The memory of one of my best hitchhiking experiences had floated up to the front of my brain when I woke up this morning. Who could say why? It’s weird, but it’s also handy because now it’s my penultimate slice!
I’ve posted a number of my hitching stories here. Things to know: 1) all of my hitchhiking happened a LONG time ago, when I was in my early 20s; 2) all of my hitching happened in Europe; 3) these are, I think now, “don’t-try-this-at-home” kinds of experiences, as I don’t see myself recommending hitching in this current version of the world; 4) this is a story from my first hitch, during the summer after my junior year abroad; and finally, 5) the whole summer was memorable, but I’m focusing on something that happened at the end of the trip, just before I flew home … but adding some (sure-to-be) lengthy context/set-up/backstory, and so …
I started the summer on my own, traveling the “normal” way (trains and buses), then met up with my friend Rachel in Vienna and we set off with the plan of hitching to London. Early in the trip, we learned from another hiker that you could cross from Calais to Dover for free if you were a passenger in an 18-wheeler. Drivers were allowed only one passenger, so Rachel and I — if we wanted to take advantage of the free-ride option — would have to find two truckers. When we made it to that northern corner of France, we got lucky. We met two Englishmen, John and John (and it’s only just as I’m typing this that I wonder if those were actually their real names … ). They were friends headed back home with just their truck cabs. And, not only were they happy to take us across, they found us a place to stay the night, dropping us off with a sweet elderly woman named Mary who — God only knows why — fed us and put us up in her guest room and refused to accept a penny for her hospitality. And then John and John came back to collect us in the morning to drop us at a good spot to start the next leg of our hitch.
(England, I know you’ve gone through some painful and ugly changes since I was there a lifetime ago, but you were such a haven when I was on the road back then. We had good, kind, safe drivers every single time, people who went out of their way to make sure we were safe and taken care of. I hope that kindness-to-strangers part of your persona isn’t fully lost.)
Near the end of my trip, Rachel and I parted. We were in Italy, and she was heading south to Sicily while I was headed back to London for my flight home. When I got to Calais, I walked around the truck parking area looking for a driver who’d be willing to take me across, and found Marco, an Italian driver who was bringing peaches to market in London. Not only was he willing to take me across, but he was headed to the town I needed to get to. Better still, he seemed like a nice guy, and we could talk a little-little bit, with my pretend Italian and his handful of English. I climbed into his truck and settled in.
On the center console, he had a flat of peaches and offered me one. On a hitch a few years later, I had a ride with a lovely Bulgarian man who was hauling pickles and when we stopped for lunch, he pulled a jar of pickles from the truck and added them to our meal. It would never have occurred to me that this would be a common thing, that the driver would eat the merchandise. Those trucks are huge, so there was no danger that Marco and I would eat enough of the shipment to make a notable difference, but it was still surprising. I say all of that, but let me be clear: I took the peach. I ate a few of them, in fact. They remain some of the most perfectly ripe and delicious peaches I have ever eaten. A total pleasure.
Marco and I couldn’t really talk. We made a lot of comical forays into conversation, and sometimes we understood each other fairly well, but it was work.
Because Marco was taking his peaches to market, his travel was timed so that we’d arrive in London in the middle of the night. I was a little concerned because I wasn’t sure the buses would be running out to the little bedsitter community where I’d be staying. And, even if the buses were running, it would be beyond rude to wake up my hosts at two in the morning. So I wondered what I’d do with myself while I waited for enough of the morning to elapse before I showed up on that suburban doorstep.
When we reached Dover, Marco had to go through customs before we could head to London. I waited in the truck. Selfishly, I appreciated the forced stop because the longer the customs check took, it might be better for me in terms of getting to my middle-of-the-night worries. I remembered how suspicious and meticulous customs at Dover could be from my entrance to England the first time around … when my innocently honest answers to what seemed like ridiculous questions almost kept customs from letting me enter the country! I was thinking about how tough they’d been with me and thinking they might have a lot of questions for Marco and maybe even need to come out and inspect his cargo or something equally time-consuming.
After I’d been waiting for a long while, Marco came back to the truck, but he came to my side of the cab and motioned for me to come out. It seemed that yes, we’d be spending a long time at customs … but then I started to worry that we might be in some actual trouble and that it would create a longer delay than I’d like.
Marco led me to the office, and the customs agents were pleased to see me because … they needed me to translate! That would have been comical if they hadn’t been 100 percent serious. I explained that I didn’t speak Italian, and they asked me to try. (I’m just going to say that this is really not at all how language works. You don’t suddenly become able to use a language you don’t know because some man asks you to try. One of the other officers told me that Marco had said I could understand him. And that was true as far as it went, but we hadn’t had anything like serious conversation, nothing that would help in an interrogation about his work and British law.)
I looked at Marco — sweet, ridiculous, peach-filled and perhaps peach-drunk Marco. He had a goofy face with a lopsided smile and a lot of dark wavy hair. He was adorable. And, clearly, an idiot for thinking I could help him. But I shrugged and said okay, asked what they wanted to know. There was a lot of pantomime and stumbling with words. I remember creating some answers from what just seemed like logic — yes, I know this was a terrible thing to do, but … I was 20 and not all of my decisions at that time were of the highest quality.
In the end, all my nonsense got us through. They agreed to let Marco drive on and thanked me for my help. Crazy. Marco was happy, and we walked back to the truck.
I was still worried about the late-night-ness of things, but I needn’t have been concerned. Marco wasn’t ready to drop me off yet. He was on his way to Covent Garden Market to unload his peaches, and I thought that meant we’d hang out pretend-talking until the market opened. Not so! Covent Garden Market was open and a hive of activity. Because of course. The middle of the night is exactly when the Marcos of the world plan to show up so they can unload their wares and clear out before all the shoppers start arriving. Which makes perfect sense, though it would never have occurred to me.
We found the place he needed to park, and we communicated something about how long the unloading would take, and he shooed me away, told me to wander around the market.
And wander I did. The market was like a wonderland. I wandered, sort of timidly at first, and also nervous I wouldn’t find my way back to Marco because the market is HUGE. After a while, though, I wasn’t so timid. I spoke to people, got to sample some raspberries and plums, got to smell some gorgeous flowers. My only regret is that I didn’t have a camera with me. I would love to have photos from that stroll through the stalls.
I bought some blueberries back for Marco, and we waited for the last of his peaches to be off-loaded and then went on our way … just as the sun was starting to rise. He drove me into the city and dropped me on a bridge where there was stop for the bus I needed to get out to my host’s house. He gave me a couple more peaches and drove off, headed back to Dover and Italy.
I think about Marco a lot, about those peaches, about the comedy of being asked to translate a language I didn’t speak, and the greater comedy of actually managing to do it. And I think about the gift Marco gave me of that wee-hours walk through Covent Garden Market, one of my favorite memories of all the memories I collected in Europe. I felt I’d been let in on a gorgeous and yummy secret, and I remain grateful.
It’s the 17th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Head on over to Two Writing Teachers
and see what the rest of this year’s slicers are up to!
if you want kin, you must plant kin ... 