Hitchhiker to Montgomery
Author: C.B. Colby


Driving towards Montgomery, Alabama, late one evening,
two businessmen planned to spend the night in a small
town on the way. They were making good time through
some low country where the roar was a few feet above
the surrounding land. Their headlights picked up a
figure far ahead. As they drew nearer, they discovered
that it was a little old lady walking briskly along the
side of the road. Slowing down to speak to her, they saw
that she a pale lavender dress, freshly pressed and spar-
kling clean. Her hair was neatly done and she turned a
smiling face to them. She seemed completely untroubled
about walking down a lonely highway in the middle of the
night.

When the man asked what she was doing on the road at that
time of night, she laughingly explained the she had started
out to visit her daughter and grandchildren in Montgomery.
She had hoped, she said, to get a ride for a least part of
the way, but no one had offered her a lift; so she had just
kept on walking.

The two men said they would give her a lift as far as the next
town, a two hour drive, and she was delighted to accept. She
sat in the back seat and, as they drove through the night,
talked about her daughter and three grandchildren --their
names, where they lived, the children's school--the usual
small talk among strangers. When the subject was exhausted,
the men eventually became engrossed business conversation and
forgot about the passenger behind them.

When they reached their destination they stopped to let the
elderly lady out. She was gone. Panic-stricken to think that
she might have fallen out along the way, they headed back in
search of her. But they found no signs of their passenger,
even though the retraced their route to where they had picked
her up, and saw her tiny footprints in the shoulder of the road
where she had first talked to them.

Dismayed mystified, they drove on to Montgomery and found her
daughter's name and number in the local phone book. They felt
they had to tell her about what appeared to be a terrible accident.
After listening to their story in bewilderment, the younger woman
pointed to three photos on the mantel. Could they identify their
passenger? They did, and she agree that it was her mother. Without
a doubt, they had talk to her. They went on to describe her
dress, she said, her mother had worn when she last saw her.

"When was that? They asked. The woman replied between sobs, "When
she was buried, just three years ago today!"