So You Won't Talk, Huh?

She was a disheveled blonde with a set lip and calloused hands, and she was thumbing a ride in New Jersey's Palisades Park. Through his windshield, Patrolman Leonard Cottrell saw her soiled shirt, the dirty dungarees rolled to her knees, the cheap zipper bag she carried. He pulled to the curb.

Minutes later, the girl was talking to the desk sergeant in the Palisades Park jail. Name: Susan Bower; age: 20; home: Bozeman, Mont.; possessions: $14; last address: Bangor, Me. (where she had been digging potatoes); present occupation: hitchhiker; destination: Florida.

Then she clammed up. When Cottrell and the sergeant doubted her story, she got mildly sassy. The sergeant booked her for disorderly conduct (time, 11:15 a.m.; date, Oct. 5) and sent her along to the white brick Bergen County jail. Jersey justice forbids sass from drifters.

In her cell, Susan learned that it also (technically) forbids hitchhiking,* and demands (by a law passed in 1799) that strangers be able to give a good account of themselves. Susan's account, including her admittedly phony name, was not good enough for the easily irritated Jersey cops. But Susan was as stubborn as they were. After she had been in jail 23 days, Assistant Prosecutor Stephen Toth Jr. tried to reason with her. But Susan, whose description and fingerprints had been sent to the FBI and all state police, claimed that her right name was her own affair. She was heartless, the sheriff said.

Finally, Prosecutor Toth asked that Susan be sent to jail for six months for persistent disorderly conduct. Judge Irving S. Reeve, president of the Bergen County Bar Association, agreed. Then the press heard about the case.

In an angry editorial, the nearby Hudson Dispatch declared that a "friendless, helpless stranger" had been jailed for a very poor reason: withholding her identity. Manhattan papers took up the cry. Attorney James A. Major of the American Civil Liberties Union demanded that she be given a new trial. Offers of money, clothes and jobs poured in. The clamor got too loud for the sensitive ears of judge and prosecutor.

Last week, 34 days after she flagged the wrong driver, Bergen County admitted that Susan Bower had a right to keep her mouth shut. Turning down all offers, "Susan" put on her dungarees, pocketed her $14, and set out for Manhattan. Later, she said, she would hitchhike to Florida.

* There are almost as many unarrested hitchhikers on New Jersey roads as there are mosquitos in New Jersey's meadows.

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