On one summer vacation from college, I decided to hitchhike back home.  Since I went to school in New Hampshire and my mom lived in California, that made for a pretty long trip.

One day I got dropped off on the north side of Mankato, MN.  I didn't know that the highway *through* Mankato is almost entirely overpass when I started walking.  As an overpass, there wasn't really anywhere for anyone to pull over, so I walked the entire length through Mankato, probably 3-5 miles.

I came out the other side as the sun was setting, sweaty and tired.  I tried not to hitch at night, but I was really tired, so when a guy in an old VW microbus pulled over, I tossed my pack in the back and hopped in.

He was a floor refinisher, so the entire inside was full of sawdust.  He had a red Irish Setter that soaked it up; pet the dog and get little mushroom clouds of oak.

Anyway, I say I'm trying to get to I-90 that night, and he says that he lives in a town right next to I-90, so it's no problem, and we go bouncing down the road.

Pretty much as soon as the car starts moving the guy launchs into this tirade about how crappy his life has been and how many people have treated him badly.  Somewhere in the middle of this, he gets off the highway and starts off on a little country road - no explanation or pause in the story.

So we're disappearing into MN farmland, houses are getting fewer and farther between and this guy is still ranting.  After a while he blows himself out and is quiet for a while.

Then he looks up and says "Ya hear Ed Gein died?"

I say "No, who's Ed Gein?"

He says "He was a Wisconsin folk hero."

"Really?  What'd he do?"  I was thinking maybe Paul Bunyun.

"He killed 6 women and made lampshades out of 'em."

I really couldn't think what the right thing to say there was, so I said "Oh."

"Then he dug up 10 more and furnished his house.  They made those Psycho movies based on him.  A real Wisconsin folk hero."

I started keeping my hand on the door handle in case I'd just have to tuck and roll into the MN farm country.

Night has good and well fallen, and we get to this little town.  The biggest, cinder-block building in town turns out to be the municipal bar.  I kid you not - the town government operated the bar.  We coast up to it as the radiator on the microbus overheats and starts spewing steam, so we go into the bar to let it cool off.

We both have some Coke, sitting at the bar.  A very large famer (John Deere cap and all) comes up and slaps my driver on the back and starts laughing about how they used to beat up my partner every day in recess.  The driver gets more and more agitated as the guy goes on, finally slamming down his Coke glass so hard on the bar that it shattered in his hand.

We leave the bar, and the driver turns around to me and says "Well, I can take you to I-90, but it's night.  You'll never get a ride.  Or you can come spend the night with me and my 70-year-old mother."

By this point, I say "I'd reaaaaaaaaaaally like to get to I-90 tonight."

So after all that build-up, he drives me out to I-90.  As we stood on the overpass, looking at the headlights and taillights going to the horizon in each direction, he says to me "For two bucks I'd go with you."  I hemmed and hawed and said "I'm a little short."

I walked down the on-ramp, and he drove off.  I threw my sleeping bag under the overpass and tried to get some sleep.