It was the summer of 01. I was 17 and broke when a friend (Blake) told me about a temp gig in SLC helping around a furniture store's tent sale. I had a bf (now my husband, lol) and school was starting soon and homecoming dresses don't buy themselves. I said, "I'm in."
-
-
Show this thread
-
There were three of us going: me, Blake, and Blake's friend Kole. It was a 40 min drive south to SLC, so they picked me up early. Blake was driving, I was in the passenger seat, and Kole was alone in the back...(but not for long, ha)
Show this thread -
In Utah, I-15 is the one main freeway that runs north-to-south across the entire state. We were getting on the on-ramp when we saw an old man walking alongside the road. Blake, bless him, said, "That guy's gonna get hurt walking the freeway!" and pulled over.
Show this thread -
Kole and I were like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" but it was too late. The guy walked up to the window. He was very old--in his 80s at least--and wearing a hat that said "DALE" in big letters. "Where you headed?" Blake asked. "Back to my home in Salt Lake," he answered.
Show this thread -
"Get in," Blake said. And the guy climbed in the back with poor Kole, who was staring at Blake in the rearview mirror with wide, accusing eyes. He could see what we had not: that this hitchhiker could have walked straight from an urban legend or the pages of a horror story.
Show this thread -
We started down the freeway, Blake and I staring at the road while Kole nervously chattered at our passenger, making small talk. I'd sneak little glances at the guy and the one thought that kept coming to me was, "DANG. This guy reminds me of my Grandpa."
Show this thread -
Now, my gpa John was a gruff man. Not mean...but surly. Stubborn. ECCENTRIC. I later worked with a guy from the same town as my gpa and said, "Oh! My grandpa rides a three-wheel bike with an orange flag up and down that highway." And he replied, "CRAZY JOE IS YOUR GRANDPA??"
Show this thread -
(He was well known to the locals) So this elderly hitchhiker reminded me of my grandpa. A LOT. But nobody in my extended family was named Dale...and what were the odds anyway? Slim to none. But still...I couldn't shake the thought that there was just something about him...
Show this thread -
When we asked "Dale" where to drop him, he directed us to a location off of Beck St...it's an industrial area. No houses. But what else could we do? We all just wanted to get him gone before any murdering could begin. (Even Blake, who got us into this mess in the 1st place.)
Show this thread -
We took the first chance we had to pull over and let him out. As he grumbled a thanks, he put his hands on the doorframe. And that's when Blake and I saw what Kole had been freaking out over, alone in the backseat. A HOOK. HE HAD AN ACTUAL FREAKING HOOK.
Show this thread -
And as the car squealed away, we all began hyperventilating and talking at once. Blake: "THAT WAS A HOOK. A HOOK." Kole: "WE PICKED UP A HOOK-HAND HITCHHIKER. HOW ARE WE ALIVE NOW??" Me: "Kole, you talked to him. Did he say his name was really Dale??"
Show this thread -
Kole said, "I don't know, I just called him that because of his hat. He did say he lost his hand in an accident with a gun when he was 14." And I was like: "GUYS I THINK I'M RELATED TO THAT MAN."
Show this thread -
Backstory: I grew up hearing stories about my hook-handed great uncle, Theodore, who made my gruff gpa look like a Cratchit to his Scrooge. He was a large, looming figure in my Dad's life. Didn't like animals. Or children...
Show this thread -
He was a notorious cheapskate who was so stingy he'd avoid paying for a stamp by switching the "to" and "from" addresses so when his letters got flagged for "insufficient postage" the sender they were returned to was the place he wanted it to go.
Show this thread -
I'd never met him in real life, but I was sure that the man we'd just encountered Old Uncle Theodore. Blake and Kole thought I was joking. I wasn't. None of us had cell phones (Prehistoric times) so we had to drive to the furniture store to access a phone.
Show this thread -
I called home. My sister answered. I said, "Weird question...how did Uncle Theodore lose his hand?" She said, "I think he lost it in a gun accident when he was 14. Why?" I said, "Go get Dad. I think we just picked him up on the freeway."
Show this thread -
My Dad called his cousins (Theodore's daughters) and they called Theodore's assisted living center. Sure enough, he'd walked out that morning and had not been seen since. Based on my description of where we'd dropped him, they had a place to start searching...
Show this thread -
Didn't really matter, though. By the end of the day, he'd grown tired of looking for his old house (which wasn't there anymore, had been gone for years) and caught a bus back to the assisted living center on his own.
Show this thread -
A few weeks later, at a family funeral, one of his daughters came up and gave me a hug and thanked me for "rescuing" her father. She said, "You never know what kind of strange and dangerous people he could have run into hitchhiking on the freeway like that!"
Show this thread -
I just grimaced and nodded. "You never know." And that, my friends, is the story of how I picked up a hitchhiker with a hook and he turned out to be my great uncle.
Show this thread -
Tune in next time for the story of the year my mother canned emergency essentials and Christmas presents, forgot which cans were which, and ended up giving all her kids giant cans of feminine hygiene products for Christmas.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.