What if St. Peter Was a Hitchhiker?

In my daydream, he was one of us

Why would anyone in their right mind pick up a hitchhiker?

Even back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when thumbing was far more common than today, it was always the question a hitchhiker had to confront. You knew that standing by the side of the road with your thumb sticking out was a big ask. You were silently requesting the next driver to make a snap decision to pull over and let a complete stranger into their car, into their personal space, having not the slightest idea whether you would be good company or boring or obnoxious or odiferous or—and this was always the most obvious concern—dangerous. Any driver had a hundred good reasons to pass right on by.

I knew how unlikely it was for a car to pull over, so I never, ever blamed anybody for not stopping. A hitchhiker who resented people for driving past would end up a bitter shell of a human being, because 99+ percent of cars did not stop. The fact that someone might even make eye contact with me, yet keep on driving—some actually sped up, apparently fearing I could leap into their car through an open window—didn’t mean they were bad people or there was anything wrong with them. Exactly the opposite: It meant they were perfectly ordinary, sensible people. The key to sound mental health while hitchhiking was not begrudging those who drove past, but instead celebrating those few saintly souls who saw a freckle-faced guy by the side of the road and pulled over to give him a ride. There were always just enough of those charitable travelers to justify my faith in humanity and, more importantly, get me to my next destination. I never thought ill of the people who cruised on by.

With one exception . . . one major exception. If I was stuck by the side of the road having a tough go of it, I winced every time a pickup truck passed by. The bed of that Ford F-150 or Chevy Silverado, usually completely empty, would scream at me as it roared by. It would taunt me. Try as I might, it was hard not to be resentful when some guy in a pickup truck ignored me. You have an empty pickup truck, dude. You don’t have to let me in the cab. You don’t have to talk to me or share your potato chips with me. Just let me climb in the back! Although there were plenty of good reasons for somebody to whizz past a hitchhiker on the highway, almost none of them applied to a guy driving an empty pickup truck.

And if you were in the Western United States, where I grew up and cut my teeth hitchhiking, you saw lots of pickup trucks.

Sometimes I daydreamed about being a fly on the wall just outside the Pearly Gates of Heaven, at the spot where newly departed souls of Ford F-150 owners line up to be questioned by St. Peter. As he does with everyone else, St. Peter makes these pickup truck drivers account for their time on Earth, to determine whether he will allow them into heaven. (In my fantasy, there is a special gate, off to the side of the main entrance, with a PICKUP DRIVERS ONLY sign.) I listen as St. Peter asks them the usual questions about their charitable contributions, their attendance at Sunday church and their comportment with the Ten Commandments. In response, they recount their lives, explain how they were good fathers and husbands, never took the Lord’s name in vain, and give all the other reasons they should be allowed to pass through the gates into Paradise.

In my daydream, after they account for themselves, St. Peter pauses for a moment. He arches his eyebrows, then slowly says, “So tell me, why did you ignore those hitchhikers when your pickup was empty, instead of letting them get in the back of your truck?” There’s a brief awkward silence, then they stammer and hem and haw as they try to come up with a good excuse. But it seems to me that, if by coincidence—if it just so happens—that St. Peter himself was a hitchhiker, back in his Galilee days . . . well, those guys would be in deep shit.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not necessarily saying that a pickup driver should be condemned to burn in the relentless hellfire of eternal damnation just because he failed to give a hitchhiker a lift.

But it would be up to St. Peter to decide.