Transcontinental Bus

I HAVE just survived a transcontinental trip by bus. Six thousand miles in ten days, continuous going. What an item for Daniel Boone or Mother Shipton! Worse still, what an item for a T. A. T. patron!

For the first twenty-four hours the experience was valuable neither as history, as romance, nor as comedy; after that my immunities increased, and I was able to take notice. As to my fellow travelers, I had expected them to be a new creation, and they were. Such good-natured directness, such imperviousness to discomfort — nay, such utter enjoyment of what to me was an exquisite form of physical suffering. Henceforth I shall cease talking about prison reform and capital punishment, and shall advocate putting all miscreants on buses and transporting them rapidly from here to there, world without end. By such refinement of torture, criminals would become extinct in a fortnight. No wonder the pillar saints missed perfection; they were far too comfortable. Let them sit over a wheel and have their spines jolted. Let the jump-seat pinch them and the overhead baggage fall upon them. Let every passenger behind and beside them wriggle past at every station. Let all windows be closed (by successive request), and let the bus roar on, day and night, night and day. By such technique is the flesh truly mortified.

But no one minded. In fact, neither did I after I had gotten rid of my de luxe manners and become just one of the folks.

‘Well, folks,’ the driver would say, rising grandly and facing us with a smile he seemed to mean, ‘this is Booneville. Ten minutes rest-stop.’

Fifteen or twenty minutes later he would return, count us with his forefinger, and then, ‘Well, folks, let’s go.’ At the end of a division, as the railroads would say, it was ‘Good night, folks,’ or ‘So long, folks,’ as the case might be. Once at mid-afternoon of a day whose torridity I hope to forget, a driver who had been with us since breakfast said, as he took his little wallet and departed, ‘Well, folks, I hope you get along all right; I’ve filled up the ice-water tank for you.’ That was the spirit, and it was catching. We were all folks, individually crotchety enough, but compositely human nature, purged of guile, of irritation, of selfishness. J ust folks, bathed in brotherly love.

In line and sinew we were subjects for Daumier, singly and in rows. He would have run out of paper before North Platte, in both directions. Several times when I feigned an excuse to turn boldly around from my front seat, I almost called out, ‘Hold it,’ although I am helpless with crayons. Sometimes we looked like an Old People’s Home on a picnic; always there was a sprinkling of those over the retiring line. Retirement was not in their books, however; they were the sort who die with their boots on, and their traveling days had just begun with the bus era. Most typically they were women, incredibly dextrous with lap baggage. One short-haired grandmother, who was my seat mate for a day and a night, by some sleight of hand negotiated two knitting bags, two wraps and an extra hat, three paper parcels, and her lunch-medicine kit. True, she had some slight trouble shifting things about in her nineteen inches of seat space (I measured it) when it came time to take her medicine. Three red pills and the liquid requisite to wash them down are difficult to manage at a speed exceeding forty-five miles an hour. Not that she was delicate. I heard her order and saw her consume a pork sandwich and a wedge of blackberry pie at the 1.45 A.M. stop at Schiff’s Café. The bus-traveling aged are well preserved, and had better be.

Blue-shirted cavaliers, with down on their chins and freckles on their arms, came and went at all hours. So did very young, bareheaded mothers with very tender infants that never cried. Once in a while someone with initialed baggage rode for a few hours, but such customers were rare. A twentyfive-pound dog occupied space in the baggage rack for two days and two nights. Like the ticket passengers, he was probably so glad ‘to get to go’ that he did n’t mind the lack of ventilation. Whenever we changed buses, we took on an entirely new and interesting cargo of passengers — a decided improvement over the ways of six-day boats.

The nights would have made the best sketches. The victims held their poses and the bus had a unity of line and tone it lacked during the day. After ‘Pillow Service’ had intoned his little plea, prophesying that if we patronized him we should all ‘ sleep comfortable by the light of the moon,’ after the driver had pressed the button and the bus had put its collective head on its new fifteen-cent pillow, that was the time to set up the easel. Two by two, heads at exactly the same angle and all rolling rhythmically, every mouth open, every expression wiped off every face, the owners drifted, each on his own sea. Souls would come back to bodies with a jerk when the bus drew up to a STOP and the driver reversed the button. Every neck would straighten, every mouth close, every eye pop into focus. Like children in a Soviet nursery, we slept and waked at command.

By day and by night infinitely interesting things passed by, things no window of the Overland Limited ever revealed: a frightened antelope near enough to be spoken to, a thousand sheep met in a narrow mountain pass at dawn, cloud shadows on the prairie, dusk pouring down over the mesas, a gypsy camp around its night fire, air beacons seen from range to range and finally caught up w ith, all the stars in the Planetarium without an admission fee, gaunt mountains taking shape before sunrise, the smell of sagebrush, a breath of snow across the desert, the Sierras by moonlight, and, on the return, a bridge of fog hanging over Donner Lake at dawn. Any city dweller from birth or by adoption who cannot forget the pain in his knees and the bitterness of the morning coffee as the price of such experiences is not worthy to have them.

To a bus traveler the stopping is as interesting as the going. Days and even nights were punctuated by lunch stops of varying length, although, by some perversity of the management, we did not stop at the most alluring hostels. I caught mere flying glimpses of the Pantry Shelf Café, Hamburger Castle, Hotel Colossal (two stories high), Come As U R Inn, Chat ’n Nibble, and scores of others. Even Shovel Inn, although it sounded slightly prodigal for my taste, might have been a culinary experience. Instead, we drew up unvaryingly at the Bus Station Café, where we were expected to the minute. Outside, all bus station cafés are identical, but inside no two are alike. Even the accent with which the waitress proffers doughnuts, ‘plain or sugared,’ announces that a state line has been crossed since breakfast. I remember one such establishment, possibly twenty feet wide, which recorded on a window placard:

THIS CAFE HAS BEEN SERVING THE PUBLIC FOR TWENTY YEARS NEARLY A QUARTER OF A CENTURY

To have gone elsewhere would have been an affront to age and tradition. I entered, sat on a twenty-year-old stool, and ate the local ice cream, ‘Pure as the Heart of Childhood.’

Had the continent been still wider than five days and five nights (as God forbid), I cannot say what monotony might have come to pass, but, as it was, there were enough novelties to last. From Pittsburgh to Chicago and from Chicago to Pittsburgh it was the elegance of a steward, an engaging lad, who saw the humor of his ow n situation and capitalized it. His stewardship consisted in wearing an inscribed cap, occupying the front jump-seat, calling the stations, and leading the singing. Thanks to his generalship the Ohio concert was the best of the trip, although our other efforts, more in the prayer-meeting manner, had been memorable enough in their way. On this particular evening the singing was ‘organized,’ the steward being duly nominated, elected, and applauded as leader. He was a success from the overture onward, having not only a voice but a talent for wise-cracks, and knowing the words to every song proposed from the floor. That is, the first verse. No one even attempted any more, except for ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ and ‘Just A-wearyin’ for You,’ which stumbled on to a foggy close. The programme consisted of cast-off popular numbers and so-called ‘College Songs,’ never sung at college. The combined repertoire of the bus was surprising. I can think of nothing that was omitted, except gospel hymns, and, strangely enough, not a hymn was sung. When there was a sudden lull, the twilight offering was concluded with ‘Seeing Nellie Home’ and ‘Sunday School Is Over.’ We were strangers again, and it was bedtime.

One other night experience ran this a close second for novelty. We had changed buses at Reno, westward bound. There had been the usual confusion over baggage transferred, new seats chosen, and new passengers come aboard, but at last we were off. It would be San Francisco in the morning, and a few winks were in order. I was safely in medias res of my first nap when the bus suddenly stopped, the lights were flashed on, and two men in khaki entered importantly. That was the month of the Dillinger drama, and the sight of an officer presaged front-page events, but not this time. The intruders announced themselves as looking not for bank robbers, kidnappers, or escaped convicts, but for oranges and sweet potatoes, concealed in the baggage. It seemed a strange quest at 2.00 A.M., but we had come to the California state line, over which no Florida fruit fly is suffered to pass. ‘Sorry to disturb you, folks, but we’ll do this job as quickly as possible. Keys, please.’

Then followed an inspection worthy of the Cherbourg customs. Every bag was ransacked; all the trunks were taken off the roof, but not so much as one sweet potato emerged. On this night raid, as at other times, the bus had a common denominator of intimate good-naturedness which may or may not be peculiarly American. Nothing was too much trouble, not even opening a duffle bag in crowded quarters, at 2.00 A.M. on the fifth night out, and all for the sake of a fly-bitten sweet potato, which one knew was n’t there. America, on the bus level, is surely easy to live with.

On future transcontinentals I shall probably speak to no one, sleep behind a green curtain, breakfast late, and read or write all day, as usual. The Pullman conductor will probably speak grammatical English, and the porter will anticipate all my wishes. My pattern of life will be unchanged; my thoughts will not be shaken out of their accustomed channels. I shall learn nothing new about the land I live in, or the men and women who are my most numerous fellow countrymen. America will not all at once become as pleasantly entertaining as the English downs or the Basque country. After the gracelessness of us all, I may even, before another summer, forget the posture, the tone, the well-conned oration of my newest American discovery, ‘Pillow Service.’ To see him mount the bus with his white pyramid and hear him recommend his fifteen-cent wares in prose and verse was almost worth a sleepless night, sliding around on one of them. No — on second thought, I think I shall not forget ‘Pillow Service.’