Continental Trailways

Waiting for maturity to gain a foot hold.

Continental Trailways

I was completely oblivious as a child.  I could never quite understand why adults were always so jumpy around me. In my own mind, I felt I was normal, very much the same as every other kid. Sometimes things just happened while I was around. Things that made everyone a little bit nervous around me. I sometimes worried that I may have been jinxed somehow.

When I was nine, I went to stay for a few days with my grandparents on my mom’s side.  This would have been 1969 or ’70, right in there.  My grandparents lived in Ogallala, Nebraska. 

The plan was that I would spend a few days there with them, then on a certain date, my grandma would put me on a bus and I would go to my other grandparents house in Benkelman, Nebraska. Good plan, right?  Sounds perfectly normal so far...what could possibly go wrong?

On the day before my bus trip, my grandma and I went to the bus depot in Ogallala to get my ticket. While we were there, she showed me where I would be getting on the bus the next day, how to give my ticket to the driver and then how I was to sit quietly during the ride and not talk to strangers. She was a grandma that worried about things a great deal and my trip the next day was really working on her.

“Gram, I’m nine,” I’m sure I said to her, “I got this!”

The next day, we left the house about half an hour before the bus was scheduled to depart. All rehearsals had been done and I was ready. We made our way down to the depot and there was the bus, right out front. 

I assured my grandma that I knew exactly what to do so she got my bag out of the trunk, gave me a kiss and told me to give her love to my other grandma when I got there. She stayed long enough to watch me get on the bus and then drove away.

I climbed up the steps and saw that the bus driver wasn’t on the bus. I figured he was probably inside the terminal building handling important bus driver duties at this stop along his route. I wandered down the aisle, found a seat and sat down.  

The seats were huge!!! I felt like I was a tycoon on the way to my very own resort.  The arm rests went up and down, the seat backs were really high, and they reclined! How perfect was this? I was loving it. I had only ever been on a school bus. This was like riding in a high class limo when you’re regular car is an old time jalopy.  I was set.

Within minutes, the driver got on, was seated and we were moving. I’d been to Ogallala many times before, but had never seen it from this new, elevated vantage point. I remember seeing the tops of people’s heads as they walked along. When you’re nine, that kind of thing is fascinating. I couldn’t seem to pull myself away from that bus window. 

When I finally did relax a bit, I realized there weren’t many on the bus and I had the whole row of seats to myself. I stretched out, slung a leg up on the seat next to me and tossed the Mad Magazine I brought along for the ride on the seat two over, just because I could. This was my little domain, My row.  

I was all over this. What other kid in my class at school could even come close to a story like this one? None, I was sure. I reclined my seat about 27 times, just to make sure it worked properly, mind you, and settled in for a nap.

When I woke up, we were still moving. I had no concept of time in those days.  I looked out the window.  Okay, still daytime.  I began to look for landmarks along the road.  

I knew some of them that would come up as I’d been between Ogallala and Benkelman quite a few times.  It was only something like 60 or 70 miles, with some little towns along the way.

I looked some more. Cornfield, cornfield, cornfield, wheat field, cornfield, cornfield, cornfield, hog farm, cornfield, cornfield, oh look, a flat raccoon.....Remember, I was nine. 

I would have to wait for an actual town to decide where I was on my journey. I read my magazine. Alfred E. Newman had some exciting and twisted stories he was waiting to tell me.

I dozed off again. I remember waking up with my face kind of sliding into the window. Big greasy spot on the glass, some drool. The sign I saw was weird, “Welcome to Julesburg”.

 

"Hmmm, that’s odd," I thought. I knew about Julesburg.  It was the name of a town not so far away, but I didn’t ever remember passing through Julesburg in my many years of hard and fast globetrotting. I remembered other towns along the route between Ogallala and Benkelman; Grant, Imperial and a few tiny burgs with no school and no downtown area. I’d passed through all kinds of “burgs” in my travels, but never a “Jules” burg. I needed to ask somebody about this.

I poked my head up over the top of the seat back and looked around.  All I could see were the tops of a few people’s heads. Wow. Is that all you can see from a bus like this? The tops of people’s heads? 

I thought on that for a moment. How weird is it that every skeleton you see is identical to the last one you saw, but the top of the head of a living, breathing human is way different than the last one? I wished one of my pals from school was there right then so we could discuss this very strange phenomenon. I’d want it to be my buddy Jami. Jami could really appreciate the hilarious idea that the tops of these heads and a skeletons head....wait a minute, what was I just doing before all that skeleton stuff?  Oh yeah.

I poked my head up and looked again. I thought I might see a friendly face and ask somebody about this Julesburg business. My gram had warned me about, let’s see, 175 times, that I was not, under any circumstances, to talk to strangers while I was on the bus. 

I knew what a stranger was, and I knew she was real smart, but if I were to see a friendly face in the tiny crowd on that bus, well, that wouldn’t classify them as a stranger at all now would it? No indeed! 

A friendly face is the face of a person who wants to visit and share a few laughs, everybody knows that. People who want to visit aren’t strangers, they’re more like old long lost pals.

I wasn’t seeing any friendly faces. I looked again. No one was even looking up. I sort of scooched out of my seat into the aisle and tried to nonchalantly take a peek at a few of my bus mates. Up the aisle, down the aisle, back to my seat. 

Gram was right, these people were some strange looking strangers and I knew I didn’t want to visit with any of them.  I was kind of getting a pit in my stomach like something was wrong. 

I forgot what it was I wanted to talk to somebody about, so I picked up my magazine and opened to the page I’d left off. The bus became a big steel cradle around me.  I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I woke up to a slow, steady, brakes hissing stop. “Ahhh, we’re here,” I thought and grabbed my stuff and headed for the door. 

“Gram’s going to be so excited to see me!” I’m thinking as I got in line to get off. “How weird is it that one grandma was the last face I saw when I got on this bus and the other grandma’s face would be the first one I saw when I got off? 

Pretty neat. They really needed to get me into NASA or something. I’ll share that little bit of sage wisdom with her in just a minute”.

“Where’d you come from little fella?” the bus driver boomed.

Must be talking to someone else, no little fella here, I was nine you know.

“How’d you slip past me?”

I looked up at the bus driver. His eyes seemed to be locked on mine. 

“Uh-oh, there is just no way this is going to turn out good.  That bus driver guy looks serious, the kind of serious that means serious trouble is about to go down. Maybe he’s going all grown-up nuts on the guy behind me. I’ll look up at him again." 

"Crap, still staring right at me.”

The bus driver grabbed hold of the sleeve of my jacket and exited the bus with me in tow. I got to the bottom step and looked out. 

“Gram?” 

No grammy here. Just a sign that read Continental Trailways, Sterling, Colorado. 

"THAT'S what was weird about that Julesburg sign back there, Julesburg was in Colorado too!  Now HOW-IN-THE-HECK did all of these Colorado towns get over here in good ol’ Nebraska?"

When the realization hit me, I felt my knees buckle.  For just a brief second there, I tried to reason it out. 

“Why did the bus to Benkelman take me to Sterling, Colorado? There is no way I got on the wrong bus over here, my grandma put me on it and .....or did she?

"Wait a minute, there wasn’t a bus driver on there to take my ticket." 

I felt my shirt pocket. There it was, right where I put it before I left the house.  This wasn’t going to turn out well for anyone.

All of the pieces came together at once.  

"Oh, no!  He didn’t even know I was on the bus!  It was the wrong bus! The bus out in front of the depot in Ogallala wasn’t the 'go see your grammy in Benkelman’ bus. It was the 'everybody I know is probably freaking out right now because I’m in some strange place called Sterling, Colorado’ bus!'” 

I think I may have cried right there.

“Okay, let’s just move it along everybody, nothing to see here, just a boy with absolutely no sense trying to figure out the answer to a very simple puzzle. C’mon now, keep it moving. You over there, stop pointing at him, the kid is in some big trouble. Move it along I tell ya.”

The bus driver took me inside and the necessary calls were made. A few hours later, my Benkelman grandma, Frona, AND my Ogallala grandma, Margie, walked in the front door. 

They had teamed up to come and retrieve my sorry butt. This was such a totally pathetic situation. When I saw them coming, a familiar  pit developed in my stomach that can only occur when a kid like me is in some deep, deep doo-doo.  

They would probably take turns beating me right there in the bus station in some barbaric, Twilight Zone, grandma tag team match. 

My Benkelman grandma was in the lead. I took a quick glance to catch the looks on both of their faces for an indicator of what the level of hostilities was going to be. Our eyes locked. I gulped. Then I saw the light at the end of my miserable tunnel.  

Smiles were all over both of their faces. The hugs began and I couldn’t have felt more forgiven by the two of them if I had tried. We had us a little love fest right there in that dingy little bus building. 

I had landed into some big trouble that dark day. I had been trapped across state lines and was marooned many miles from my actual home.  Decisions had been made and the top advisors had been consulted; they decided to send in both grammy’s for my rescue. 

It was epic. Picture Stallone getting all those POW’s out of that hell hole in Cambodia with choppers soaring and bullets flying after many long years waiting for redemption. Epic I tell you.

Under normal circumstances, the story would end right there. We would hop in the car and head for Nebraska. I would be grilled intensely on the subject of “what did I know and when did I know it”, and life would get back to normal within days. We could soon stuff this entire embarrassing incident into a place way at the back of our memories and only allow it out on special occasions.

That could have happened, yes. But there was an added factor involved which wouldn’t allow this thing be buried so easily. That added factor was known as the Todd factor.  

The Todd factor is a law like Newton’s Law. The Todd Factor states that “outrageous events will be compounded by a multiplier of two”.  Google it. The Todd factor is well known by top behavioral psychologists world-wide. It really is a thing.  Pretty sure it just comes with the name.

This is a two act play. The curtain has been pulled on Act I and all of the stage hands are busy backstage tearing down the bus depot props....

"Uh, hold on a minute fellas, you may want to leave that stuff up for a few more minutes."

Zoom forward three or so years. The young boy involved in Act I has grown up some. He is a strapping 12 year old now and the story of his debacle in Colorado was becoming a distant memory. 

Sure, grandma’s would drag the thing out and parade it around the room once per year or so and everybody would have a good laugh. But for the most part, life had resumed to normal. The once very young Todd was now a much older, much wiser pre-teen, with all the markings of future greatness.

Act II happens fast. Pay attention here because you may miss something if you’re not on your toes. You are about to get a glimpse into the very complex mind of twelve year old Todd when he was right on the cusp of the aforementioned greatness.

My family lived in Lexington, Nebraska in the winter of 1973. We moved around a lot. I had an old friend in the town we had lived in before Lexington. That friend was Doug. We were best friends, Doug and I, when my family lived in McCook and I missed my pal something fierce. A plan to go and visit him at his home in McCook was in the works. Let’s discuss the plan.

The plan was that my parents would escort me to McCook and deliver me to my buddy’s house. I would stay with his clan for two days. At the same time, it seems my Benkelman grandparents, Leonard and Frona, had requested my presence at their home during this time as well. This was all going to take place over Christmas break. 

How would I get from McCook to Benkelman?  The question has to be bouncing around in your mind right now.  I can assure you that rocket science was NOT required for the answer.  As it happened, Continental Trailways had a depot in both of these towns, it just couldn’t have been easier.

So, the folks took me to McCook and dropped me at Doug’s place. Doug and I had a very eventful two days and finished it off with an all-nighter. We snuck out of Doug’s bedroom window around midnight. We walked the streets of McCook for hours looking for fun or trouble and found neither. 

When the sun began to come up, we knew we needed to get back, get my stuff and head to the bus depot. We snuck back in Doug’s window, made some wake up noises and sort of spilled into the kitchen where Doug’s mom had breakfast ready. 

Okay, dodged a bullet there, no bust on the sneak out maneuver. The day was starting out perfect. We finished breakfast and loaded my gear into the car. We were off. Bus station or bust.

We said our goodbye’s, me, Doug and his folks. It had been fun, but now the second part of my Christmas break was ready to begin.  It was always a great time at my grandparents house. I was excited for the whole big fun filled remainder of this perfect vacation.

I got on the bus....handed my ticket to the driver, thank you very much, and found a seat.  I adjusted the seat back ten or twenty times, old habits die hard, and prepared myself for the short ride to Benkelman.

  

The bus began to move.  I leaned back into my seat and began to replay the events from the night before.  Doug and I had said we were going to stay up all night and we got ‘er done bruh, just like old pros.  The replay was great, but all that walking around town and staying up all night, and the walking, the staying up, walk, stay, wa, st, w....s....zzzzzzzz.

Akron, Colorado was beautiful that time of year.

“Hold on a minute, what? Oh no he didn’t!”

The people in the front row of the play are poking each other and their mouths are hanging wide open.  Though our play is not one with audience participation, the comments, some downright rude, are being hurled at the stage:  

“Why didn’t they beat that boy all the way back there in Sterling?”

“If that were my boy, hmm-mmm, no sir!”

And finally, ”Feed him to the Lions!”

Yup, did it again.  Akron, Colorado this time, not far from a quaint little village they call Sterling.  There was no excuse.  

“Why didn’t the bus driver wake you up and boot you off when the bus arrived in Benkelman?” 

I don’t know, I was sleeping and was unable to inquire as such. All I knew was that I was going to need therapy, and a beating.  But to get the needed therapy, one would also need the love and caring of a benevolent family.  That last part was going to be difficult to muster; my family was only going to be registered for the beating.  

Let’s just close the curtain on Act II.  Yes, there’s an ending, but really, what would be the point?  The kid who was headed for greatness had a little hiccup, and he...

“Hey, hey, hey, that hurts...Tomatoes? Really? You in the front row, who let you in here?  You are some very sick sunza......”

It took many long years for the young lad to shake the Trailways Tale. It was humiliating, embarrassing and downright shameful what that kid had done.

The top advisors sent just one grammy this time.  The other was told to “stand down”.  The high priority rescue mission had been downgraded to “Pick-up-if-in-the-area”.

Stallone called.  He requested that none of his video highlights be used for Act II.

I gave him the Bronx cheer, “Go and pound sand, Mr. Big Shot Hollywood Rambo dude. Anybody else got a problem?”

The bombardment began.  I was unaware that even little old ladies way in the back brought produce to shows like this.

(Curtain)

Author's Note

I would appreciate any feedback on my story.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

You've certainly got the kid routine down pat. (I imagine that you have hung onto a sizable portion of the younger you--a very good thing) You mentioned that you've been accused of excessive wordiness, and I can see why some would say that. The question is, "How much is too much?" In reading this and some other of your works, I'd say most of them could stand to lose a little weight. Just a little.
"...on the bus and drove away." should be drive away.
I could easily insert myself into this story, possibly because part of me is still a kid. You and Doug sneaking out and staying up all night is exactly the kind of thing I would've done. (Me and a buddy did that once. Stole watermelons and didn't get caught.) I laughed at the bit about the elders marching out the "When Todd went to Colorado" story. My family did the same thing to me. (I thought a neighbor had melted. Blasted by a Martian's ray gun, he was.)
Like all of your work, this is grammatically clean, well-written, and entertaining.

[ToddK]

Good stuff. Yes, we both seem to have the same mindset and possibly had the same childhood. HA. I totally hear you on ways to cut some of my wordiness. I see it. I really need to go back thru and edit these stories to make them more stream-lined. Very good advice.
I'll bet the neighbor really did melt.
Thank you for looking this over, Sam.