My First Hitchhiking Experience

Last year in April, I threw on my jogging shoes, grabbed my iPhone and headed out the door.  It was warm, and gloomy, and it seemed fitting when Josh Groban's Remember When It Rained repeated on my iPod.  It started to drizzle, and after about a mile, I realized the drizzle had turned into a real, actual storm.  I kept jogging, not wanting to overreact, but called my friend to come get me.

She wasn’t home.

I live in Columbia, Tennessee, the "Mule Capital" of the world, and that week in April our town was celebrating all things mule-related. Begun in 1840 as "Breeder's Day", a meeting for mule breeders, it now attracts thousands of people and takes place over four days. This is when our county showcases the best traditional Appalachian food, music, dancing, and crafts… along with the annual mule day parade.

That’s small town life.

Our Mule Day event has grown over time into "one of the largest livestock markets in the world,” which of course is why – on that day – I wasn’t interested in going.

Something about small town festivals puts me in a bad mood.  Difficulty finding parking is even more galling in a rural community where you’ve never had a traffic slow-down unless you’re stuck behind a John Deere.  Plus, I wasn’t ready to face the forced “country-ness” of it all, the lumberjack competitions, or the flea markets filled with items emblazoned with mules.  There’s something about festivals (and outdoor weddings) that makes the weather turn persnickety, so I should’ve expected the rain.  It got heavier and started to sting my face, and my friend wasn’t home… probably watching Appalachian cloggers dance to old Irish tunes.

Lightning began striking over the field I was heading toward.  I didn't know it at the time, but my kids (who were about two miles away in school) were in "tornado position" in the halls outside their classroom.

By this time, I was saturated, pretty desperate, and regretting I never watched the weather.

That's when I looked up and thought my eyes were deceiving me…. that my desperation was creating some sort of rural mirage.  I saw a train of mule-pulled covered wagons, dozens and dozens of wagons like a scene from Little House on the Prairie, right there in my neighborhood.

The circumstances were weird enough to seem like an invitation of fate, so I stuck my thumb in the air. Feeling my thumb was a little cliché for the circumstances, I raised my arm like I was hailing a taxi.  I'd never hitchhiked before, so why not start with a mule wagon?

I saw the reigns on the mule pull taut, and the wagon stop, less easily than a car.  I’d never seen one of these up close, and I peeked in as the canvas cover unzipped like a tent to reveal a family of three. A man named Billy introduced me to his wife Darlene, who shook my hand and introduced me to their son.  This all happened within seconds, as you can’t just stop a wagon in the middle of a mule train.  That’s what I learned as several wagons halted because of me.  They’d come forty or so miles and were on their way to the mule trading in Columbia.

For a mile or so, which takes a lot longer in a mule-pulled wagon that you might think, we visited.  Inside the wagon were the trappings of modern life -- an open beer can, an iPod, and a cell phone.  Cars buzzed by, and I could tell Darlene was worried about the mule tied to the back of the wagon.

"My mom told me never to hitch hike, but I figured I could just step off the wagon if y'all were dangerous," I said.  We were going maybe three miles per hour because of the rain, though this particular mule wagon model had no speedometer.

"Well, you picked a good time to hitch hike," the dad said.  "Mule owners are the most family-friendly group you'll ever find"

And they were.

I think of that day as the year the Mule parade came to me… when I truly got to experience the friendly neighborliness that comes from small town life.

After our slow mile, I reluctantly got out of the cozy wagon and wished them well.   Within thirty minutes, dime size hailed pelted my windows like rocks, flash flooding caused traffic to come to a complete stop, thunder shook my windows, thousands of lightning strikes touched the ground in our area, and schools were under lock down.  I sat there in front of the weather broadcast, drenched and chilled…wondering how my new friends in the wagon train were doing as they wound their way to the town.  However, in Columbia. during the mile festival, I felt pretty confident there were kind people there to help them like they'd so generously helped me.

That’s small town life.