Scanning Around with Gene: And Leave the Driving to Us!

I’ve never hopped a freight train or even hitchhiked across America. But I have ridden on a Greyhound bus, and I can say without hesitation that bus travel has no romantic connotations for me and is an option of last resort. But since bus travel is typically the cheapest way to get from one place to another, I realize my views are elitist. Most bus travelers would likely choose another method if they could.
The image of bus travel has become so poor that we now use it as the lowest measure on the public conveyance scale. When airfares became dirt cheap after deregulation, how many times did you hear someone say something like “Air travel use to be special, but now even the bus crowd is flying.”
Click on any of these images for a larger version.


Like all bigotry, our image of bus riders as somehow undesirable is often based on a personal (if narrow) experience. If you’ve ridden on Greyhound, you’ve cringed and avoided eye contact when certain passengers board, looking at that empty seat next to you. The likelihood of an engaging, polite, and well-behaved seatmate is probably high, but we tend to focus on the few who are talking to imaginary demons and in need of a bath. Thus we pay extra to travel by air or train or car.


But that wasn’t always an option. Bus travel has generally mirrored various eras in the United States, good and bad. Busses played a significant role in the civil rights movement, and bus riders have been concerned about who sits next to them for all kinds of reasons.
The black-and-white photos in this article were all taken by Esther Bubley on a 1943 Greyhound bus trip throughout the eastern half of America. Bubley was part of the photographic effort funded by the Farm Services Administration, and these photos are in the Library of Congress collection. Here is Greyhound driver Bernard Cochran (top), and another unidentified driver from Columbus, Ohio.


America is a big place, and even though we did build a decent cross-country rail system, our transportation infrastructure has always been big-city oriented, or existed primarily for commercial, not passenger service. So bus travel quickly became the norm for anyone travelling from one small town to another, and bus companies sprang up all over the country.


Greyhound, for example, which became the largest among nationwide bus carriers, began in 1914 in Hibbing, Minnesota, with a single Hupmobile ferrying iron-ore miners back and forth between Hibbing and Alice for 15 cents. By the 1940s, Greyhound had over 4,750 stations and nearly 10,000 employees. Here, a Grehound station in Washington DC, another in Indianapolis, Indiana, and another along the highway in Indiana.



The architecture of bus terminals is another subject entirely, but Greyhound in particular built many stations during the art-deco period of design, such as this one in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Go to page 2 for many more images, and for Gene’s thoughts on everything from civil rights to canine companions.


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Gene Gable has spent a lifetime in publishing, editing and the graphic arts and is currently a technology consultant and writer. He has spoken at events around the world and has written extensively on graphic design, intellectual-property rights, and publishing production in books and for magazines such as Print, U&lc, ID, Macworld, Graphic Exchange, AGI, and The Seybold Report. Gene's interest in graphic design history and letterpress printing resulted in his popular columns "Heavy Metal Madness" and "Scanning Around with Gene" here on CreativePro.com.
  • geozinger says:

    I traveled pretty frequently on the bus as a college student, mostly for trips to and from NYC (from Ohio). About 15 years ago, I traveled from Atlanta to Cleveland via bus, just for old time’s sake. It turned out to be a lot different than I remembered from my college years… to say the least. Not that I was harmed or even accosted (I’m a pretty big guy, 6’1″ & 250 lbs.) but it was a different crowd than I remembered from my college days in the early ’80’s.

    However, if I ever wanted to write a novel, I would go on an extended bus tour and talk to the other passengers. I’m sure it would yield a couple of great stories…

  • lydia_coffman says:

    Anybody remember the Canadian man who hacked away at his seatmate on a Greyhound bus, decapitated him, and proceeded to eat him, just 2 1/2 months ago?!

    https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25966835/

  • fsheff says:

    As a nineteen-year-old traveling from a military base in Texas to my home in the Los Angeles area, I enjoyed bus travel. Trailways, if I recall correctly. Seems to me it worked out to about a dollar an hour for the trip.

    Every couple of hours along the Route, most of it 66, the driver would stop at a roadside facility and announce, “Ten minute bathroom break”. A bus full of passengers couldn’t actually do a bathroom break in ten minutes, but the time always seemed to stretch to accommodate everyone.

    On this Saturday night, he stopped in Tucumcari, New Mexico ( I love that word. Tucumcari. Marvelous. ) and said, “Fifteen minutes for supper”. Yeah, right.

    At the end of the break, everyone back on board, I had a new seatmate, on the aisle. He was a Native American whose aura was composed of equal parts metabolizing alcohol, a wet blanket coat, and sheep. In two minutes he was asleep, and toppled over to lay his head on my shoulder. I righted him a few times, but for about half an hour his relaxed state was dominant, and I grudgingly accepted the burden.

    At an unmarked spot on the highway the bus driver let off the throttle, the man woke up and staggered to the front of the bus, and by the time it was stationary, he was ready to step off into the vacant night. I guess it happened often enough they both knew their parts. I reckon I learned mine, too.

    When I got to L.A. my girlfriend hugged me and wrinkled her nose: “You been sleeping with a drunk sheep?” Not exactly, but close.

  • Anonymous says:

    They really do. I would rather drive my own car somewhere than hop in a bus. Or if going on vacation, I’d rather fly for it only takes a few hours. Bus rides are rather long and boring; it takes a lot of your time waiting to get to your final destinations on vacations and on a daily basis. You would have to get up really early to hop onto a bus just to get to work on time. Been there…done that and never again. :) Mindy

  • Anonymous says:

    One of the Greyhound buses made it to Europe and I spotted it in Southern Austria, promoting a sport good company:

  • AndreasZa says:

    One of the Greyhound buses made it to Europe and I spotted it in Southern Austria, promoting a sport goods company:
    In Austria…

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