.

Hitch-hiking or giving lifts in Islamic/African countries never inspired the same sense of terror!


notes from no w here