My childhood friend Beatrice and I stood by the side of the road, looking, searching for that familiar red-and-cream-colored Trailways bus. We were teens then, headed to the big town of Macon, GA, to see Sidney Poitier in the movie “To Sir With Love.”
Back then, Trailways was the way most of my family traveled. The bus would stop where you were standing on those long paved country roads, and on this day we were planted in front of my family’s house at the end of a dusty unpaved driveway. Beatrice lived up the street from us, and had walked down to my house.
I don’t remember much about getting on the bus that day, but I do remember the drill: You stepped up from the ground onto two steps, where you faced the driver, gave him your money and took a seat. I don’t remember where we sat on the bus (it was 1967), but we were so excited, I’m sure, that it didn’t matter.
The movie was playing at the all-black Douglass Theater in Macon where you could sit just about anywhere that you wanted. I don’t remember a lot of particulars about the trip, but I do remember our reliance on the Trailways bus. Not Greyhound; I’m not even sure if we were on its route.
I got to thinking about these buses recently when I came across a Greyhound model on an auction table. A couple months before, a vintage Greyhound model had found its way to auction. I figured that a Trailways would show up soon.
There was a time in my family – and I’m sure in others – where bus travel was the norm for those without means just as auto travel was for those lucky enough to have a car. Trailways has been around since 1936, when a group of independent operators formed the Trailways National Bus System. Throughout its history, it has remained a network of independents. Greyhound was the older brother, having been formed as a company back in 1914. Three years ago, it started the curbside BoltBus.
These buses were a lifeline for many of us, even forging a place in the country’s civil rights history. When I think of the Freedom Riders and buses, Greyhound comes to mind, although those volunteers also used Trailways buses to make their way to and through the enemy territory that was the South. The buses were battered and beaten just as much as the heroic black and white freedom fighters who weathered assaults by mobs of whites and Klansmen to challenge Jim Crow laws.
Here is an excerpt from the 2006 book “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice” about volunteers who were attacked at bus depots and on buses in Anniston, AL, in 1961. One mob fire-bombed a Greyhound bus with the riders still aboard, but they escaped. What stories these buses, too, could tell. This year, about 40 college students re-created the ride as part of a PBS documentary.
I came across an actual crimson and red bus – Trailways’ trademark colors – recently at the Museum of Bus Transportation in Hershey, PA. I never knew there was such a place and so close by until researching this blog. The museum’s buses date from 1912 to 1975. It also has some of the most beautiful old cars from around the same period.
Until Sept. 15, 2011, the museum has a special exhibit titled “Buses and Baseball” about the buses used by the Negro Baseball Leagues and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The display does not include the actual buses, but rather the types of buses the teams may have used to ferry themselves to their away games.
The exhibit includes jerseys, lots of photos and other ephemera from several of the men’s and women’s teams. On the sign on the rear of a Barans Transit Lines bus: “Racine Belles. dirt in the skirts.” There were paintings of Buck O’Neil and Effa Manley of the Negro Leagues, a photo of Frances Vukovich of the Girls League and photos of the teams standing near their actual buses. On a Capital Bus Company beige and brown bus was a sign: “Harrisburg Giants. Negro Leagues Baseball Team.”
But the bus that captured my eye was the crimson and red Trailways – and the Trailways Bus Depot sign hanging from the ceiling. I stepped up onto those two steps into the bus and was taken back to that summer day in 1967 with Beatrice and “To Sir.” It hadn’t aged a bit; it was as mighty as I remembered it.
It anchored one side of the exhibit that held the Negro Leagues memorabilia, with the Barans bus (that I’d never heard of) holding up the other side with the women’s. The museum also had a bright yellow school bus and several others with names I didn’t recognize. It also had a large array of miniature Greyhound and Trailways buses in glass cases.
Another attractive red and yellow bus stood nearby. Curious, I read the placard: Checker Model 01. It was manufactured by Checker Motors, the cab company. It seems that the company made 500 transit buses from 1950 to 1953, most of which were sold to the city of Detroit.
I had recollections of two other experiences on Trailways. I would always take the bus from Paine College in Augusta, GA, to Macon, along with other students who lived along the route. The driver stopped in what then seemed like hitching-post towns like Sparta and others whose names have faded from my memory. I got a chance to see parts of the state that I’d never see again.
My worst was a bus trip from Macon with my grandmother to visit her daughter, sons and their families in Cincinnati, OH. We stopped in a town in South Carolina to change buses. I distinctly remember asking a driver if his bus was headed to Cincinnati. He said yes. He forgot to mention that it was headed to the city by way of Spartanburg, SC, – to the east, not north. It was not the right bus and took us out of the way. Needless to say, my aunt in Cincinnati was worried sick. Those were the days before cell phones made communicating and keeping in touch very easy. I chastised myself about that mistake for a long time, and it taught me to ask the right questions.
