Summer Fun for Three Sisters Part 1
Every summer, after school let out, our Mother took us on an eight week bus ride from San José California to Lawrence, Massachusetts and Toledo,Ohio then back home to San José. We rode the Greyhound buses mostly but sometimes we had to switch over to a bus called Trailways.
My two sisters got out of school first then I got out a week later.
As soon as we were on summer vacation our Mother would ask us to pick out five nice outfits a pair of pajamas, five sets of underwear and five pair of socks with "no holes"!
Ha ha that was really for me because one time she took me to the shoe store to buy a new pair of shoes and when the salesperson asked me to take off my shoes to try on the new ones I was wearing a sock that was half gone in the toe area! Mother about had a cow when she saw that!
Mother said we could pick out the clothes but she had to inspect them for stains. loose or missing buttons or tears so she could repair them. Our little suitcases were lightly packed because during our trip we would accumulate more clothes and shoes to bring back to California.
We each had our own backpacks, with name tags, filled with one set of clean clothes, games, cards,books and a small thin blanket. If there was anymore room left we could fill it with anything we wanted as long as we toted the bag. Mother had her medium size suitcase with her five sets of clothes and other essentials also packed. She had a medium size backpack filled with her extra clothes, a small first aide kit and nonperishable foods for us to eat on the first few days of the trip such as washed fruit and vegetables and the old standby peanut butter and crackers.
Along the bus line the bus driver picked the place we got to stop and eat. Some places were nice but a lot were not the cleanest according to Mother. In those places Mother would allow us to buy from the vending machines anything that was pre-packaged, even what she called junk food. She was not too keen on us drinking soda pops so she would say we could have two cartons of milk each. We liked that especially if it was chocolate. We three really liked this part of the trip because we rarely got to eat junk food because our Father would have frowned about that even junk cereal. We wore dark pants flowered or plaid shirts and a light red jacket on the bus so we would stay reasonably clean and red jackets so mother could find us easily in case we roamed off in those busy bus stations.
We had so much fun meeting all kinds of different people from all different backgrounds and ethnic groups, races and religions. Mother allowed us to talk to anyone because that was how she was raised by her parents. If Father were with us we would have been made to sit up straight and keep quiet as that is how he was raised in a very strict home. When we got a little too loud Mother would just give us "The Look" and that meant to pipe down or we would be given the talk.
Once the other bus company, Trailways, went on strike and all those people tried to push ahead and steal out seats on our Greyhound bus. We were in the terminal and Mother was worried about us losing our seats and suitcases on the bus. we had stopped for lunch and a little washing up. She told us to go outside so we could get on the bus real quick but when we went out the door there must have been one hundred people trying to negotiate a place on our bus. she told my two oldest sisters to wiggle and squeeze through people to get to the driver and tell him in worried tones that mother was way in back with their little sister with our four tickets and that our suitcases were on the bus. They were brave big sisters and pointed at Mother who had picked me up and the driver made the crowd move and let the Mother through so she could be with her children. Mother showed him our four tickets and we were allowed to enter the bus and reclaim our former seats.
©Julia A Knaake