The picture below is from a John Deere calendar in July 1984.  That year the calendars had paintings by Walter Haskell Hinton, who was hired by JD back in the 30’s and 40’s to paint pictures.  This one is named “Going Places”, portraying a farm girl on a Model H tractor, with a loaded wagon, and her father harvesting grain, with a Model A tractor and a PTO combine. This painting was originally on a 1940 Ag calendar.  What is interesting on this painting, is that there is a hitchhiker shown.  Back in the late 50’s and early 60’s, I would occasionally hitchhike home from college and Army bases.  In the summer of 1961, I was stationed at Fort Riley, KS, and there was a high school classmate of mine, named “Jerry”, on the same base, but different company.  We would get together occasionally on weekends.  Jerry came over one weekend, and said there is a fellow I know, that owns an airplane.  He is from Mpls. and he wants to bring it back to Manhatten, near the base.  He offered to pick me up at Ashton, IA, which was about 15 miles from our hometown.  Jerry said, we would have a ride back, but need a way to get home first.  I said, that would not be a problem, we could just hitchhike home.  He said, he did not think that would work, but he had never tried it before.  I said, we should make sure we had our uniforms on, because my experience is that WWII or Korean Vets would pick us up, especially seeing our uniforms.  So we both got 3 day passes, for that weekend, and we had someone take us out where 77 went north to Sioux City.  We got out and stood there, trying to thumb a ride.  Cars just kept going by, and it got to be an hour and still no ride.  Jerry said that this is not going to work.  I said I don’t know just what the problem is.  I had no more than said this, that a car pulled up and stopped.  It was a young officer, a lst Lieutenant, who said, where do you want to go?  I said NW Iowa…he said I am headed to Mpls, and will go right through there; get in, I will give you a ride.  That afternoon he let us off at Ashton, and we were only 15 miles from home.  Jerry’s dad picked us up.

(Hitchhiking Calendar 008 (full).jpg)

Hitchhiking Calendar 008 (full).jpg (97KB - 171 downloads)