On any given afternoon in the summer of 1972, driving along Highway 3 or Interstate 45 meant listening to Carly Simon’s “Anticipation” or her upcoming chart-topper, “You’re So Vain.” For the teenagers of Galveston County, that AM radio soundtrack accompanied a lifestyle lived largely out in the open.
At the time, drivers routinely pulled over for hitchhikers out of a sense of neighborly obligation. An empty backseat was viewed as a wasted resource, and sharing a ride with a stranger functioned as a standard form of public transit.
But underneath the casual mobility of the early 1970s, the baseline rules of public trust in the upper Texas Gulf Coast were about to collapse…