Stag 2 – Hitchhiker(s): Pt 1




At KXII I was sent into Oklahoma for some story, no clue anymore what that was about.  It has been like 14 years after all.  It was somewhere North of Durant off of Highway 75.  I shot whatever story I was sent to cover and went on my way back.

It was on the way back that it got weird.  There were a couple guys waving me down at a broken-down car.  I pulled over and asked the gentlemen what was wrong.  Apparently, they had hit a deer and it totaled their car.  They told me somebody had stopped by about an hour prior to this.  A couple of dudes in a pickup truck.  They loaded the deer carcass into the truck bed.  The would-be rescuers were supposed to return to give them a ride, but alas, that never happened.  Instead a couple of guys drove off with a few dozen pounds of free meat.

It was now dark and they were heading south, like me.  So I agreed to take them a few miles down the road.  It was sort of paying it forward from when I hitchhiked back in high school.  If my boss ever found out about this, I would have been rightly fired.  I should have never done this, but, much like at the Yellow Rose, it’s hard for me to say no.  I don’t want to insult people, or disappoint them.

I wasn’t robbed, didn’t lose the company car, didn’t get thousands of dollars of gear stolen.  These were genuinely nice guys that needed help, but I shouldn’t have done that on company time.  It was not my call to make.

I dropped the guys off wherever it was, again, I don’t remember.  I drove back to the station.  Good, if foolish, deed done.  I finished up my work.  Much like the drinking at the Yellow Rose, I never told anybody.  Work went off without a hitch and in the end, it never mattered.  This, however, wasn’t the last hitchhiking story I’d have from my time at KXII…



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