Girl on the Road

Hitchhiker Chic

The excerpt from Louis Adamic’s My America, “Girl on the Road,” really epitomizes many of the travel themes we have discussed in class so far this semester. First and foremost, the piece involves a first person account from the writer himself, who was “goin’ ‘round the country for a magazine, writin’ things up” (Adamic, 505). This fact is indeed true regarding Adamic’s career; he worked for several magazines including Harper’s Bazaar as well serving as the editor of Common Ground. Like so many other artists during the Great Depression, Adamic quite literally took to the road to discover the hidden truth about life in America. In picking up hitchhiker Hazel Leyton he probably got a little more than he had bargained for.

Hazel has a typical travel story of the 1930s. She lost all her money to her deadbeat husband and then was forced to ‘go on the bum.’ Her first thought after escaping a house for wayward girls was “to go California. I always heard California—Los Angeles—Hollywood—what a swell place it was” (Adamic, 510). This cross-country migration echoes countless other pieces of travel literature from the period. Just as the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath believed, Hazel thought she was going to a new Eden. So she hitchhiked, alone, all the way across the country. This aspect of her story deviates slightly from the usual migrant myth. The distinction that sets Hazel’s story apart is the mere fact that she is female. Her travels place her neither in the plebian novel genre nor in the typical migration saga. In a period before the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, a woman traveling alone like Hazel was automatically assumed to be a prostitute. The writer indeed first questions if Hazel is working the Mann Act, which “banned the interstate transport of females for ‘immoral purposes.’” Perhaps because of the vast reach and influence of the Mann Act, artists were less likely to write about female hitchhikers or female lone travelers for fear of prosecution.

Another aspect of Hazel’s story that is very reminiscent of others from the Depression era is her inability to actually get into the state of California. “Everybody said no use tryin’ to cross the line to California—the LA bulls was sure to get me” (Adamic, 512). But she tried anyway and was forcibly removed from a truck and beaten just outside the state line in Arizona.

Finally, Hazel is classic character in her insistence that she would not take charity or any handouts. She describes in depth the lengths to which some people went to slip her money or help her out unawares. Even the author practically coerces her into taking money from him. The men and women in The Grapes of Wrath were also too proud to accept direct handouts from people. And also like the Joads, Hazel repeatedly insists that she is tough and that she will make it on her own, no matter what.