Chapter 9: Approaching Pittsburgh


 

We crossed bridges, four of them, with an island in the middle, then Harrisburg was behind halfway between Philly and Pittsburg, signs along the highway counting down the miles until I had to change buses for Chicago. Twilight came. Blue mountains rose around us, and blue grass.

The man in the seat in front of me noticed my stare.

“If you think it looks good now, you should see it in daylight,” he said.

By daylight I would be in or on my way to Chicago and I wondered if I should get off the bus. The signs said 200 miles to Pittsburgh with a number of smaller less significant towns in between: Green Spring, Breezewood, Bedford, Somerset, Mt. Pleasant.

The hostess stayed silent now; the wheels hummed.

Would the bus stop before Pittsburg? What would I do if I got off?

But the bus never stopped. The restroom at the rear of the bus provided whatever passengers needed between where we were and where we were going.

No one thought to supply an escape hatch.

Until I bought the ticket in New York, I had never heard of Continental Trailways, and yet now I was trapped inside of one, filled with elbows and knees sticking out into the aisle and the rustle of newspapers and paper bags, shifting suitcases, and the snoring of weary passengers for whom Pittsburg was just one more rest stop on the way to someplace else, chattering about this or that without real concern as the  bus rushed towards Pittsburgh with the unrelenting urgency to meet it schedule.

A child in the back hopped up and down on the seat, giggling constantly, while other, more disciplined children sat morbidly in their own seats staring back in envy, clearly wishing to do the same thing.

The squeal of the hostess’ microphone drew everybody’s attention to the front of the bus, where she stood in her red and gold uniform. Her name was Wanda and had spoken at intervals during trip from Philadelphia. Like the driver, she would get off in Pittsburgh and serve the same role going back.

 "Most of you are going to Los Angeles or points west of Saint Louis," she said. "You will be traveling by what is called the southern route. This is fortunate. You will not encounter the kind of inclement weather that the northern route suffers this time of year. Weather forecasters claim you will not even likely encounter rain."

 She also talked about the highways and how we would wander on and off what had once been called "Route 66" but had over the years become bits and pieces of other highways.

 "Many of the sights will still be there," she said. "The person who takes my place for those parts of the trip will try to point them out."

Some of the businessmen mumbled somewhat obscene things about Wanda under their breath.

"The road does that to them," Mrs. Warton later told me, she one of the regular riders on the bus line, who had spent the greater part of the last few years going from place to place to place, sort of an extended vacation.

 She was a big-breasted woman whose age could have been anywhere between 40 and 60. She laughed easily and talked loudly and seemed an odd contradiction to her much shyer husband who wiggled his fingers at me when she introduced him. She had done her hair up in a beehive, a fashion that ceased being popular the same year the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, but which seemed to take time to filter down to women in middle America. It continually bumped into the baggage rack above her whenever she stood up, drawing out of her a string of curses more suited to a construction crew than a Christian lady.

 "That's the only bad thing about these buses," she said. "But Greyhound is worse."

Mrs. Warton wore a light patterned dress of white and red flowers. Bill wore a grey summer suit. Both sweated profusely as if still in Florida. He patted his forehead with a handkerchief. She powered her face as often.

At internals she nudged Bill who frequently nodded off and started to snore.

When they pressed me for my name, I told them my last name was “Calli” something I had invented by accident while on AWOL in New York. I had mistakenly started to sign an anti-war petition.

 "Calli?" Mrs. Warton said, her puzzled expression saying she did not understand what nationality to which I was laying claim.

 "It's short for Calovitch," I said quickly. "That's Russian. My family changed the name when they came over."

 She looked over my face as if even this didn't solve the mystery, slowly shaking her head.

 "No, you have no features that are Russian," she said. "Does he, Bill?"

  "That was on my father's side," I said. "He was only half Russian himself. His mother was Irish."

 "I can see that," Mrs. Warton said. "You have Irish eyes. Doesn't he, Bill."

 Mr. Warton agreed.

 "But the rest of you isn't Irish or Russian," Mrs. Warton went on. "What nationality was your mother's family?"

 "Italian and German" I said, not lying about this part of it, which succeeded in a knowledgeable nod from Mrs. Warton.

 "I knew it!" she said, clearly having scored a point. "It's all in the face. Can you see it, Bill.”?

 "It's in the face," Bill again agreed.

 "So where are you from?" Mrs. Warton asked, making me extremely uncomfortable, not because I believed her to be a spy for my family, but that her questions could draw unnecessary attention to me, when I simply wanted to remain invisible.

 "New York City," I said, wishing I had made up some better lie, but could think of none at the spur of the moment.

 "Really?" Mrs. Warton said. "We rode with someone from New York City on our last trip, to Canada. What was the name of that nice couple, Bill? You know, the people we rode with to Canada."

 Bill after some prying managed to come up with a name, which Mrs. Warton immediately confronted me with and was extremely disappointed when I did not know them.

 "I suppose it is too much of a coincidence to expect everyone to know everybody," she grumbled, then asked me what had me out on the road now.

 I told her I was just out of the army and wanted to explore the country a little.

 "By bus?" Bill asked, his Col. Sander's face taking up a puzzled expression. "I would think a boy your age would own a car."

 "That's a New Jersey thing," I said. "In Manhattan, it's too big a pain to park to own a car. But I'll be getting one when I get to where I'm going."

 "And just where are you going?" Mrs. Warton pressed, as if now suspicious about me because I had not known the couple from their Canadian trip.

  "I was thinking of going to Denver," I said, before I could stop myself and tell them another lie. I could have invented any place west of Chicago, only I couldn't think of any at that moment.

 "Denver? Are you out of your mind? It's cold in Denver, and do you know how much snow they get there this time of year? Tell him how much snow Denver gets, Bill."

 Bill said Denver got snow.

 "I couldn't stand to go to a place with that much snow," Mrs. Warton went on. "Even when we took our little trip to Canada last year, we made sure that we did it in July, so that there wouldn't be any snow. Isn't that right, Bill?"

 "We went to Canada in July," Bill said.

 "And that's why we moved to Florida and live there year around when we're not traveling. If there's snow there, we never hear of it, and if the temperature drops below 70 degrees, people there consider it a national disaster. Isn't that right, Bill?"

 Again, came the automatic response.

 "We're from Fort Lauderdale," Mrs. Warton went on. "We're going to visit my sister in Los Angeles."

 "Santa Monica," Bill corrected.

 "Santa Monica, Los Angeles, it's all the same place," Mrs. Warton continued, "and though this isn't technically one of our usual vacations, we decided to take the bus, see the scenery. Bill hates to fly anyway, says the seats are always too crowded together or too expensive, and he complains about having jet lag even after the shortest of trips. Better to go there the old-fashioned way, the way the pioneers did, slow and steady, seeing something along the way. So that's what we're doing."

 "This bus started in Fort Lauderdale?" I asked, wondering earlier why Philadelphia had just seemed a stopover for the bus, rather than its point of origin, the way New York City would have been.

 "Hell, no," Bill grumbled. "Miami was, and we had to take two buses to get there, so we could get on this bus west."

 "Bill just hates all that connection stuff," Mrs. Warton said. "He doesn't mind the long trips, but the short ones get him, climbing in and out of buses, making sure all the baggage has been changed over from one bus to the next. It can be as bad as flying in that respect. He wanted to drive across country, but I told him no. Bad enough he nearly gets us killed driving around Fort Lauderdale, just think what he might do with 3,000 extra miles."

 Bill grumbled and turned his attention towards the window and the passing hills. It was remarkable lush landscape considering the season, with grass that looked so blue, it might have been Kentucky.

I nodded off and woke with a start when Wanda announced we had arrived in Pittsburgh.

 

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