On Sunday morning I was scheduled to work at Morning Glory Farm. I was supposed to begin work at 8:30 a.m. but my Chilmark neighborhood wasn’t plowed, so there was no way I could get my car to the road without risk of being stranded in a snow drift.

I looked at my husband Rich and speculated, “I could walk to South Road and hitchhike?”  

“Go for it!” he said.

I ate a good breakfast, made my lunch, packed my bag with my shoes, a dry pair of pants and dry socks, bundled myself into my heavy down coat, hat, mittens, sunglasses and boots, and then walked out the door carrying my Yeti mug full of coffee.

My husband took my picture as I was heading out the door. I wondered if he thought it might be the last time he saw me.

The first hill on the way to the main road was an aerobic workout with thigh-high snow drifts. I stopped to rest, then continued downhill and soon found out why we were not plowed out. There was a pine tree across the road, blocking access.

South Road was quiet when I got there. A few plows went by but I didn’t try to get a ride from them as I was sure they were busy heading to their next job.

Then a few cars passed me, but no one slowed down to pick me up. Realizing I needed to be more proactive, I put my coffee cup in the snow bank, removed my mitten and showed my naked thumb to the next car. It worked. An SUV stopped and the driver rolled down his window.

“Is there any chance you are going to Edgartown?” I asked.

The man said he was only going to West Tisbury, so I asked if he could take me to Alley’s, thinking maybe I could get a ride from there.

“Sure,” he replied.

I hopped in, fastened my seatbelt and introduced myself.

He responded by saying: “Hi, I am Stanley Larsen. And I would drive you all the way to Edgartown, but I have to be in Menemsha at 9:30.”

Of course I know who Stanley Larsen is. He runs the Menemsha Fish Market and as we drove he filled me in on all the renovations at his store. He also apologized as he fumbled with the knobs to give me some heat. It was his wife’s car, he said, and he was unfamiliar with all the fancy controls.

It was a warm and pleasant ride to Alleys but along the way I realized I had left my coffee cup in the snowbank. Stanley said he would pick it up on the way back but I told him no worries, it would probably be there when I got back.

After getting my bearings in front of Alley’s porch, I looked around and saw cars coming from the Mobil station where they were advertising “discount gas.” I felt hopeful that someone would be headed to Edgartown and out came the naked thumb again. Sure enough, I scored with the first car. The driver said he lived in a neighborhood near Morning Glory Farm and he would gladly drive me the whole way.

The man’s name was Michael and he said he was out and about to get gas and test the handling of his car in the snow. He told me he stopped to pick me up because it reminded him of the old days on the Vineyard when everyone would hitchhike.

I told him I had hitchhiked on the Island as a teenager during the summer. Then he told me how when he was a teenager and growing up in Milton, his mother had dropped him and a friend off at the Southeast Expressway on-ramp to hitchhike with a sign that said: Martha’s Vineyard. They had a tent, sleeping bags and all their camping gear. They made it to the ferry easily, he said, and asked me if I remembered the campground at Cranberry Acres off Lambert’s Cove Road. He said they camped there and then hitchhiked to Oak Bluffs and spent the evenings at the Ritz.

When we arrived at Morning Glory Farm I thanked Michael for driving me all the way and told him I owed him a jar of MoGlo’s special honey roasted peanut butter. I plan to buy Stanley a jar too.

When I walked into work everyone asked: “Ann, how did you get here?!”

“I hitchhiked,” I responded.

At the end of my shift I got a ride home from a co-worker. My coffee mug was still in the snowbank on South Road, just where I’d left it. It was still warm too.

Ann DeWitt lives in Chilmark.