Skitching means hitching a ride by grabbing a moving car’s bumper and sliding along an icy street, or, later, doing something similar on roller skates or a skateboard. Spence from Heartland, Wisconsin, remembers Chicago kids using the word in the 1950s, when packed snow and leather-soled shoes made for a better, if dangerous, glide. Known print evidence appears much later, with a 1991 New York City example about someone hitching along on roller skates. Its origin is uncertain: it may blend ski hitching, skate hitching, or both, and one account traces it to skeet hitching. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Skitching” Is Grabbing a Car to Slide Along Behind It”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Spence Steno in Heartland, Wisconsin.
Hello, Spence.
How are Martha and Grant today?
We’re great, thank you. Thanks for calling.
What’s going on, Spence?
In my youth, there was an event that I used to participate in with the other neighborhood kids in Chicago. The snow there, when it came, often got packed down and very icy on the streets because they didn’t plow and salt anywhere like they do today. Sometimes the occasional sand throw.
But what we would do is we’d hide in between the cars or snow banks, and when a car came down the street going nice and slow, we’d jump out behind it and grab onto the bumper and be pulled by the car down the street and tumble off somewhere. And hopefully that we didn’t have your mouth on the exhaust or a car following you. Otherwise, it was pretty much fun.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, sounds great.
Sounds dangerous, but…
Yeah, it’s under the category of don’t tell my children about this, but the way that it happened, you know, we just called it what we’ve referred to it as sketching. Now, I’ve heard it called skeetching, which is, I have no idea, but over the years I’ve referred this to a number of people, and nobody has really heard of doing it behind cars, but I’ve heard of other people saying these days that, oh, yeah, they do it with skateboards or snowboards or hang on to vehicles going by.
I just, I’m surprised I can’t find any great history about sketching anywhere and wonder if this is a colloquialism of Chicago or might there be any other distance in history behind it.
That’s a good question. I have a few things to tell you about it, but let me ask you a question first. How long ago was your youth?
That was in the 50s.
The 50s.
So you’re sure that you were using the term in the 50s?
Oh, yes.
Oh, wow.
Okay, great.
Because I’ve got to tell you, the interesting thing about this term, it doesn’t show up in print until the 90s.
Wow.
The first use that we find in 1991 comes out of New York City, and it refers to somebody hitchhiking along on roller skates. And they claim that the origin of the term skitching is skeet hitching, whereas I know that Wikipedia and other sources claim that the origin is ski hitching. It’s possible that ski hitching and skate hitching both contributed to the word skitching or that they were independently derived.
But yeah, so if you Google this carefully and actually look at newspapers and books, you will find plenty of people who know skitching as you know it. It’s specifically a winter sport, something you don’t tell your parents about.
Or your kids.
And it’s dangerous. You’ll find newspaper reports of people dying from it.
Yeah.
Well, we used to have, you know, as kids, again, the modern clothing didn’t exist. So you had your leather shoes and you had these big hunky galoshes with the snaps on them. Well, those were worthless for sketching. You wanted to use those nice, smooth leather shoes.
Yeah, the leather soles.
Yeah, that got you a better glide. Another reason not to tell mother that you’re wearing your Sunday shoes in the snow.
Well, exactly. There would be a warm adventure from Pups when he got home if he heard about that.
Warm adventure, indeed. You’ve been out in the cold. It’s not so bad.
Yeah, yeah. Your opinion.
So that’s the most that we know about sketching. But it is widespread. You’ll find plenty of people still know the word and still do it. It’s fun for a lot of folks. But you’re right. Lots of folks just only know it is you get on your skateboard, you duck down behind the car and you hold onto the bumper so they can’t see you in their mirrors.
Right. Don’t try this at home, right?
Spence, I want to thank you for giving us a call and sharing your stories. Really appreciate it.
Pleasure chatting with you all.
Take care now.
Bye, Spence.
Bye-bye.
What are your sports? What do you call them? What’s the language you use that you don’t think other people have heard of? Give us a call, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.
