Background On My Association With Pacific Trailways

Chapter 8

That summer (1976) I enjoyed the Bicentennial Celebration of the United States at Drake Park with the rest of the community. I soon found another place to live nearby, my first apartment on Irving. Much better living arrangement than where I was-- and furnished too.

I also found another way to drain my finances-- a car. Out on north highway 97 there was a used car lot next to where Izzies is now. They had a 1959 Pontiac Catalina 4-door out there with a ‘99 Dollars’ placard on the windshield. Being a kid who wanted wheels, I asked him if it ran, the salesman said yes. I got an advance on my pay at Pacific Trailways at which my boss Frank Aden said, ‘don’t buy a car, you’ll never have any money again.’ Boy was he right!

The good thing though was, I was able to get around, the bad thing was, the car used a quart of oil every fill up and I never had any money again! LOL!

However, as if that was not enough, I found another car, found it in the Bend Bulletin. A 1960 Buick Electra 2 door for $35.00. I thought, ‘I should at least check it out’. Turns out it belonged to a 15-year-old. It was discovered in the backyard of a neighbor which told the boy, ‘if you can get it running you can have it’. So he did, and parked it at his mother’s house. He told me all it needed was fluid and he had to put the spare on it. The mother took one look at the intruder and said, ‘get rid of that thing'! So the kid ran the ad. I decided to buy it and fell in love with the styling and tail fins. I took it back to my new apartment and cleaned it up and polished it.

The caveat was I now had two cars! After a couple weeks, I drove it over to Trailways just 3-blocks away to show it to my friend Earl. This was at about 9 P.M. (between the nightly Trailways buses). I drove in from the rear up the entry ramp toward the drive-thru garage. As soon as the car hit the upward slope the front right wheel fell off with a clunk. I was frantic as the bus was due any minute! I ran in and got Earl who came out and said, ‘you have to move that car, the bus is going to hit you!’ Uh yea, LOL! This was a blind corner and poorly lit. What happened was when the kid changed the front tire, he didn’t reattach the lug nuts tightly, eventually they worked loose and the wheel fell off. We frantically got it jacked up, but couldn’t get the lug nuts on, as a couple studs had sheared off. Finally though, we got the wheel attached using about 3 of the good studs. Just as we threw the jack in the trunk I heard the mighty roar of a MCI diesel bus down the block. I jumped in the car, fired up the 401, tromped the accelerator and the beast leaped out of the path of the 50,000 pound bus! No one was ever the wiser, not the bus driver, or Trailways-- thank goodness!