62 years ago when I was 16 I was hitch hiking from Dallas to California.
I found myself in Del Rio on the Mexican border near sunset. No traffic to speak off and I was thinking of finding a free place to sleep.
No money for a hotel room. In fact only a few bucks. Parked cars and trucks were potential places. One did not sleep out side as you could get stung by a scorpion or bit by a rattle snake.

Finally along came a 1934 Ford pickup with a drunken Indian dressed in a suit along with a drunken itinerant road side sign repainter holding a puppy.

Obviously I did know all this at first. We put the puppy in the bed
of the pickup to make room for me in the front. I also put my
bag in  the back with the paint and ladders.

We drove along OK until we got to the Pecos river gorge  and went
down the south rim to get to the low bridge. We crashed into the left turn wall at the bottom and lost the puppy. Paint got all over  my bag and some of my clothes were ruined.

The front axle was bent and the rad punctured
but the 34 Ford pickup would still moved. The nearest town was 30 miles away and we soon ran out of water for the rad. It was the middle of the night so no cars came along. We would drive for 5 minutes and stop for 15 while the engine cooled off again. Finally we got to the next town.
I think it was Landry.

Paul Lamar