#Cowboy steering wheel drivers driver#
The four-finger waggle permits the driver to flex his whole hand without shifting its position on the wheel. One is the Uncle Sam patriotic point, in which the finger is extended straight out instead of up, making it even more low-key and difficult to see. There are several less common varieties of the hi sign. So be ready: The simultaneous mutual exchange of hi signs will put a smile on your face that will last till the next tailgater. If, on a deserted, narrow road, you pass a Stetsoned grandpa in a Ford pickup, you can anticipate that he will give you the hi sign. The best bets are men, especially middle-aged and elderly, people who drive American-made vehicles or anything with mud flaps, and those in cowboy hats, who by and large still cling to the friendly tenets of Western hospitality. Women, unless they are truckers, are unlikely to give the hi sign. The more deserted the road, the more likely it is that you’ll see the hi sign, which tends to disappear if there are more than two cars-the giver and the receiver-on the road. Passing BMW owners, for example, might flash their lights in reciprocal admiration for each other’s taste in cars, while a particular bumper sticker or window decal might elicit a honk or hook ’em.) You will find the hi sign only on safer, emptier turf, such as two-lane blacktops and lesser byways in the country or, perhaps, in very small towns, such as those that don’t even have a traffic signal.
#Cowboy steering wheel drivers drivers#
(When urban drivers do acknowledge their fellows, their gestures are based less on friendliness than on status. Nor is it likely to appear on those extensions of urban haste and aloofness, the freeways, where traffic is too heavy and where drivers are doubly distant-first, because their citified distrust and fear discourage them from looking at occupants of other cars and, second, because the oncoming cars are too far away. The hi sign does not exist in or near cities, where drivers are more likely to flash a neighboring finger. The hi sign is brief, often lasting only a second. It wastes no energy it is a model of efficiency, like all nonessential movements by country folks who must save their labor for the land.
(The other arm is out the window or on the armrest, depending on the weather and your driving speed.) Giving the hi sign also provides an opportunity to stretch a cramped hand, thus accomplishing two purposes at once.
A person on horse or on foot raises his whole hand, but the demands of travel on wheels dictate a specialized wave.īody language for “howdy,” the hi sign is the simplest of waves, merely the raising of the forefinger of the driving hand, which does not budge from its draped position across the top of the steering wheel, the attitude struck by most long-distance or travel-wise drivers.
The hi sign is strictly a highway courtesy, an automotive gesture developed for the modern age. By using it, we convey our goodwill to our fellow drivers and reaffirm our reliance on each other during long trips across isolated country. But we modern Texans travel 55 miles an hour-at the very least-and can barely slow down for a pit stop. In the days of the open range, when pioneers saw another wagon of lonely wayfarers on the trackless plains, they could always rein up and chat awhile. Texas’ motto is “Friendship,” and Texas’ highways cover more miles than any other state’s, and the intersection of these two facts is the hi sign, the laconic one-finger wave shared by rural travelers.