Riding The Bus in 1964,
In my childhood, we were free as kids to go where we wished, alone, in the cities of our youth. I’ll attach a photo of the bus in Lincoln, Nebraska, that I rode, for a dime, as a 12-year-old kid. The buses were pale green on the bottom and pale yellow on top. It was only a 15-minute ride from our bus stop in the suburbs to downtown Lincoln.
I was a morning paperboy for the Lincoln Star newspaper. I woke up at 5:30 AM seven days a week for 2.5 years. Every month, I’d go house to house to collect the subscription fees for the paper. I hated collecting. Meeting people is very uncomfortable for me.
After collecting the newspaper’s booty, I’d board the bus, alone, with my sack of money. No one bothered me. I then walked to the offices of the Lincoln Star and settled our accounts. I then took my money home on the bus, maybe with a bag of rubber bands I bought from the Lincoln Star to wrap my newspapers.
One time, my good friend Mark, who also had a morning Lincoln Star paper route, came downtown with me. We clowned around throwing the bag of rubber bands back and forth like a football. The bag hit a sign and ripped open. We scrambled to pick up the rubber bands.
A meter maid came over and confronted us. She thought we’d broken into a parking meter to steal coins. Sheesh!
We told her our story and she laughed.
Poor Mark ended up getting a low draft number seven years later. He went on the lam in South Dakota. Got caught. Two years of community service. Mark kept his draft evasion pardon from Jimmy Carter over his toilet so he could look at it as he peed.
TJM
Timmy Tae's Thoughts 