I was driving north on US-83 when I reached the North Dakota state line.  For some odd reason, I planned to visit Flin Flan and The Pas, Manitoba villages at the northern end of public highways.  I wanted to experience the true end of the road.  The sign for Strasburg, in Emmons County was just ahead. This was glacial lake country, landscapes dotted with melt-water lakes, cattail swamps, deranged river drainages, killer mosquitoes, and friendly people.  The old timer at the Strasburg Shell, a local schmoozer, told me that the Lawrence Welk family farm was just north of town, a “must see attraction”.  He continued extolling the virtues of Emmons County life, but I politely extracted myself from the conversation.  I was anxious to reach Canada.

After leaving the station, I started thinking about the past, of big band music and my teen years in Illinois, of boring Saturday nights and conflicts with my father.  It was virtually impossible to borrow his car, so I was dependent on friends for wheels.  The Lawrence Welk show was the main attraction of his Saturday evening viewing schedule.  I have indelible images of band members and singers, sounds of accordion music, the background bubbles, and Lawrence’s Welkisms, a collection of his eccentric anecdotes.

I was caught up in these unpleasant thoughts when I saw the sign for the Welk farm and unconsciously flipped my turn signal to seek closure from childhood grievances.  The farm country north of Strasburg is classic rural America, and the Welk place was typical, a white two-story frame house, a privy, a tidy bank barn, and even a two-acre lake.  The most outstanding feature though was the pavilion where Lawrence (not Larry) played his accordion for local crowds as a youngster.  I pulled into the long driveway and parked near the house.  An old guy on a sit-down lawnmower waved to me enthusiastically, and another friendly volunteer, an older woman, walked over and welcomed me to the property.  There was no entrance fee, although donations were accepted.  I entered one of the out buildings and yet another amiable volunteer asked where I was from and thanked me for my interest in Welk.  She pointed me toward some Welk memorabilia including postcards and a life-sized cardboard image of the band leader.  I discovered that Welk and I share the same birth date, March 11th.  I wasn’t overwhelmed with nostalgia but meditated on that coincidence while walking to the lake shore to kick a few pebbles and absorb the post glacial landscape.  Two of the volunteer staffers thanked me for visiting and I drove off.  I was happy that I stopped, especially because the friendly staff made my visit enjoyable.

As I drove northward, I noticed something about the oncoming traffic.  Nearly all of the drivers waved.  With rare exception, I would get a couple of fingers, a high five, an arm roll, or even two hands up above the wheel.  Like the folks at the Welk farm, highway 83 was a very sociable place.  I waved back—and even began initiating waves—for what seemed like hours.   These were the most hospitable people I ever encountered on the road.

Canadians are also very friendly people, even friendlier on average than state-siders, but as I reflexively waved to oncoming traffic after crossing the border, only the rare Canadian waved back.  I experimented with this a hundred times during the trip—nary a wave back.  As a matter of fact, I’ve waved my way from British Columbia to Manitoba—nary a wave.  But when I pull over and approach Canadians, they are an  amicable lot, jovial to a fault, upbeat and funny, always happy.  They are great schmoozers too.  A campground conversation with Canadians can take time, a jumble of weather talk, local activities, history, family life, and even politics interspersed with much laughter.  I’ve not driven much in Quebec and in the large cities of eastern Canada, but I suspect that Canadians there are like eastern Americans.  Hobnobbing may have more to do with sparse populations and commanding landscapes of the west, the barrenness of the spaces.

It’s the same in the Lower 48.  There is a distinct drop in cordiality both east and west of the Central states, but drive south through South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and even Oklahoma, and you will encounter passionate wavers and schmoozers.  I still have friendly encounters in the rural Rockies, but west into Nevada and California, forget it.  There is little hobnobbary in the far west.  You might get a few hands or fingers in the Northwest but don’t count on that either.  Diminishing affability can be followed eastward.  You’ll run into wavers in Iowa and Illinois, and even Wisconsin and Minnesota, but not farther east.  Forget the Deep South, where people are neighborly and polite to a fault, especially if you go to the same church, are the same color or class, or exhibit a very friendly manner, but Southerners, in my opinion, are not great schmoozers.  Well, I try to avoid the south anyway.  I might be considered a trouble maker, or even an elite Liberal.

There are lots of important rules about waving.  First of all, urbanites are just too busy to wave and might consider you a psychopath if you do.  People in cities are in a hurry anyway, too busy making money or just heading somewhere, focused on the road ahead so they can avoid a collision on their crowded roadways.  But I’ve been on quiet byways or side streets in medium-sized Midwestern cities like Witchita or Grand Junction and have received a casual hands up, but I was always the first to wave.  In small Midwestern towns, approaching drivers, walkers, and even cyclists offer recognition.

I’m reminded of an experience several years ago, somewhere in Iowa, driving along the main business street, a worn and polished brick-veneered thoroughfare as 8-10 vehicles passed me doing 5 mph, all casually waving.  Friendly farmers and townspeople headed to the hardware store, pharmacy, or supermarket all acknowledged me, but that was the early 2000’s.  If they had seen me in the 1960’s in my VW Karmmanghia coiffed with in curly locks, the reaction may have been different.

Women rarely wave first.  This condition no doubt reflects the aggressiveness of men, the fear of appearing too friendly around the male ego and potentially being hounded or even chased.  I remember one exception to that rule from personal experience, in southwestern Montana where cowgirls can be exuberant wavers.  Maybe it has to do with competing with males, to be equal to men in a hostile environment, on equal terms with the opposite sex.  I ran into a woman once in the Centennial Valley on the South Rim Road, a lonesome gravel trail paralleling the Centennial Mountains in southern Beaverhead County.  She was dark haired and beautiful, attired in the customary jeans, boots, and western hat.  She was riding a handsome black horse and pulling another pack horse behind, provisions for a long journey.  A couple of scruffy dogs were pulling up the rear.  As I slowly passed on the right, she waved and smiled.  An hour later she pulled into the upper lake campground at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge a few miles up the road.  She explained that she was headed to the Mexican border via the Continental Divide trail, a 2,000 mile trek starting at the Canadian border, a six month journey through the Rockies to find America, or perhaps herself.  She was a woman with a mission, a waver and a schmoozer, a true cowgirl.  I was a bit worried for her as she was describing the trip, but relaxed significantly when I saw the rifle holstered to the horse.

Hikers are also friendly people.  They are not inhibited by the high speeds of vehicular travel and the isolation of confinement in a two-ton metallic canister on wheels.  Folks generally acknowledge each other, especially if they are on remote trails.  I’ve hiked trails in Yosemite during tourist season where hundreds of people are encountered, and even then, people often say hello.  Maybe it’s just a “Hi, how are ya”, or “Spectacular day, huh”, but more often than not a short discussion can develop about the trail, the weather, or just about anything.  Recently, I met a couple of older men on a trail in Capitol Reef National Park.  Within a minute, we established that we were scientists, and one of the fellas was from Colorado School of Mines petroleum engineering department.  He had hosted one of my USGS colleagues, to speak to his classes on organic geochemistry.

Recently, at Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, I met Pat Clark, a real vagabond.  We were the only inhabitants at Alamo campground and started up a conversation.  He worked on the family ranch near Big Timber, Montana until his 40’s, then moved around the West as a seasonal forest ranger involved in fisheries maintenance and fire suppression.  He bought a small spread in the eastern Pioneer Mountains near Glen, Montana.  Now that got my attention.  I asked him if he knew a guy nearby who hated the Bureau of Land Management and carried an AK-47 around with him.  Yes, he said that must be Randy, a local guy who managed a place adjacent to his spread.  I explained that I had met Randy some years ago.

My hiking style consists of raising my left hand high and turning it sideways, palm outward.  Simultaneously, I say “Howdy, what a spectacular day”.  More often than not, I initiate the greeting.  The introverts and self-absorbed hikers are easy to identify.  I have a tendency to overdue it.  I walked past a guy last year in a campground at Organ Pipe Cactus NP.  He was fumbling with something in the rear of his vehicle.  I enthusiastically said: “Beautiful evening”.  He never looked up and gave a quick “yah”.  Not friendly for some reason.  Maybe his dog died.

Waving is an art.  People wave in many different ways, so I’m never surprised when I see a new gesture.  There isn’t a common wave.  First, one can do a two hands up on the wheel.  When someone doesn’t want to remove a hand from the top of the steering wheel, they simply lift fingers in the air so they can continue to steer safely.  There is also the one hand on the wheel, other hand salute.  This maneuver can be very casual as the free hand can be holding a cigarette or a beer.  The friendliest greeting of course is the one handed wave, where the appendage is raised above the wheel and extended quickly to the right or left in a show of enthusiasm.  The faster the motion, the greater the enthusiasm.  This wave is usually accompanied by a smile, but recognition of facial friendliness disappears at high rates of speed.

There are variations on the hands on the wheel approach.  Some drivers are flippers. They simply lift a hand above the wheel quickly in a flip-like gesture.  Some flippers are full hand flippers, while others are flip a finger flippers—any but the middle one will do.  There are also two hand flippers.  I’ve seen waves where a full hand is lifted high in the air above the wheel and rotated back and forth, as if they were saying goodbye.  That’s partly true.  They are saying hello and goodbye at the same time.

I suppose the type of wave is related to mood.  Some people may be preoccupied and don’t wave.  Others just respond generically.  Since I’m a wave initiator, I can do what I want at the time.  Sometimes I wave at the last second, either because I forgot or as a cruel joke.  Responses, if any, vary.  Some people rush to get their hand up before I drive past.  Others just ignore the wave or figure it’s too late.  Old people just don’t have quick enough reflexes to respond appropriately to the last minute wave.

Generally, I vary my wave pattern.  If I’m in red-neck country, I pick a masculine wave, a quick upward slide of the left hand toward the drives side window.  With women, I raise my left hand in a nonthreatening motion.  Usually only older ranch or farm women wave back.  Women never respond to the masculine macho wave.  When driving slowly on a warm day with my left hand on the window ledge, I’m ready for action.  When encountering vehicles in a campground or forest road at very slow speeds, I stretch my arm out the window in a slow leftward motion while stretching my fingers outward and smiling broadly.  Truckers always pose a problem because they don’t expect people to wave.  They’re so high up and often invisible to approaching cars that they feel ignored.  I feel sorry for them.  It’s kind of lonely up there.

Waving is a form of schmoozing to me.  My brother in law, Mark, says that schmoozing has a purpose, that is to flatter, or perhaps to manipulate.  The word has old Hebrew origins.  It’s a business-oriented networking  interaction, especially to be persuasive, when someone has a need to communicate informally.  I’m just an extrovert and enjoy waving or talking to people.

I wasn’t born a schmoozer, but learned the skills after years of practice.  So, what is good schmoozing anyway?  To explain, I’ll use two examples.  Kurt and Becky, were locals from Tucson up for the night, he a Lutheran minister and she an organist and CPA.  I met them at a campground in the Santa Catalina Mountains northeast of Tucson.  They were camped near me and out walking their dogs when we met, resulting in a very amiable conversation.  It started with the dogs names, which were taken from the Old Testament.  We then segued into Becky’s fondness for car racing, Kurt’s parishioner demographic, and my life as a part-time vagabond.  We talked about health, his congregation, retirement, and car engines, all in 15 minutes.  It was freewheeling free verse, a roving interaction of creative schmoozing.  We didn’t exchange addresses.  Nothing usually comes of that.  I’ll never see them again, but that doesn’t matter.  It was a time-place thing, and I for one really enjoyed it.  I think they did too.

The Divisadero loop trail was one of my favorite local hikes when I lived in Taos. It included a gaggle of switchbacks along the Sangre de Cristo mountain front east of town.  The trail snaked its way up a long ridge, offering the hiker rewarding views of the Taos Plateau and Tusas Mountains far to the west.  The ridge top was my usual destination, several acres of pinyon-juniper forest atop a mountain of Pennsylvanian sandstones and shales.  It’s not unusual to find fossils along the trail.  Some design oriented hikers once constructed lounge chairs at the top of the mountain from nearby sandstone slabs, rocky recliners for the weary hiker.

I was relaxing in one of the chairs and munching on a cookie one sunny afternoon several summers ago when an attractive 40ish woman hiked up the trail and approached me.  She was dressed in black, tights with outer skirt, sandles, and sleeveless top.  She had long black hair and a relaxed, confident smile.  I motioned for her to sit down in the vacant chair, a competent introduction to a potentially successful schmoozing session.  I offered her a cookie and we started talking.  She explained that she had flown to Albuquerque, rented a car, and just now reached Taos.  She said that “she was looking for love”.  I was rather startled by that to say the least, but just said something like “well, good luck with that”.  I was quite taken aback by her openness.  She had been married to a Canadian from Montreal but recently divorced.  She had a doctorate in French and an adjunct teaching position at some eastern university, but had just quit her job to start a new life.  We talked about Taos and its idiosyncratic people.  I mentioned that PhDs were a dime a dozen here, implying that Taos was a very liberal community.  I told her mine was in geology and my wife’s was in English.  We both retired from long careers and had moved to Taos to soak up the culture, art, and landscape.

We schmoozed for about 30 minutes and headed off the mountain together continuing our rambling discussions.  Back at the trailhead, I wished her the best of luck and hoped she succeeded in “finding love”.  I suppressed my tendency for sarcasm and waved as she drove off.  I thought I had seen the last of Ellen that afternoon, a highly successful schmoozing experience coming to an end.  I even Googled her name later to verify the authenticity of her background.  Sure enough, there she was, a faculty member in adjunct standing at a university I can’t recall.  The next morning I was at Smith’s supermarket in Taos wandering through the dairy section when I ran into her again.  We smiled and chatted for a few minutes.  Ellen excitedly told me she had found love last evening along the plaza in town, an older guy, and they really hit it off.   He was the son of a famous movie director from the 40’s and 50’s, his name was Tony, a long time Taos resident, goat farmer, and eclectic Taoseno.  I congratulated her and we hugged goodbye. I hoped she truly found love.  I never saw her again but hoped her new love would last.

Sometimes, successful schmoozing can be accomplished in unlikely situations.  Russ Tysdal and I were returning from a day in the field one summer afternoon in the early 1990’s.  We were about 15 miles north of Dillon, Montana on I-15, heading into town to our motel when we were stopped by a state trooper.  I was driving.  We were in a Jeep Cherokee with U.S. Government plates, a USGS motor pool vehicle assigned to us for the summer.  I was driving about 15 mph over the posted limit.  It was hard to drive slowly when we had an open road, scant traffic, and beautiful clear driving conditions.  The officer’s first question was: “How do like your Cherokee?”  He was thinking of getting one himself and wanted to get some testimonials.  Russ and I explained that we usually preferred Ford Broncos from the motor pool, and the Cherokees are not the best for remote off road driving conditions, but Cherokees got good gas mileage and were great on the highway.  We discussed some local 4 X 4 opportunities, the weather, and the driving range of his police cruiser.  Just before he returned to his vehicle, he mentioned that we were speeding and we owed the state of Montana $5, the standard fine for the offense in those days.  He was willing to take cash or check and would give us a receipt.  We gladly paid our fine and drove into town.  This was before the Montana state legislature passed a law removing speed limits.  Signs at the state line soon read “Speed Limit: Reasonable and Proper”.  Reasonable and proper turned out to be 85 mph during daylight hours on interstate highways.  This fact was substantiated by several BMWs during an advertising stunt some years back. As I recall, they were ticketed for doing 90 mph.

Schmoozing can sometimes just get out of hand.  I met Hans and Jane at Sand Island, a BLM campground on the San Juan River in southeastern Utah.  They were vagabonds from Colorado, both retired, he from the BLM, and she from the oil industry.  They had a camper vehicle that I admired, so we started a conversation, first about careers and campers, then about vagabonding and travel.  He was reticent, she a moderately disdainful monologist.  After about five minutes, talk turned to politics (by Jane).  My concerns were validated when they wanted to know what I thought of Donald Trump.  I was honest with them.  I didn’t extract myself immediately because I had not yet met a Trump supporter and was curious.  I got more than I needed.  They confirmed my immediate suspicions.  I politely excused myself from the conversation to make dinner.  They had major complaints about government even though Hans had worked for the government.  They were reasonably affluent, a condo in Breckenridge, Colorado and an expensive truck camper.  They were just angry people.

Another awkward experience occurred after stopping at a rest area in Spencer, Idaho, the last bathroom break on I-15 before climbing Monida Pass into Montana.  I was downing some snacks, a few peanuts and some cheese sticks from ziplock bags on the floor of my VW van.  I was leaning over occasionally to get these treats as I enjoyed the drive on a virtually empty span of roadway.  When I saw the flashing lights behind me, I pulled over to the shoulder on the right and waited.  I was driving 65 in an 80 zone, so I wasn’t speeding.  I wasn’t especially concerned about the stop but was curious about the officer’s intentions.  He first walked to the rear of my van and peered in the window, then to the passenger side.  I opened the window and greeted him.  He was lean with the informal appearance of a rural peacekeeper, a dark brown police jacket, some day old stubble, thinning red hair, and a serious, cranky disposition.  I asked him how his day was going, but he answered with nary a nod.  He was minimally polite, professional, but not a schmoozer.  I mentioned that I wasn’t speeding.  He agreed but said I was driving erratically and had swerved onto the rumble strip twice.  Okay, I knew where he was going with this line of reasoning.  I said I was eating snacks and the bags were on the floor.  I apologized for swerving but emphasized I did that only because there was zero traffic.   He looked into the vehicle as he sized me up and began to ask me questions.  Where was I going?  Where did I work? I answered with polite frankness that I had friends in Butte and was headed to Bozeman to meet with some geology colleagues.  I emphasized that I was actually a part-time Montana resident, a fervent admirer of Idaho, and frequently drove this way to spend money and help the local economy.  I even unfolded a long career of regional geological exploration, an attempt to impress him with my conversational skills and friendliness.  I wanted him to think I was really a local guy.  He wasn’t impressed.   He then asked if I had drugs or alcohol in my van.  As I reached for my driver’s license and registration, I said that alcohol gave me a headache because I’m old.  I didn’t drink or use drugs.  I was in the early stages of irritation when I noticed more blinking lights.

A second officer parked behind the first vehicle.  He walked up to the van and began peering into the windows.  He looked slightly more professional, a hat, and pressed pants, maybe a state trooper but I couldn’t tell for sure.  My initial inquisitor walked back to his vehicle and they started talking, probably about whether or not to search my vehicle.  After what seemed like five long minutes the first cop walked back to me and asked a second time if I had alcohol or drugs in my van.  That’s when I got testy and raised my voice.  I slowly explained that I was 70 years old (I pulled the age card again), I got headaches from alcohol, never used drugs, and wanted to get on my way to Montana.  If they wanted to search my vehicle, they should just do it now.  I only had camping gear and supplies.  The first officer looked me over once more, gave me my paperwork back, and suggested that I should not eat and drive.  The second guy was still peering into my van one more time in the hopes of convicting me of camping infractions.  He grunted unintelligibly as if he was disappointed he couldn’t search the van.  Guilty until proven innocent.

I grudgingly bid the first guy farewell, started my engine, and entered the flow of traffic, although there was no flow of traffic, only a semi truck about a mile behind me.  The officers were gone when I looked in the mirror a second time, perhaps waiting for the next aging VW van owner.  I continued northward into Montana still trying to assess my encounter with Idaho law enforcement.  I boiled everything down to an old guy with long hair, a VW van, and Colorado plates—identifying a state with legal marijuana.  Then it occurred to me—marijuana.  I basically dared them to search my vehicle.  I totally forgot that I had a plastic bottle of edibles, THC lemon drops in my food box, fully identified with a label.  I’m sure glad that trooper didn’t take me up on my request to search the van.  Sometimes schmoozing can backfire.