I won’t lie: I love the Greyhound bus. Or at least, I used to. I’m 45 now, and I hear it’s changed a little, doesn’t go to so many small towns anymore, everybody’s just on their headphones, and so on.
But many of the travel articles I’ve written for the Memphis Flyer were inspired by my lifelong relationship with the Great Grey Dog, that most treacherous of the travel gods. Here’s a piece I did that was basically clearing out the notebook of some of them.
Dog Treats
Recovered memories from the journal of a Greyhound trip back east.
Russ’s Market in Dickson, Tennessee: The trip is now a few hours old, with a C-minus Greyhound start. We were an hour late leaving Memphis, the bus is horribly crowded, and among its passengers are three people on crutches, two others who stretch across the aisle because of their size, and four or five kids who won’t stop moving or screaming. Anything else would have been disappointing.
Knoxville: There was a woman upset about something, raising all kinds of hell, and this guy identified himself as a police officer and told her, “I will help you, lady, but you need to shut your mouth.” She shouted, “I will not shut my mouth.” And by golly, she didn’t.