Here is a story about my first trip on a Greyhound bus, which was from Phoenix to Santa Barbara. Since my birthday is in December, I was just 13 years old when I boarded a Greyhound bus in Phoenix, Arizona in August of 1963. There were about 12 of us seminarians on board, from freshmen to seniors; and as the bus pulled out of the station, at 8 PM, I was off on “Steve’s great adventure.” Since it was a “milk run” bus, and not an express, our first stop was Wickenburg, AZ, about 40 miles northwest of Phoenix. We were told it would be a 10 minute stop to pick up passengers; and if we got off, to be sure to remember the bus number! Well, I got off to use the restroom, but I also managed to forget the bus number! Yikes! There were 5 busses parked there, and I stopped at the door of each one. “Going to Santa Barbara?” Nope! The last bus, of course, was the right one! We were traveling the overnight run because we would then arrive in Santa Barbara at about 8 o’clock in the morning; so we were supposed to sleep on the bus. Well, that didn’t exactly happen. With crying babies, guys who wanted to play cards, smokers, and ‘non-freeway-type’ roads, it was a pretty restless night. Our next stop was Blythe, California where an inspector entered the bus and asked if anyone had any fruit, especially citrus. “Why?” I blurted out. “To stop any and all fruit flies,” the man said. Fruit flies? Darn, no gabardine suit story there, no spies, just a man with a silver ‘Inspector’ shield on his chest, looking for fruit flies.
But the big part of the adventure was yet to come… We pulled into the downtown Los Angeles bus station at about 4 o’clock in the morning for an hour layover. The older guys knew the routine. I just followed them… out the bus depot door and onto the streets of LA!!! Wow, here I was, roaming the downtown sidewalks of LA, at 4 o’clock in the morning, with 11 other guys! We passed drunks and the likes of people that I had never seen before. Then, after about three blocks, we entered an all-night ‘auto-mat!’ We put our money into the slot and pulled out a piece of pie, or a sandwich, or a whatever! Very cool, I thought, but I also thought, what if mom and dad heard about my ‘downtown stroll?’ Mum’s the word. Finally, at about 8:30 AM, and many stops later, we rolled into the SB bus station, and a stake truck from the seminary was in the parking lot. We loaded our big trunks onto the back of it, and I hopped on; but the driver, (a senior I found out later) said, “No, no, you guys walk, only seniors get to ride.” (My first encounter with the phrase “Seniors have preference.”)
Now repeat this experience twice at Christmas time, and again in June, … and by then my Greyhound ‘street smarts’ were well-honed. Steve R. '67