All Thumbs

“All Thumbs” is mostly about my brief and checkered career as a hitchhiker. I first tried hitchhiking during a college fraternity race to Atlanta. I managed to survive the experience so later, I dreamed of hitching to California and wrote the fictional first song of this episode, “California Itch.” In 1975, I finally traveled west by train, then hitchhiked throughout California. The reality was totally different than the song.

The second song, “Another Man’s Shoes,” is a true story. In 1977, I drove my unreliable Volkswagen van to Knoxville for a friend’s party. When my grandmother died, I needed to return to Nashville for her funeral but feared the van wouldn’t make it. I decided to hitchhike home. A man in an old station wagon picked me up and asked me to drive while he rested. Instead of sleeping, he told me about a cowboy in a Chicago tavern who gave his beautiful boots to a stranger, then walked barefoot into a snowstorm. That true story inspired this song.

The final song, “Easy Fall,” was written years later in New York. It tells the fictional story of a young woman hitchhiking across America, torn between the freedom of wandering and the desire for something permanent, which sums up my hitchhiking mindset in a nutshell.

© 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Noted Stories. True and Tall Tales Set to Music. I'm your host, David Ray Skinner. Every episode will feature stories that are musical trips down someone's memory lane, mostly mine, since I've been writing story songs for over 50 years. And that's because I was born in Nashville back in the 1950s, and I grew up listening to family stories and tall and sometimes cautionary tales. So it seemed only fitting that I started adding music notes and melodies to these stories. Over the last half century, I've written and collected quite a few story songs, and rather than have them sit buried on a shelf in dusty old music notebooks, I launched this podcast to share them and the stories behind the stories. So I've put together some musicians of all types to help me bring these stories to life and to song. Now my sister Jan and I had a pretty sheltered life growing up. It was mostly built around church and family. There were things that did scare me as a child. They weren't really realistically scary things, but rather dangerous things or situations I saw on TV. My most favorite TV viewing time was on Saturday mornings. While the rest of the family slept in, I was in front of the old Motorola black and white television waiting for the TV stations to switch on their broadcasting signals. I was usually early, so I'd spend the first half hour or so twisting the dial between the three Nashville stations with their various test patterns. Once the patriotic music started, it meant it was about time for my shows to begin. There were the three stooges, black and white cartoons from the 40s, and Davy and Goliath, a stop-action, claymation, 15-minute faith-based program produced by the Lutheran Church. Davy was a young boy about my age. Goliath was sort of a clay-based, canine Mr. Ed. Now, there were also old Tarzan movies from the 30s and 40s. I think these movies were behind a couple of my fears. You know, I was afraid of crazy things like accidentally getting stuck in quicksand or being invaded by army ants. I was pretty terrified by African army ants because there were millions of them and nothing seemed to stop them. They could even cross streams. They built bridges out of themselves so their sister ants could cross. I was also pretty frightened by the thought of hitchhiking, but that wasn't a fear I picked up from Tarzan movies. I think I may have picked that up from a Twilight Zone where there was a hitchhiker confronting this woman all across the United States and he turned out to be Mr. Death. No, Tarzan didn't hitchhike. He always preferred a swinging vine over his thumb. Now, understand, as a kid, there was no reason for me to hitchhike. My world was pretty limited to school and church, and I could walk to both. But back in the 50s and 60s, it wasn't unusual to see somebody hitchhiking on any given day or any given road. Of course, this was before the interstates were in place. The first place in time where I didn't have easy access to a car was when I first arrived at college. My college wouldn't allow freshmen or sophomores to have cars on campus. I pledged a fraternity, Phi Mu Delta, the second semester of my freshman year, thinking if I ever needed a ride, one of my junior or senior frat brothers could provide one. Imagine my surprise when during my pledge season, one of my frat brothers suggested a hitchhike race from our Baptist College, which was 30 miles east of Knoxville, down to Atlanta. What? The goal was for each of the pledges and their big brothers to leave in pairs 10 or 15 minutes apart and meet at the varsity in downtown Atlanta. To make it fair, the time when each pair left was factored into their arrival time, so the race was decided by the best time for each team. My big brother and I didn't win, but we got a ride all the way to Atlanta from one of our fraternity brothers, so that may have disqualified us from the get-go. As I recall, we only waited out on the highway with our thumbs out for about 10 minutes before our frat brother stopped and gave us a ride. Still, I sort of got my feet wet with my thumb out. But it would be several years later before I would actually become a certified hitcher. A few weeks before I graduated from college, I was sitting around with some of my fraternity brothers talking about our time at school and what the future would hold. Someone brought up the hitchhike race to Atlanta. I got an idea, another said. Let's all hitchhike to California. Everyone agreed it was a swell idea. But as I've mentioned in a previous episode, once everyone graduated, they found jobs, wives, and families. Not me though, no sir. I still dreamed about California dreaming. Although I was still uneasy about the idea of hitching by myself across America. I figured, what's the worst that could happen? But then someone told me a hitchhiker joke that was funny, but also a possibility. Here's the joke. And when the hitcher climbed into the truck, he said, Hey, thanks for the ride, but why would you pick me up? How would you know I'm not a serial killer? And the pickup driver replied, I figured the chances of two serial killers in one pickup would be astronomical. Okay, the joke didn't help. I also have a fear of scary jokes and stories becoming reality. However, I thought I should just man up and face my hitching fears and try it. I even wrote a song about it where I imagined myself hitchhiking to California. It just so happened that itch rhymed with hitch. So here's how that song turned out. I called it California Itch. California Itch was one of the latter, fictitious, that is. There was no lady, no El Dorado, and by the way, I only picked that car make because it rhymed with Colorado, which would have been on my way to California. But as I also mentioned in episode 2 and episode 7, I ended up taking Amtrak from Nashville to Portland. But in Portland, I did stick out my thumb and I hitched all the way down to Los Angeles and then back up to San Francisco and then back and forth from where I was staying in the Bay Area to the BARC train stations. And so I got pretty comfortable with the process. Again, it was over 50 years ago, and I looked like just another California hippie, at least until I opened my Southern mouth. I got back to Tennessee from California in late 1975, and by the end of the year I was back in Nashville driving my 1964 black Falcon again. However, the Falcon was on its last legs or tires, whatever. In February of 1976, I drove from Nashville down to Boaz, Alabama, to interview for a reporter job at the town's newspaper. It snowed on the way down there, and by the time I got to Boaz, the Falcon, which didn't really like rain or snow, just coasted to a stop in a parking lot. I walked in the snow the last mile to the interview, but because I was late, the editor was visibly non-plussed and I obviously did not get the job. I also thought it was time for a new vehicle. Well, new used vehicle. Still basking from the California Afterglow, one summer day in 1976 I saw a used 1965 VW van for sale. Cheap. I had to have it. Even though calling it a piece of junk would have been exaggerating. The previous owner must have wanted to convert it into a camper, but he only got as far as stripping everything out of the interior. The driver's seat and the passenger seat were not even bolted down. They were held in place by seat belts, and that is if the driver and passenger use their seatbelt. Plus, if the temperature dropped to below 40 degrees, it wouldn't start. I'd have to push it off. Okay. Fast forward to the spring of 1977. All was good. The temp was above 40 degrees, so the van would start, but it was still temperamental. That March, my good friend Millard Fillmore Strunk Jr. announced that he would be hosting a spring equinox party at his home in Knoxville. As I mentioned in episode 4, Fillmore was a member of Contents Under Pressure, and we have stayed friends for all these years. Needless to say, I was very excited to get back together with Fillmore and all my East Tennessee friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in two or three years. So I threw my guitar, banjo, and backpack in the old VW van and headed down to Knoxville. When I pulled up in Fillmore's driveway, he came out to meet me. Your dad just called, he said, and wants you to call him back, ASAP. Never a good sign. Sure enough, when I called home, Dad said that my grandmother had just passed away up in Dover, and her funeral would be in a couple of days, and they needed me as one of the grandsons to be a pallbearer. When I told Fillmore, he said, Don't worry, you showed up early for the party. The real celebration will be this weekend. So there's plenty of time for you to go to the funeral and get back here in time for the real deal. But here was the dilemma. Whereas I had felt pretty confident that the old VW van would have gotten me to Knoxville and back to Nashville, I wasn't so sure that it would get me down to Knoxville, back to Nashville, then back to Knoxville after the funeral, and then back home. Also, there's a good sized mountain to climb on the other side of Rockwood. And my previous car, the Black Falcon, had broken down a few years before after climbing that hill. I spent a very unpleasant evening on the side of Interstate 40 trying to sleep in my car while the tractor trailers attempted to rock me to sleep until the sun came up and I could call my dad in Nashville for help. I knew that if my van broke down on the way back to Nashville, I wouldn't even make it to the funeral. So in my mind there was just one thing to do: thumb it on home. Fillmore drove me and my guitar back to the entrance ramp onto I-40 and the hitching began. The people in the first ride were very nice, but they informed me up front that they'd be taking Interstate 75 down to Chattanooga and on to Atlanta. Back then, as well as now, that section of Interstate 40 doubles as Interstate 40 and Interstate 75. I-75 splits with Interstate 40 at, well, the middle of nowhere. There's no exit there, just the split where I-40 goes on to Nashville and I-75 goes south to Chattanooga. It is nowhere's ville. Now, when they told me that, I knew exactly what I'd be in for, stuck on the side of the interstate, not an exit, and easy pickings for a Tennessee State Highway Patrolman. Still, in hitchhiker language, it was on down the road. It was also a hitching dilemma I had faced before, and one time it nearly got me in a lot of trouble. On down the road, stuck in Fresno, California. So, against my better judgment, I opted to take the ride. It turned out to be one of the better decisions in my hitching history and one that inspired this next story song. Whereas the first song had been fiction, this song, word for word, is true through and through. It's my sister Jan's favorite song of mine. She calls it a story song about a story about a story. So yeah, not only is it true, it's also multi-layered. So, true to their word, my first ride dropped me off at the I-40 West, I-75 South split in the middle of nowhere. As I steeled myself for what could happen next, much to my pleasant surprise, I saw an old brown station wagon slowing down and pulling over. Now sometimes this was a trick. When I would reach the vehicle, they just jet away, throwing dirt and gravel all over me. But this was not the case. The driver was alone and he leaned over and rolled the passenger side window down, and I stuck my head in. He immediately asked, Do you have a valid driver's license? When I told him yes, he said, Here's the deal. I've been driving since early yesterday and I need to rest. If you can take the wheel, then you got yourself a ride all the way to Oklahoma. He slid over to the passenger side and I threw my guitar case in the back seat and took the wheel, telling him I was only going as far as Nashville. He looked at my guitar and rolled his eyes and said, Ah, yes, you're a picker. I should have known. No wonder you're on foot. I didn't really take offense because he wasn't that far off. So I just laughed and explained my story. One question led to another and then another, and soon he forgot about taking a nap and started sharing stories with me. He said that once upon a time he'd also been a musician and had actually been an orchestra conductor, but then he burned out and saw a much more simple lifestyle. He said his current job was frying hamburgers at a local diner back east. I was trying to think of a symphony hamburger joke, but I figured that could go either way, and as it was, I had a ride all the way to Nashville, so I decided not to rock the boat. So, do you play that country Western music? He asked. I glanced over at him in the passenger seat to see if he was being snarky, but he appeared serious and genuinely interested. So I explained that I wrote my own music, and it was a little bit of everything. But having been born in Nashville, of course, there were country inflections in my songs. He asked me, Do you want to hear a story? I live for stories, I told him. He said, Okay. Back in 1950, he was living in Chicago, and one winter night he was drinking in a Chicago bar with some friends when the tavern door swung open, and this cowboy with a big Stetson, shiny boots and sparkles strode in like he owned the place. He bellied up to the bar, and after a few drinks, one of the other guys sitting at the bar yelled over to him, Hey man, I love your boots. I've been all over this world. I've never seen a pair of boots like those. So that cowboy sat down his beer mug, leaned over, and pulled off his boots and said, Here, mister, they're yours. Now the Tennessee landscape was blurring past us as we hurled toward Nashville, and I looked over at this guy to see if he was spinning a yarn, but he was dead serious, and he continued his story. So this other fella at the bar ran over and grabbed the boots and shot through the doors. I guess he was afraid that the cowboy would change his mind, and they were beautiful boots. But here's the thing, the guy that took the boots didn't even leave his own shoes. He just took off. He left him in his sock feet, I asked the station wagon owner. No, he left him barefooted, he said. Now, after this, he did sit down with me and we shared some pictures of beer and some stories, but then he took off barefooted into the Chicago night in the middle of a snowstorm. Now I've often said that some songs write themselves, and this is one of those songs. All I had to do was remember the man's story and write it down, make it rhyme and set it to music, and then add the ending. And yes, I made it to my grandmother's funeral. She had lived a good life. She'd been born in poverty on the banks of the Tennessee River in the 1880s, got married at 16, and had 12 children over the next 30 years, and nine that lived and married. After the funeral, we all went over to my Uncle Ray's house, I'm named after Uncle Ray, and I brought my guitar, and that became the epilogue to this song. It's called Another Man's Shoes, and in the song you'll hear the story and the identity of the cowboy. Here's Another Man's Shoes.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

Travel in the South alone. When my grandmother, she was called to heaven, and I had to hitchhike home. On an only stretch of interstate forty, the station wagon slowed on down, and the man said to her son, Lordy, Lordy, and I'm open on the town. Country boy pulled off his boots and he put 'em on the table. He said, Mr. Here, they're young. And the fellow grabbed the boots, and as fast as he was able, he went tearing through the tavern doors. And the boy said that all these roads with the last thing boots in the middle of the night. But I never took a step in another man till I finally stop. Till I finest on the light. Then said I gotta go. And though we all told him it was risky, he left barefoot in the snow. And someone looked up from their liquor and said the boy's quite insane. But the barmaid said no, he's just a picker. Hank Williams is his name. And right then I stopped the station wagon, cause it was the Nashville line. And he drove away saying, Maybe I'm bragging, but he felt like a friend of mine. And my grandmother's funeral was held in Dover, and her life was happy and alone. And back at the house, my uncle called me over just a singing hang William Song. But I never took a step in another man.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

But this song, like the first one, is fictional. I was trying to channel country songwriter Doodle Owens and write this song. Doodle was the father of Lee Owens, who was my national songwriting partner. And when I wrote this song, Doodle was still turning out country hits. They say right about what you know, so I wrote about a hitchhiker. In this case, a young woman traveling across the country. It's sort of a variation of Tennessee songwriter Jesse Winchester's classic song, Yankee Lady. Only it's written in the third person, and the protagonist is the young woman. It's a classic tale of transition versus permanence, a common theme back in the 60s and 70s with our generation. This song is called Easy Fall.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

She said Brooklyn ain't the place to settle down. So she thunder in Jersey, and when she climbed inside, he told her he was Carolina bound. And she said she'd go along just for the ride. They shared a cup of coffee and some drinks. And it rolled them down that Carolina route. And he said, You can stay with me till springtime. Carolina winters are quite as mild as I recall. I think I'll fall in love with you if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

And I know it's gonna be an easy fall.

SPEAKER_04 26:45

And I know it's gonna be an easy fall. Now that autumn in the mountains wasn't bad. But sometimes the wind blew memories of the highway back around. She knew she'd miss the good times that they had. But she also knew she couldn't settle down. And he said, You can stay with me till springtime. The Carolina winners are quite mild as I recall. I think I'll fall in love with you if you don't mind. And I know it's gonna be an easy fall.

SPEAKER_03 27:43

And I know it's gonna be an easy fall.

SPEAKER_04 27:49

She said I still ain't the place to settle down. The summer wind was blowing gently down the mountainside. He told her he was California bound. And she said she'd go along just for the ride. But he said you can stay with me till springtime. But California winters are quite mild as I recall.

SPEAKER_03 28:28

I think I'll fall in love with you if you don't mind. And I know it's gonna be an easy fall. And I know it's gonna be an easy fall.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

So that's it for our all thumbs episode. Just to wrap it up, after my grandmother's funeral, I did hitch back to Knoxville. I got a ride with a trucker, and I did make it to Fillmore's 1977 Spring Equinox Party. It was a great time. And my VW van got me and my guitar back to Nashville in one piece. Now it did drop a vowel on Interstate 24 a month later, but that's another story. I think I conquered my fear of hitchhiking, but I can honestly say I'm glad it's in my rearview mirror. I met a lot of great people and some not so great people, but I did survive. Now, my closest call was not in California, but rather in downtown Murphy's Boro, Tennessee, where my van was in the shop after dropping a valve on the interstate. I squeezed into the back seat, and once we got going, the driver asked me, and this is what he sounded like. I answered, Oh, you mean like on an airplane? No, he said, as the rest of the misfits laughed. I mean, if we throw you out this car at fifty miles an hour. What'd you think about that? He gifted. Now, many years before that, when I was a skinny little kid, I developed a unique talent. I taught myself to speak in a squeaky voice of gibberish, and it got me out of more than a few bad situations just by confusing my would-be bully. Now, some thought it was how a mouse would sound if a mouse could talk, others how a Martian would speak. I prefer the Martian speak because of all those two high tones I watched as a kid. So when this near do well asked me what I thought of being thrown out of a car at 60 miles an hour, this is what I said. All five heads quickly swiveled in my direction with open mouths and wide eyes. The driver slammed on the brakes and in unison they said, What the But I didn't wait for the last word. Because of the driver braking, the car was slowing down enough for me to jump out. And fortunately, it was a four-door, so I kicked the door open and bailed. And much to my surprise, I landed on my feet and I lived to tell this story. For more information about Noted Stories, you can check out our website, notedstories.com or DavidRayskinner.com. Thanks for listening to our all thumbs episode. See you next time.