Of Bus Rides and Moments

I must have gotten my “Let’s go!” genes from my Daddy. He was always ready to go somewhere. The first time he and Mother took me any great distance was when my brother and I were very small. Our family took a bus trip to Arkansas to visit my Mother’s sister and her husband. We traveled on a Greyhound bus.

Long distance travel by bus was a common form of transportation at the time. People also used buses to travel from one town to another. While I was growing up, a bus stopped every weekday afternoon near Daddy Leland’s grocery store. The folks getting off were coming home from their jobs in Nashville twenty miles away. I guess they got on the bus there in the mornings, too, but that must have happened while I was still eating my scrambled eggs and toast on our silver Formica® table in our kitchen.

While I was in high school, our band director sent me to Louisville to marching camp and I rode a bus to get there. While I was enrolled at Cumberland College in Lebanon, Tennessee, I sometimes rode a bus home for the weekend. The bus dropped me off at the corner by Daddy Leland’s store, just like those commuters I had seen as a child.

One time I got to ride an express Trailways bus between two large towns. Instead of stopping at every little wide spot in the road (such as the corner by Daddy Leland’s store), it traveled non-stop and had a hostess onboard, like on an airplane.

I decided to write about buses after finding this bus station photo on the Library of Congress website.

Louisville, Kentucky. A bus passenger reading the Sunday comics, which, since all the benches were full, she spread on the floor to sleep on while waiting from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. for a bus in the Greyhound bus station. She is on her way to Nebraska to enroll in a nursing school.

Isn’t it wonderful?! That is the exact Library of Congress caption. What a priceless photo of a monumental moment in one young woman’s life in September of 1943.

Esther Bubley was a photographer for the U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information. She took the photo above and each of the ones that follow. Her photos capture moments — moments when some Americans were fighting World War II in Europe and in the Pacific and the rest were juggling lives on the American homefront. Each moment was a precious one in the lives of those who lived it. Imagine yourself living that precious moment as one person in each of these photographs.

*Louisville, Kentucky. Part of a line of soldiers waiting for Fort Knox bus at the Greyhound bus station.*

*Indianapolis, Indiana. Passengers waiting for a bus at the Greyhound bus station.*

*Sixteen-year-old baggage clerk at the Memphis bus station. He goes to school in the daytime and works from four till twelve.*

*Waiting for a bus at the Memphis station.*

*Also waiting for a bus at the Memphis station.*

*Bus trip from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Washington, D.C. Saying goodbye at Knoxville bus station.*

Each moment we live today is precious, a priceless gift from our Father.

This is the day which the Lord has made;
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24

All photos are courtesy of the Library of Congress.

2 Comments

Penelope Kenney

January 28, 2019 / 7:14 am Reply

I was excited to see this post on Esther Bubley. I have seen her photos of my town, Tomball, TX, for many years displayed in our town museum. She was in Tomball in 1945 for about 3 months taking photos of everyday life. Tomball was an oil town back then. I love to look at those old photos of my town and imagine life in the 40s when my Mother was growing up there.

Thank you
Johnna

January 28, 2019 / 9:22 pm Reply

I enjoy seeing how folks were dressed back then. Everyone is so neatly put together. I recall when I was young everyone dressed very nicely to fly. What happened and when did things change? Curious.

Johnna

2 Comments

Leave a ReplyCancel Reply