Buses Took 9 1/2 Hours, but He Got There Cheap

ON THE ROAD FROM SAN DIEGO TO LOS ANGELES — It all started out with an extended ride through San Diego County by bus, with drivers continually offering the little slips of paper that promise a ride farther down the line. The idea clicked. The curiosity wakened. What if you just kept on riding? Could you get as far as Los Angeles on the same ticket?

So it happens that I’m in a bar late one night, and there’s this character waxing eloquent on his travels in Mexico.

“Mexican buses! I got around the whole country on about $10, man! Where else could you do that?”

“Hey,” I said, remembering my experience with the bus transfers, “I bet you could get around the whole of California on one dollar.”

The deal finally came down to just trying to get to Los Angeles. And as the sober reality of the challenge sank in, I got him to agree to a $2.50 ceiling. The winner would get a beer.

Dawn. Making sandwiches in preparation for hours, days on the road maybe, trying to make it up to Los Angeles. On the less opulent highways. The suburban bus routes. Who knows how long it’s going to mean being stranded between buses, between schedules, between counties? A plane costs between $19 and $40--one way. A train maybe $20. A Greyhound $12.50.

But when you have the bargain-hunter’s bug, who minds a few freezing hours out in the streets and deserts if you can cut even a Greyhound fare by four-fifths ? Myth says you can do it on a single $1 ticket--if you’ve got plenty of the one thing money saves: time. And if you make the right use of the transfer slips each driver hands out. The transfers are good as long as you don’t backtrack and you take the first available bus going on in your direction.

7:30 and here comes bus No. 1. The Coronado Silver Strand Route. In drop four pieces of silver. And that’s just to get across the bridge. Rolling up its ramp as a Navy cruiser slices the ice-blue waters beneath, you see the horizon stretch far away up north--over the suburban roads that most never see in the age of freeways.

This is the office workers’ bus. A few sailors from the North Island base sit up back, but it’s mostly women bound for the offices of Broadway and downtown’s rock-garden of towers. The talk is of sugar vs. artificial sweeteners, Shirley’s husband who’s lost 100 pounds. Some crochet, others read about the effects of lower mortgage rates in the week’s new Coronado Journal.

The first ride ends at Broadway and 4th. Downtown. 7:50. The regulars are already at the liquor-store corner farther up the street. Whiskery men in raincoats are reading the morning papers through the milky plastic of the boxes. A grizzled old guy leans on a shiny new truck, wiping his nose with his sleeve. The buses roar. The entrances of the abandoned Walker-Scott store smell of urine.

Nearby, the Watchtower people are wandering with their latest edition emblazoning their chests, slightly outnumbered by their Spanish counterparts, La Atalaya. One of them has snared a woman waiting for a bus. The Spanish Bible pages flick from quote to quote. The thesis surges to its climax--just as bus No. 30 rolls up with a guttural roar. Saved from being saved, she climbs into the bus and back into the skin of worldly worries that fit her better at this time of a weekday.

No. 30 is the first real step of the journey. But it’s a double blow. To get to La Jolla and beyond, you’ve got to pay another quarter. Then the guy behind hasn’t got an extra quarter. He has to get to La Jolla or he’ll lose his job. Could I lend it to him? I’m not going to count that in the count.

On board, it’s a Spanish world. There’s one guy with a United Steelworkers’ union cap. But mostly it’s little girls running round their mothers’ legs. Their mothers ignore them, talking away with the vivacity many people find too much at this time of the morning. One little girl in a furry white coat goes round offering shocking pink chewing gum to all the older ladies.

“Eh! Que linda! Gracias, amiga.”

We drive up tantalizingly close to the Greyhound depot. One of the buses is pulling out. It says “L.A.” up front. At 10:30 we could be there.

But we’re not doing what Greyhound will be doing: heading straight for the concrete sweep of the freeways. We stick to the jigsaw puzzle of little awkward roads to find people where they live to help them down to the shops, to the little light factories, to their old folks’ club. You suddenly realize you’re not trying to speed anywhere.

Soon we’re into stucco rent-land. Lots of “For Rent” signs up at this time of year, especially down by the beach. The Crystal Pier Motel--”Sleep Over the Ocean!”--looks as if it wants to come ashore till the weather turns. Outside a Great American Bank a teller is unfurling the U.S. flag to haul up next to the ubiquitous bear. Schoolgirls are already out on the basketball courts.

But I’m getting worried about life after bus 30. I wobble down front. “I want to get, er, north,” I say to the driver, showing my cards far too easily. I sound like an illegal alien.

“Where ‘north’--Alaska?” the driver asks. He’s used to the types he gets at this time of day.

I take a quick look at the little list I made of town names between San Diego and Los Angeles.

Don’t want them to think I’m taking advantage of them. But I want to stretch this as far as possible. Not get off at every little crossroads.

“Del . . . Solana . . . no, uh Cardiff-by-the-Sea.”

“You’re quite sure about that, my friend?”

“Yes, yes. Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Can you give me the . . . “

I’m about to say documents for some damned reason.

“I’m sure we can arrange something ,” he says, looking me up and down. “Why don’t you get off at UCSD, cross the road, and wait for a 301. North County bus.”

“Will that cost me?”

“The advice is free. The 301 will rob you blind 25 cents. A whole quarter! More, if you don’t have one of these.”

He hands me a little piece of newsprint, little symbol with the power to move men and machines.

Across the road, a couple of men in dirty slept-in clothes, and one with a clean white beard, come walking out through the trees. One comes to the bus stop. The bus stop suddenly reminds me of an animal watering hole. Where all come warily, but with regular necessity. Unwilling participants in the social whirl where different species have to mix.

It’s 10 after 9. “There’s one due soon,” says the guy with the smudged windbreaker and the weather-cherried cheeks. His voice sounds educated. He keeps his distance. Another, with a limp, comes up. “Yeah, it’s due in the next five minutes. How far are you going?”

Now here, I can be frank.

“Oh, God, no trouble! You’ll get right up to San Clemente on passes. After that, I don’t know. It’s the border. Orange County starts there.”

We’re just getting into America’s Cup talk when the 301 comes beetling round the corner. 301’s shorter, newer, somehow a more friendly bus--it look s like a country bus. It’s another quarter, all right. That’s $1.50 gone, excluding my loan.

I do a few sums. So far we’re doing about 13 m.p.h. average, and about 4 cents a mile. The Greyhound averages about 50 m.p.h. at 10 cents a mile. It will be halfway there by now.

But the 301 is soon grunting out into the countryside in and out of the canyons. Weaving around and through the giant clusters of housing projects that look like outcrops of white rock scattered around the countryside.

We’re on the highway between Del Mar race track and the sea. A clump of people flag us down. They stumble on board, a shivering mass of miserable humanity. Three of them. Two guys and a girl. Teen-agers. Loaded with packs and sand-scattering sleeping bags and great white plastic garbage bags that look as though they have the last month’s stored laundry in them. The wind comes in after them, sharp and cold. When the door closes, their pervading atmosphere of smoke tells all. They’ve been out overnight on the beach trying to keep warm by a fire. They ask the driver where a camp is. A proper one. He suggests Cardiff.

“Sounds cool,” they say.

A guy has come on board just after them. He’s talking to any and everyone. There’s a little liquor on his breath. “Hi, Don. hear about my nightclub? Yep, I’m gonna start this nightclub, only they’re giving trouble about the liquor license, so I’m going to make it a teen-age nightclub.” He’s obviously an old customer of Don, the driver. He almost part-owns the bus. It’s his right to speak to the captive audience. Don doesn’t mind.

“Here, Don,” the man says after only a couple of minutes. “Let me off here.” He turns to us. “I’m 73 and I was a sheriff, and a damned good one, too. Drive carefully, Don.” He jumps off.

He’s kind of catalyzed the bus. Now we’re all talking. No hang-back of intentions here.

“You want to get up to L.A.?” asks one of the kids. He’s 18. From St. Louis. But already streetwise. Statewise. He’s spent time in Florida, but that was too flat, too humid. Looking for a school to go to here. Cheaper. Warmer. Better. Parents don’t seem to mind. Used to it. He’ll register sometime soon.

“You’ll get up there, no problem.” He rattles out instructions about transport systems, bus to San Clemente, changing at Carl Jr.’s, the traffic circle at Long Beach. It’s getting confusing. We’ve stopped in Cardiff. It’s not long before they’re getting out.

“You in a hurry?” he asks. “Hey, we’re camping a while here. Come with us. We got time, space. Spend a few days. Relax. Live!” The other two nod.

I thank them. It sounds like fun, but I’ve got this thing to prove. And those follow-on tickets have time limits.

Outside, an immigration officer is leading two young guys along toward a wagon. They’re handcuffed. “Illegals. Well, they get a free lunch. They won’t give us free lunches and drive us home free,” says one of the kids.

“I tried to help one of them this morning,” says the St. Louis kid. “He had no English at all. I rang through for his brother in L.A. for him. He’s driving down to pick him up. Hope he does before these fellows do.”

The immigration guy sticks his neck in the bus. He doesn’t bother to come up. The St. Louis kid waits for the officers to pass. He takes a pen and piece of paper. “You into phone calls? Here. Take this.” He’s scribbling a whole range of numbers and instructions, beginning with a 1-800 number. You have to wait for beeps, dial more, then a long code at the end. Then the number you want.

“Hey, you can take that into any phone box, and dial anywhere in the world. True! Anywhere in the world! Free!”

He’s gathering up his bags and pack. He’s got a fresh face. Happily rootless. This is the California the songs have sung about--if only it weren’t for that wind outside.

The bus stops by the beach. “Here it is,” says the driver, “hearth and home.” The young guy goes waddling down the steps, followed by his friends.

“Hey, and stop at Compton--get the Long Beach bus or the RTD. Compton Courthouse. Climb up the top of it. You get a view of everything! But steer clear of Long Beach. It’s got pushers and guys who’ll knife you quicker than you can spit. Hey, don’t have a Tylenol, do you? That smoke. Splitting headache.”

By 10 a.m. we’re in Leucadia. Don the driver has set down one of his old customers at the Leucadian Club, a place that’s already crowded with cars. “Must be having a party,” says Don. “No, it’s just . . . well, it’s just quite a place,” says the other man. “Keeps me alive. Come on over!”

It’s kind of hard not to follow him. But already, as we take off, Tom McCaffrey’s telling us about the short stories he writes, about the sea bass and grouper you can catch at the San Clemente Pier and Dana Point.

A young lady climbs aboard and presents driver Don with a cup of coffee. “How’s my favorite guy?” Don sets it down for the next red light.

She’s followed at the next stop by somebody about her age, but clearly not together. Her clothes are filthy. She has a blanket trailing the ground.

“I want to get to Sizzlers,” she says.

Don looks at her.

“Other way. Bus on the other side.”

“Oh. Oh. Sorry. I’m new around here.”

She shambles back out onto the grass rise.

“Boy, Don, you sure draw,” says the coffee lady. “It’s your pizazz. Your wife at home know what you have to put up with every day?”

“She’ll get Eddie’s bus,” says Don. “Live and let live.”

It’s an hour’s wait at Oceanside, where Don dropped us at 10:20. The 305 will take us to the border. The end of San Diego County and the beginning of Orange. At this speed, the idea means something. “Us” is a black guy about 35, with a black patch over his right eye, and a middle-aged Caucasian with blue eyes that have seen the world. We’re all circling the same stop, waiting for 305 to turn up. I’ve noticed them all the way from La Jolla.

11:15 a.m. 305 turns up. Another North County country bus. As we get set to take off, I calculate. It’s been nigh on four hours. We’ve done about 40 miles. I’ve spent $1.50, excluding the loan. We’re down to 10 m.p.h., at about 4 cents a mile. The Greyhound will have been 45 minutes in Los Angeles already.

A Greyhound with “Los Angeles” labeled up front is sitting there waiting, tempting with the finger of the devil. Lots of Marines are getting aboard. They’re looking happy. It’s their payday. They can afford such luxuries. I force my eyes away. Jump up and down to get blood into the increasingly compressed seating area, and make doggedly for the little 305 branch line.

And then, catastrophe. The driver of 305 is charging us 65 cents. 65 cents! Highway robbery! “No hold it, hold it,” he says, “this will take you through to Orange County, through to the other side . Plus I’m trying to coordinate with the Orange County buses--I’ve put in a suggestion about it--and I think we’ll be able to link up with one that goes on up San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano way. And this ticket will be good for that. Nothing more to pay.” Four hours, 40 miles-- $2.15! Still twice that distance to go and only 35 cents left.

The guy who drives the 305 is a talker. Understandable when you see the country he’s taking us through. We’re checked through the gates to Camp Pendleton, and up and over what must be every nook and cranny the Marine Corps has ever trained on. This is Marine-land with a difference.

“I’ve been to ‘The Price Is Right’ once,” says a young wife, to the driver, taking off time from work to go up to visit her Marine husband. Shows are the subject. “Didn’t win anything. I couldn’t think! The lights and all the people. . . . my mind went blank!”

We’re passing weapons training. There are tanks, field guns, training, engineers’ headquarters. This must be the ideal bus trip for a spy new on the job.

Inside the bus, it’s all diapers and bottles. Two moms are aboard, strollers and babies filling up the front well of the bus. They’re both combing their babies’ hair. The smells of powder and home fill the bus. We drive past whole squares of Marines standing at batteries of telephones, calling mom. Choppers batter overhead.

It’s midday, and we’re still winding through settlement after settlement of Marine battalions, combat engineer battalions, and incongruous outdoor cinema screens with rigid rows of aluminum seats in the middle of grass and trees. Mostly it’s just the wilds. It feels like miles from California.

Then, suddenly we’re back in cultivated countryside, in a valley descending to the sea, among field workers, bent and picking vegetables in long orderly rows. And then we’re out. Into the villas, the neon signs and Carl’s Jr.

We turn onto El Camino Real. We’ve crossed the line. We’re in Orange County.

“I’m trying to get to coordinate with you,” says our driver to the driver of an Orange County bus parked ahead. “What time do you leave?”

“12:11, theoretically.”

“Well, I’ll try and make that, so we can kind of integrate a bit,” says our driver. “OK, just show him your tickets, and you’re good for San Clemente, where you want to go.”

We’re witnessing history here. The meeting of the railheads. This is real border territory. We climb in the next bus. OCTD, says the sign. It’s new territory. The three of us hard-core travelers are still together. But we don’t know one another too well yet.

I start calculating again. It’s 12:10. I would be almost back in San Diego if I’d gone Greyhound. Say five hours, halfway . . . about 60 miles. Wow! We’re up to 12 m.p.h. Great. 12 m.p.h., $2.15. Even with the 65 cents, value’s going up: 3 1/2 cents a mile.

Orange County’s bus 91 takes us half an hour along cute El Camino Real into San Clemente proper. At K mart plaza, there sits Orange County Bus No. 1, and a decision: continue on with 91 up toward San Juan Capistrano and Anaheim, or go coastal in No. 1?

“Well,” says 91’s driver, “stay with me, and you can get the 460 Express from Anaheim. It costs a little more, but it’ll get you there a helluva lot sooner. . . . “

No contest. Sorry, bud. Time is not of the essence, this time. We carry our things forward and climb aboard the No. 1 coastal route bus. Janice is driving. She’s a trainee. She’s being watched over by a veteran of seven years on the route. He’s middle-aged, thin, twitchy. A friend to his friends, tyrant to his enemies, which includes smokers.

“Don’t get aboard with that thing. Put it out. Throw it on the ground! And don’t blow the smoke into the bus! Blow it away. Outside!”

An abashed girl comes reeling on, shooting one last lungful around the front window.

“Next thing you’ll start the smoke alarms going off,” he says, half to Janice.

Then he goes straight back into good-natured conversation with Janice. A never-ending chat-and-instruction babble that somehow gets the rest of the bus going. We’re passing El Moro beach. The Rock. “The rock to see,” he says, “is Ayer’s Rock. Australia. Hot at the bottom, cold at the top. Fantastic! Did a trip, wife and I, 22,000 miles, 18 airplanes, 21 days.

“I wish they wouldn’t allow them to put ads in bus stops with pictures of people in them,” says Janice, “I keep thinking they’re real. I keep stopping till I see they’re just pictures.”

The guy with the blue headband and the short-shaved hair opposite tells us he’s got a problem. Someone hit him with a pipe, and he fell and hit his head on concrete. Brain damage to the degree that he has difficulty putting thoughts into words. The doctors say it’s a matter of time before the brain’s neurons find other ways to reconnect.

“I’ve had a life, man,” he says. “Here! Right here. They were ripping up the road. Didn’t put lights in. Collided with a little old lady. I was passenger. Little lady died. I sued. Got $100,000. Gave $40,000 to my lawyer, $10,000 to the hospital and bought my mom a Cadillac-- and one for me too. ‘Cept I totaled that. Sue, man. The only way.”

A little middle-age lady is listening, fascinated. Especially when he moves on into his career as an artist with a company that turned out to be importing Afghanistan hashish oil in typewriter covers, among other things. When they were raided and put away, he was out of a job.

“But how do you tell if people are taking drugs, or selling drugs on the streets?” she asks, grabbing her chance to meet a real authority. “I think it’s perfectly dreadful.”

“Well, there’s so much on the market these days, the only thing you can tell from the eyes is acid. Only way I can tell how good a place is is to go down on the street and see what’s selling. You’ll tell pretty quick, if you’re in a ‘good’ neighborhood.”

The conversation is becoming generational.

“Well, I think it’s perfectly dreadful. My brother was a colonel in the Air Force, you know, and if he even suspected one of his men touched drugs, that man was out! No chance of even protesting. He had men’s lives in his hand, you see. . . . “

“Just stay out of Long Beach. I keep telling my girlfriend. Laguna. Much cooler.”

The little lady looks worried. She turns to the rest of the bus.

“I think it’s dreadful. All they have to do is get to bed early. Go to bed early and exercise a lot. That’s what young people need. . . . “

“Uh oh,” says the instructor.

There’s a guy waving in through the window.

“Don’t let him on, Janice, don’t let him on. He’s crazy. He just rides up and down all day long. You can’t get him off.”

He waves out the other window. There’s a bus going by.

“That’s Keith. You’re doing great, Janice. Just remember, we drivers are like doctors. All the people with their problems they bring to you. Just say, ‘Take a bus and call me in the morning.’ ”

We’re about to get off bus No. 1 here at the Veterans Hospital just out of Long Beach. Within sight of the Queen Mary. The instructor driver has told us serious travelers to get off there, instead of downtown Long Beach. That way we can get a bus to bridge us into Los Angeles territory.

“Get a Long Beach Transit No. 91,” says the driver. “For 10 cents they’ll transfer you down to Long Beach Boulevard. The L.A. people, RTS, won’t take our transfers, but they do take Long Beach Transit transfers! You’ve got to know the rubs.”

This is about 3 p.m. Sure enough, for 10 cents the Long Beach 91 takes us down to Long Beach Boulevard. It’s beginning to feel like L.A. One of us three hard-core guys, blue-eyed Bud Worthington, shows the way to the RTD No. 60 bus. This is goodby. He’s not going to downtown L.A. It’s not until the No. 60 is almost almost coming that I think to ask Bud what he’s been doing traveling like this all the way from La Jolla.

“I’m a vet. Used to be an air traffic controller (in the Air Force). Dhahran (Saudi Arabia), Saigon, the lot. I have a heart problem. I’m 48 and I look 69. I can’t drive under my drugs. They’ve closed the VA heart unit at Long Beach. I’ve got to go down to the VA at La Jolla regularly. And I can’t afford 25 bucks on a Greyhound the number of times I have to go down. There’s a lot like us. Believe me, I’ve met people gone all the way from San Francisco down to San Diego because that’s all they can afford. Costs them $6, $8--and 48 hours of hard traveling.”

We feel like old buddies when I jump aboard No. 60. For the last hour and a half the ride is excruciating, bumping and circling round what feels like the entire periphery of Los Angeles. Suffering extreme foot crunch and bus buttocks.

But at 5:06 precisely, one minute ahead of No. 60’s schedule, I am dropped off at the corner of 7th and Maple. Downtown L.A. In the freezing evening air, I dive into a bar.

This trip has taken 9 1/2 hours. An average of just over 12 m.p.h. I could have made four complete trips on a Greyhound. San Diego, this morning, both seem light-years away.

But, on the other hand, I have spent precisely $2.25 making the trip. The entire second half of the trip up has cost 10 cents. There’s something gratifying about it. Or maybe not.

It’s the people. You feel as though you traveled. Met people. Dared. Adventured. Arrived. Filled the miles with so much more than you would sunk in a seat for 2 1/2 hours surrounded by blank people with earphones, sealed off from the world behind the smoked glass and air conditioning of the Greyhound. Or worse, the utter aloneness of the freeway in a car.

Within five minutes I have spent an entire San Diego-Los Angeles bus fare in the bar. In my second beer, I fall into conversation with an Irishman. He’s a millionaire slum landlord here in L.A. He shows me a deal he has just made, selling off a block of slum apartments for $350,000. It cost him $35,000 12 years ago.

“But I tell you what,” he says. “I always catch the RTD. My age, it only costs $4 a month. Can you imagine the money I save.”

It’s too much. Suddenly I don’t want to hear one word more about money value, buses. I get up to go.

“Where’re ye going?”

“Home. On a Greyhound.”