RIDING THE GREYHOUND BUS

 Did you ever ride the Greyhound Bus and spend any length of time in their bus terminals?   Probably an experience you will never forget.  In my high school years in Sacramento, while attending Christian Brothers High School from 1959-64, a few of us living in the Sacramento Valley had to ride the bus home on weekends.   After taking the city bus to the Greyhound depot in the old part of Sacramento, we had to purchase our tickets and wait an hour or two for the northbound bus going up old Highway 99 to Redding (there was no I-5 freeway back then).   The Sacramento depot was a busy place with busses coming and going.   We had to wait in the terminal where there were wooden benches and all kinds of people, including the good, the bad, and the ugly.   If you have seen one terminal you have seen them all, the nice little cafeterias with a fine selection of items, the semi-clean restrooms, and all the pleasant smells that were part of the experience--diesel fumes, cigarette smoke, cleaning solvents, and the smell of alcohol on some of the passengers carry those brown bags, usually with a bottle of not so fine wine.    I don't recall ever eating in the cafeteria where there were premade white bread sandwiches, dishes of jello, and maybe some kind of other salad dish that did not look too fresh.  In fact, I don't remember anybody ever eating in those establishments.   If you had to use the restroom it was a place you could not get out of fast enough in fear of who was coming in next.   Once on the bus, it no sooner got going 80 mph before it pulled into every little town along the route.   Most of these small towns did not have a depot, just some designated place along a street where a Greyhound sign was posted and people waited for the bus.   It was about 90 miles from Sacramento to our hometown of Willows and it usually took two hours after making seven stops before our final destination.  On one trip home on a Friday night, I remember the bus driver pulling over between Sacramento and Woodland and kicking a drunken passenger off that was urinating in his boot.  There were other occasions with people leaving the bus before their final destination for a variety of reasons, such as fighting, threatening other passengers, etc.   The posted speed limit that I remember was 65 mph and these bus drivers were always behind schedule, so the pedal was to the metal and they were passing any vehicle going less than 70 mph.   We felt like survivors when the bus finally arrived in Willows.