Background On My Association With Pacific Trailways

Chapter 5

Huckleberry Inn & Pacific Trailways

Those days at Bend I spent as little time at home as possible. I practically raised myself garnering good from those I met as role models. In spite of this I reveled in my freedom and independence. My Dad didn’t really have a place for me, as he was working construction at Bend, I was more of an inconvenience, but I had to have somewhere to come and go from. My life revolved around work and school, and friends’ homes, I guess looking back I was an interloper with some and feel bad to have imposed on people at times.

This was ever apparent after school let out for the summer of ’75. Because I was an employee of Pacific Trailways, and later at United Airlines, I received travel passes and flight passes. I could travel nationwide or fly worldwide. The caveat though was time and money. This particular summer, I decided to take the bus up to Mt. Hood again. I called my friends Rita and Bill and asked if I could spend another summer with them sleeping on the sofa, they agreed. I took Pacific Trailways up to Wemme, and a mutual friend Irene, picked me up in her 1969 Grand Prix. When we got up to Rita’s, suddenly, I learned they did not want me to stay the summer after all. Irene took me back to her hair salon at Brightwood for the night. Again, I had nowhere to go and spent the night wondering where I would end up for the summer.

The next morning, I found Irene had been doing some footwork for me and found me a job at Government Camp at the base of Mt. Hood. The place was the Huckleberry Inn, a historical landmark restaurant, and ironically a contract bus stop for Pacific Trailways, part of the original foundation of this transportation concern. Irene drove me up there and dropped me off-- problem solved! After she drove away, I was again feeling pretty lost, surrounded by strangers, and all alone. But kids are resilient, that’s for sure, and I was a survivor. I soon settled in, and they offered me a room upstairs where I could sleep. I also could travel back and forth to Portland on my days off on Pacific Trailways. I knew all the drivers, so it was like an extension of my life at Bend, and that gave me comfort, as they all treated me like part of the Pacific Trailways family.

Photo shows Huckleberry Inn with Mt. Hood looming in the background (1975).