Cousins have your back

When me Pops graduated from High School in 1954, him and his cousin Jerry took a three week trip out west to celebrate. They drove an old station wagon, figuring to spend some nights sleeping in the back to save on hotel costs. Sometimes one of them would drive while the other caught a nap. 

Being young and naive, and consider too that it was the middle Nineteen Fifties, they occasionally picked up hitchhikers. They only had a scare once.

Pops had picked the guy up while Jerry was asleep in back, dozing under a blanket. Everything seemed all right at first. But then the man began talking out of his head. It was all nonsense stuff, me Pops recalled, yet the guy was getting himself all worked up and increasingly animated, throwing his arms around to emphasize this or that point, and growing angry.

"What am I gonna do?" though the old man, traipsing across the barren landscape of I believe New Mexico. Glancing at the rear view, he realized that an apparently awake Jerry was worried too. Dad had seen a hand reach out from under the blanket and stealthily grab an empty glass Coke bottle, sliding it back with him obviously for use as the weapon Jerry was increasingly convinced would be needed.

Thankfully nothing came of it. When they had reached the hitchhiker's destination the guy readily hopped out, said thanks to the boys, and went about his day. Yet they stopped picking up hitchhikers after that.