Via Greyhound

I began my journey from Ohio to Tucson, Arizona by getting a bus ticket at the Greyhound Bus Station in Dayton, Ohio. My dad dropped me off at the bus station and I got out of his 1939 Plymouth Coupe, hoping he would give me some money. He opened his money sack, got out a roll of bills, and peeled off two $20.00 dollar bills and handed them to me.

I inquired about getting a bus ticket to Tucson, Arizona and was told it would take 3 days and 4 nights to get there and a one-way ticket took most of the $40.00. I was able to buy something to eat before we pulled out and started for Indianapolis. Along the way we started and stopped at all the little stops for a rest and food plus use the toilet. I would buy a cheap hot dog with diced onions and mustard and wolf it down. My stash of cash dwindled until I was broke – then I worried how I would make it to Tucson on an empty stomach.


I had to lay over for several hours at the bus station in Chicago and when I got back on the bus for Tucson, Arizona, a lady got on and sat down on the seat beside me. She turned out to be a schoolteacher from Massachusetts who worked at Hotel Desert Air Parkway in Palm Springs, California. She told me that she made more money working as a waitress than she did teaching all winter in Massachusetts. We would both go into these restaurant stops and she would buy something to eat. I didn't have any money so I only drank water. She asked and I told her I was broke and she began buying my meals. When we got to Tucson, we sat together and she asked if I liked shrimp and I told her I didn't know what a shrimp was. She got me an order of shrimp and fries. I was so hungry I ate all the shrimp and fries and drank several cups of hot coffee and smoked several cigarettes. When the bus pulled out, and she waved goodbye, she told me if I ever got to Palm Springs, California that I should stop and look her up.

I slept on a park bench at the University of Arizona that first night and the following morning went back to the bus station used my locker key to get my stuff out – got cleaned up in the bus station bathroom. With fresh clothes and clean shaven, I walked back downtown and into an employment office and they sent me to Levy's of Tucson to interview for a job. The man who interviewed me hired me to work with him in trimming the store's windows. It was a never-ending job with each window featuring something a department wanted to sell. I learned a lot from that job – mostly how to make any size dress fit any mannequin.

I was “working” my way across the United States using my “thumb” that showed all passing motorists I was willing to take a chance and ride with them if they picked me up. Nobody tried to molest or rob me– I think those who stopped and picked me up just wanted to talk. They always asked who I was and where I was from and where did I think I was going to go. I told each one a similar story that I sold pots and pans and encyclopedias from Tucson, Arizona all the way to Dallas, Texas where I decided to stay a while and rest up.

I got a cheap hotel room and laid down and woke up the following day about as refreshed as you could be after wearing the same clothes for several days in a row. I looked out the hotel window and saw a store across the street that sold typewriters. I was keeping a kind of journal or diary (because I loved to write even back then) so I thought I should get myself a typewriter and I did. It was my very first purchase “on-time” (meaning I would pay it off in monthly payments). I sat in my room and began typing one tale after another and in the end I drug it back home to Ohio when I ran out of money and luck. I wonder what I ever did with all those stories?


Story © By Abraham Lincoln