Gun-slinging Bus Drivers

Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet represents one of the more memorable epic movies made in the modern era. I thoroughly enjoy James Cameron’s creative direction making the wistful ruminations of Gloria Stuart appear in "real time. Genius!

This afternoon I met Lydia, a Gloria Stuart of a different era. Lydia boarded my northbound route 72; her bubbly personality made me smile.

Lydia voiced amazement in bus transit improvements over the years, conjuring up the past as she recalled It while we traveled through the City.

She spoke of growing up South of Market where warehouses laden with ship-borne goods proliferated the area. Wistfully, she spoke of how she looked forward to each Thursday when her mother brought her down to the shipyards so she could eat lunch with her father.

Lydia proudly proclaimed her attachment to San Francisco. Born in the City in 1936, the year before the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge, the massive project of which her father played a part.

Lydia's parents moved to Southern California from Hawaii in 1918, lured by storied dreams of "streets paved with gold." Even though they didn’t find gold upon their arrival in L.A., their new life on the mainland seemed promising.

The irresistible lure of a more exciting life in San Francisco with its’ teeming economy, opportunities galore and all of it set in a cosmopolitan center rising in the middle of the Western frontier prompted Lydia’s parents to take another gamble. Lydia's father ventured ahead of his wife, to find a home and a job good enough to support their relocation to this new field of dreams.

In time, he did find work as well as a nice home and in the fall of 1927, Lydia's father sent for his wife by way of a Western Union telegram.

Lydia recounts how her mother told the story, time and time again of her northward journey to San Francisco aboard a Greyhound bus. Her strongest memory of the trip had nothing to do with the beautiful scenery, but rather of the six guns, one on each hip, worn by the driver. Her mother described the pistols as the "most beautiful pair of pearl-handled pistols” ever.

"What?" I exclaimed, "Pearl-handled pistols?"

"Of course. During that era, no bus driver would think of undertaking a cross country journey without being armed to protect himself and his passengers."

"What are you talking about?"

"In those days, whenever anyone traveled any distance on Greyhound, passengers were arranged Conestoga Wagon style. The early buses had a door in the back and two in the front of the bus, so the men would shield the women and children by sitting in the back and in the front of the bus with the women and children sandwiched between them."

"Why would they do that?"

"To protect them from bandits of course."

"Bandits?" I asked. "What bandits?"

Nonchalantly she replied, "During the Roaring '20's, it was not uncommon for robbers to flag a Greyhound bus in the middle of nowhere as if to board and then rob the driver and passengers when the driver stopped."

All of a sudden it hit me -- I previously never thought through the perils of early transit, not at all unlike the Wells Fargo & Co. stagecoach robbers of yore!

Continuing our journey, Lydia noted the current Trans-Bay Terminal where trains that traversed the bay bridges began or ended their journey.

Adjacent to the Trans-Bay Terminal, Servicemen could while away time in a huge penny-arcade.

"With each new deployment of troops, mother dressed up in her Sunday best and made her way to the docks to bid them all a tearful farewell. That really affected me. I guess this is why I remember this like it was yesterday.”

Turning onto Sansome St. from California, Lydia smiled. “According to my father, this is where the ‘ladies of the evening’ would gather. How my father knew, I don’t know and I didn’t dare ask.”

Each morning, a small army of horse drawn carts descended upon the ice houses located on upper Sansome for their daily ration. After receiving their allotment, the carts would leave with their frigid cargo, navigating the streets, delivering ice to businesses and households.

A Potter's Field formerly occupied the area now known as Aquatic Park. During the construction of Crissy Field, dredging caused flooding in the area, requiring an unearthing of the bodies and subsequent relocation to a mass grave in Colma. The grave markers, many of them still visible in the depths on a calm day, remained to fortify the newly designed beachfront.

Crissy Field’s name sounds like a name given to a parade ground or athletic field, but in reality, an airstrip with a small fleet of attack planes that made their home there stood ready to protect the west coast from Japanese air attacks.

“Several Japanese torpedos apparently made their way into Drake’s Bay. My father worked on the Golden Gate Bridge but also worked with the crew in charge of raising and lowering the anti-submarine barrier stretched across the entire mouth of the golden gate.”

As we passed the Presidio, she pointed out the white head stones, lined sentinel-like upon the hill, "All of those are our boys from Viet Nam."

While crossing the bridge, Lydia said her father witnessed the horrible fate of the fourteen bridge workers who died during the construction of the bridge. He happened to be pouring cement in the area near where the scaffolding supporting the workers broke loose, tossing them to their deaths into the ocean below. All bridge workers received a full-day's pay and furloughed for the remainder of the day.

Upon our approach to Alexander Drive, Lydia said, "In the late 30's, my father passed up an opportunity to purchase acreage in Sausalito. He said, 'Why in the world would I want to buy property there?'"

I asked, "I don't want to feel sick to my stomach, but do you know the cost per acre back then?"

"Five dollars," she replied.

AAARRGgghhhhh!