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Dog gone

Greyhound downshifts on "the small towns and small people."

By TAMARA LUSH
Published June 21, 2005

	Driver Charles Huffman, center, directs passengers at the Wauchula bus stop recently. Clarence Bolin, owner of the home decorating business where the bus pulls in, says there is still a need for the stop. He posted the bad news in English and Spanish on his front door.
	Cruz Hernandez makes a call at the Fort Meade stop. Hernandez was traveling from Manor, Texas, near Austin, to stay with his father, who lives in Avon Park and is ill.

The stories started even before I boarded the bus.

"My feet swelled up," the large man in sweat pants and a faded T-shirt said as he eased onto the bench next to me. "I've got diabetes."

I nodded sympathetically. We were sitting in the Greyhound bus stop in downtown Miami. It was a small Florida cracker house surrounded by weed-filled vacant lots, a parade of homeless people and broken-down cars.

I was waiting for the next bus north, doing a story on how the company was discontinuing small-town stops in Florida.

"Yeah, I had gangrene, and that's why they had to amputate the toe," the man continued, slipping his right shoe off. He wasn't wearing socks. Sure enough, his big toe was missing.

He had just arrived from New Hampshire, a 24-hour trip. Somewhere along the way, he lost his black suitcase. There were photo albums inside, he informed me.

It was 7:30 a.m. and I had forgotten that everyone who rides a Greyhound bus has a story to tell.

***

By the time you read this, Greyhound will have stopped service to 33 towns in Florida.

They are all small towns, and you probably haven't heard of most of them: places like Cross City and Waldo, Blountstown and Youngstown.

Nearly a third of the state's bus stops are being discontinued.

The reason is money. Greyhound officials said they are "streamlining" service in several Southern states where the company seeks to "eliminate time-consuming and costly stops in areas where customer demand is low to nonexistent."

This probably doesn't mean anything to you and me. People like us probably won't be affected. Yet for the vast majority who take the bus - the carless, the jobless and those who are too afraid or too poor to fly - this is bad news.

The Greyhound has always been the savior of small-town America, the way out when a relationship goes bad or things just look good somewhere else.

****

I decided to take the bus from Miami to Bartow, hitting five discontinued stops: Bonita Springs, Arcadia, Wauchula, Fort Meade and Bartow.

I wanted to know: who takes the bus anymore?

My answer came quickly, before we even left South Florida. People without cars take the bus. And in Florida, people without cars are invisible, ghost-like people who inhabit a parallel universe of itinerant jobs, coin-operated laundromats, check-cashing stores and pay-by-the week apartments.

People like David Rosa.

He boarded the bus at the Miami Airport. He was dressed in a black hat, black shirt and black pants, like a Latino Johnny Cash. He made eye contact with me as he walked down the aisle. He was maybe 40 or 45.

He sat behind me and started speaking in halting English. I thought he was talking on a cell phone, but then I realized he was peering through the seats and asking me a question.

"Are there jobs in Tampa?" he asked.

We started speaking, in Spanish. Rosa asked me several questions about Tampa. Where is a good neighborhood to live? Are there Spanish speakers there? Where is there a good lawyer?

Rosa avoided my questions about where he was from and why he needed a lawyer. He doesn't seem crazy, I thought. Instead, he seemed very kind. He asked me if I went to church. Rosa was Catholic.

When we arrived at the bus stop in Fort Lauderdale, he offered to buy me a coffee.

****

I am no stranger to the Greyhound bus. I grew up listening to my mother's stories about her first bus trip, in 1962. She went from Oakland, Maine to Santa Rosa, Calif. She was 19 at the time, had never been out of Maine before.

It took five days and 3,000 miles.

The journey was a series of firsts for her: the first time she had been away from her family, the first time she saw the United States, the first time she met a black person.

She smoked Camels across the country and listened to the dreams of secretaries from the Midwest who were headed for fame in Los Angeles. She sent her parents postcards from Nebraska and Chicago. She saw the skyscrapers of Manhattan and bought moccasins in Wyoming.

Her stories inspired my wanderlust.

****

Becky Woodward was on my bus, headed home to Fort Myers. She had cut her vacation short in North Carolina. She had left her husband behind, but made me promise not to write about that.

She was sitting toward the back of the bus, weeping.

"I've never taken a bus before," she said, taking off her sunglasses and wiping her eyes. She pushed her long, strawberry blond hair back from her face, looking much younger than her 49 years.

The trip hadn't been good. Not only was she emotionally drained, but the rest stops in Georgia were filthy, there was no coffee anywhere and a man harassed her for money in Fort Lauderdale.

"My PMS is kicking in," she told the man. "I'll stick my boot up your a-- if you don't leave me alone."

Woodward laughed as she retold the story. Never, ever, will she take the bus again. Too long, too dirty. Hard to sleep upright in the tiny seat. Fortunately for her, she has a car at home.

"You can't expect a lot, but clean bathrooms would be nice. Coffee would be nice," she said. "They should close some of these stops down, they were so bad."

****

When I was 17, I begged my mother to let me take a bus across country to California. A friend and I bought the tickets. I think they were $100 round-trip.

It was my first real journey. We caught the bus in Lyndonville, Vermont. That was the good thing about the bus - it always rolled through your backwater of a town, ready to take you to bigger and better places.

It took five days and 3,000 miles.

The bus itself was dirty, smelly and tiring. Probably dangerous, looking back on it. But it was thrilling, in the way that new and weird things are always thrilling for teenagers. We discussed Kerouac as the cornfields whipped by the window and thought we were really, really cool.

But the best part was making friends, meeting the other wanderers. Boys with long hair who read poetry and smoked clove cigarettes. Older men with tattoos who bought us grain alcohol in states where it was legal. We were too young to be skeptical of their wisdom or disgusted by their words; everything fascinated us.

On the bus, the country seemed so big. For the first time, I realized that there were hundreds, thousands of little towns just like Lyndonville, Vermont.

The Greyhound connected them all.

We went to a county fair at night in Omaha, looked at the skyscrapers in Chicago and I fell in love with the orange sunset in Cheyenne, Wyo.

I bought moccasins there, just like my mom had.

****

"You ever smoked pot?" Thomas Martin Nebus took a long drag off his cigarette after asking me that question.

We were in Fort Myers, standing outside while the bus made a stop.

"Um," I said.

"Well, if you have, I probably trafficked that pot," he said, gleefully.

Nebus is precisely the kind of man that people are afraid to meet on the bus.

He was tall, clad in flip-flops, cutoff jean shorts and a short-sleeved shirt with little cartoon sailboats on it. His goatee was fast growing into a beard and he wore a cap and sunglasses.

He looked a little crazy. I asked him if he was wanted by the police. He said no.

Nebus said he is 53, a Vietnam vet. First took the Greyhound when he was in the Army, took it all over the country.

"Back then, all the people on the bus were Americans," he said. He lowered his voice. "Now they're all Mexicans."

He was right, kind of. Our bus was chock-full of diversity, a reflection of Florida: Haitians and Latinos and African-Americans and yes, whites. The only common denominator that I saw was poverty.

He was taking the bus from Fort Myers to St. Pete. He'd never been to St. Pete.

"Know where I can find work there?" he asked me.

****

The last time I was at a bus stop was in 1993. I was graduating from Emerson College and my mom took a bus to Boston from Vermont to attend the commencement ceremony. I picked her up at the bus station downtown, and I wondered to myself if any of my other classmates' parents were taking the bus in for the weekend. I hated myself for thinking that.

For all of her love of travel, my mom hated flying. Besides, there was nowhere to fly from: her town in Vermont was hours away from any airport. Driving a long distance alone wasn't something she was comfortable with.

In 2000, my mom overcame her fear and flew to visit me in Florida.

She had a setback a year later - like many, she was just too scared to fly after Sept. 11.

She had a mild heart attack soon after. She recovered, a little, and went back to work too soon. I urged her to take some vacation time and come to Florida to relax at my house.

"Just take a bus here," I told her.

She said she would think about it. She died two days later.

****

I am thinking of my mom as I ride the bus. To keep from crying, I do some interviews.

There are only a few people to talk to on the bus from Punta Gorda to Bartow. There's a school therapist who hates to drive. Two young black women. A Haitian man who doesn't speak English, and a young man in an oversized red shirt and big jeans named Cruz Hernandez.

The first thing he said to me was, "I'm Mexican."

Hernandez started his trip from Austin, Texas, and was traveling to see his family in Fort Meade.

"I don't know," said Hernandez, who confessed a deep fear of flying. "Are they trying to make us ride planes? I haven't done it since 9/11."

****

In Wauchula, another Mexican man in a white cowboy hat and tan ostrich-alligator cowboy boots boarded the bus. His wife was in the parking lot of the bus stop - a window and blind store - and he hollered into a walkie-talkie as the bus pulled away.

"I love you!" he called into the device. He was missing a front tooth, and it showed as he hollered. He was half-smiling and half crying as he said goodbye on the walkie-talkie; it was the first time he had been away from his wife in 11 years.

His name was Max Nunoz. He's 49 but looks 60, a retired field worker. He was going to Texas to see the rest of his family.

In these parts, he explained, everyone uses the bus to get around. Wauchula is a town of Mexican migrant workers, and most don't have cars. The bus takes them north to other picking jobs, and it takes them home to Mexico.

Without the Wauchula stop, Nunoz said, folks will be lost.

"This is the only way to go," he said. "A lot of people can't afford to fly."

****

We arrived in Bartow, the end of the line for me.

The bus stopped in a lonely parking lot on the outskirts of town, near a Mexican restaurant, a gas station and a welfare office. It was 81/2 hours since I had left Miami.

I was the only one getting off; no one was waiting to get on. Three or four riders were still aboard the bus and they were going to the Orlando area.

Driver Charles Huffman offered me his hand as I walked down the steps and out the front door. It was a gentlemanly, gallant gesture, which was made more formal by Huffman's neatly pressed gray uniform.

He opened the luggage compartment and carefully reached in for my suitcase.

He said that he has been a Greyhound bus driver for 31 years.

"When I came to the company, the dog was just a little puppy," he said, laughing.

I asked him what he thought about the route changes, how he wouldn't be stopping in Bartow or Fort Meade or Wauchula much longer.

Huffman sighed.

"Through the years, Greyhound always catered to the small towns and the small people," he said. "Now . . ."

His voice trailed away. He smiled and thanked me, then said he really had to get going, on to the next stop.

Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Tamara Lush can be reached at 727 893-8612 or at lush@sptimes.com

HOP ON THE BUS, GUS

WEB SITE: www.greyhound.com

PHONE: Toll-free 1-800-231-2222

COST: In-state fares are pretty cheap. For example, St. Petersburg to Miami costs $38, one-way, according to the Web site. Seven-day advance purchase is often cheaper. The Web site explains all the fare specials and deals.

TIME: You need a lot of it. St. Petersburg to Miami, for instance, takes about 8 hours. Driving takes about four and a half hours. A plane takes less than an hour (excluding security checks and time in the airport).

TIPS: Bring a portable music player (Johnny Cash, the Allman Brothers or anything by Simon and Garfunkel make great bus soundtracks). Bring a good book, or several good books. (To get in the traveling mood, try reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road, a classic tale of budget travel wanderlust).

Also bring water, snacks and coffee. They are in short supply in many stops. You may want to bring a pillow if you want to sleep. And, be prepared to interact with your fellow travelers; Greyhound riders are notoriously chatty.

Greyhound bus rides have inspired many great songs. Here are a few:

Roy Clark, Thank God and Greyhound

I've made a small fortune and you squandered it all

You shamed me till I feel about one inch tall

But I thought I loved you and I hoped you would change

So I gritted my teeth and didn't complain

Now you come to me with a simple goodbye

You tell me you're leaving but you won't tell me why

Now we're here at the station and you're getting on

And all I can think of is thank God and Greyhound you're gone

Allman Brothers, Ramblin' Man

Well my father was a gambler down in Georgia,

He wound up on the wrong end of a gun.

And I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus

Rollin' down highway 41.

Lord, I was born a ramblin' man,

Tryin' to make a livin' and doin' the best I can.

And when it's time for leavin',

I hope you'll understand,

That I was born a ramblin' man.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stuck in Lodi Again

Rode in on the Greyhound

I'll be walkin' out if I go

I was just passin' through

Must be seven seven months or more

Ran out of time and money

Looks like they took my friends

Oh ! Lord, I'm stuck in Lodi again

Harry Chapin, Greyhound

It's midnight at the depot

and I drag my bags in line.

Travellin' light, I got to go

But the bus won't be on time.

Everybody's looking half alive.

Later on the bus arrives.

They punch my ticket

I find a seat

And we move out past the lights.

Come on Driver, where's the heat?

It's cold out in the night.

I keep telling to myself that I don't care.

Come tomorrow, I'll be there.

Take the Greyhound.

It's a dog of a way to get around.

Take the Greyhound.

It's a dog gone easy way to get you down.

Simon and Garfunkel, America

So we bought a pack of cigarettes and mrs. wagner pies

And we walked off to look for America

Kathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in pittsburgh

Michigan seems like a dream to me now

It took me four days to hitchhike from saginaw

I've gone to look for America

Billy Joel, New York State of Mind

Some folks like to get away

Take a holiday from the neighborhood

Hop a flight to Miami Beach

Or to Hollywood

But I'm taking a Greyhound

On the Hudson River Line

I'm in a New York state of mind

[Last modified June 20, 2005, 19:43:03]