This is the third and final story about hitch-hiking days. This true rendition is the grand climax to end our hitch-hiking days forever.

In the late 1940s, most of the colleges frowned upon students having their own cars on campus. That was OK because in those post-war years, most students did not even have cars to bring. Exceptions were war vets, who lived with their families in the “Fertile Flats.”

During our freshman year, my high school friend and I continued to do some h-h jaunts — certainly nothing major. Yes, of course, we had money for a bus, but what fun is that? To begin this final story, I need to refresh your memory. We are now six college roommates from Carol Hall at St. Cloud. Three are from the metro area, one from Walker, and two from Ortonville. We are on the road again!

Spring fever was abound so when Marilyn, from White Bear Lake, invited all six of us to her home, we were delighted. There probably was some major event going on. With less than 100 miles to cover, we presumed we could dress nicely for the day ahead.

The night before, we laid out our clothes. We decided on pleated plaid skirts and sweater sets. Mine was a plaid of pale blue, light grey and off-white. A powder blue sweater set and small strand of pearls did the trick.

Had we known what would happen, we would have not worn skirts nor spent hours winding up our long hair into thickpin curls with seemingly tons and tons of bobby pins. Sleeping with heavy metal is not fun, but we felt it was necessity.

Morning came early. Are we ready? Get set. Go. So, OK, we took a taxi out past the penitentiary to the old military highway 52. Thank goodness — the spring day was gloriously warm and sunny. We all felt blessed. Aah-ooo-gah!

Now we need to practice our old routine — like quit laughing and stand up in a straight line alphabetically by height. It seems with the six of us we always had three stooges to contain. Still, it’s the fun ones we remember.

The rides were here and there and soon we were past Becker and Big Lake on into Elk River. Yet on down the pike we traveled — until at some point, when were close to the metro area, we got the ride of a lifetime.

We were talking with a young truck driver about our excursion. His Paul Newman baby blues were captivating as he said, “I’ll give you gals a ride.” We thought this trip would be a straightaway, but when we agreed to change course, well, that’s what made it memorable. Little did we know the driver’s truck was a five-yard cement truck! Well, this certainly was not in the plan, but whatever!

Two girls got stuck in the car with the driver, two on the left running board and two on the right running board. It did not take any technology to figure that out. As I started to climb up, it reminded me of when I did the same on the metal ladder of a freight car. I was on the driver’s side (next to the traffic, of course) and, with my head and arm halfway in the window, I barely had a good grip when we were off. Literally flying down the highway and feeling like a Flying Wallenda!

It is like we were traveling at 50 mph, but with our skirts flying and our high flying it seemed like we were traveling through a wind tunnel right into St. Paul. Traffic to the left and traffic to the right. Nothing to do but hang on.

Finally, the driver (not so cute now) let us off at a gas station. My word, we could hardly stand on our rubber band legs. It took all we could muster up to say thank you.

After this experience, we didn’t share any more rides and left the lure of the road to others. Very sadly, we had no more “aah-ooo-gahs.”