This well-traveled dummy has probably seen his share of truckstops

April 28, 1999
Web posted at: 3:52 p.m. EDT (1952 GMT)

MODESTO, California (CNN) -- With the help of cooperative motorists, a plywood dummy named Artie has hitchhiked from Tennessee to California, giving elementary school students in both states an opportunity to improve their knowledge of geography.

Artie's cross-country excursion began in the Southeast, but the idea that put him on the road was born in Modesto, where each student in Susan Unruh's fifth grade class selected a state for a geography project.

Nick Ridley picked Tennessee, where students he contacted at Knoxville's Lake City Elementary School created Artie, a life-size (albeit two-dimensional) piece of lumber covered with geographical tidbits about their home state.

To deliver his message, all the Tennessee traveler needed next was a ride west. So he hitchhiked. Sort of.

"They took him to rest stops and people picked him up," says Ridley. As motorists dropped off the dummy in one location, others took him along for the next leg of his journey.

As the mileage grew, so did the amount of geographical information pasted onto Artie.

The five-foot-tall hitchiker dummy is covered with geographical information about different states

And while at the mercy of strangers, Artie was never lost. Awaiting his arrival, Ridley and his classmates tracked the hitchhiker's progress through postcards the ride-providers were asked to return.

After 13 days, the woodman's wanderlust got him to Modesto, giving Unruh's students a lesson in low-tech learning. "We're competing with computer games and Nintendo and all that. We've got to make learning fun," the teacher told CNN affiliate KCRA.

What's next for Artie? Well, if the plywood person finds himself homesick, young Ridley has the answer. "We're going to put some California stuff on him and hitch him all the way back to Tennessee."

Kristen Simoes of CNN affiliate KCRA in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.