"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America
Y'no, i mentioned greyhounds before, the wonderful animals. A bus company uses them as their logo. Cleveland Greyhound Bus station has been in the same spot for some time. It is an unfriendly place, there is not the happiness and lightness of Paul Simon's lyrics. I walked into the place, the other night. The first time in over thirty-five years. I wanted a foto of the flying greyhound. I was kicked out in under thirty seconds. The place was cluttered, and not unclean.
Riding that old grey dog was not as romantic as Paul Simon sang it. From
the Great Depression, through the War, to after the highways were
completed, until perhaps the first oil crisis when Nixon was president
it was not too bad. Decay and increased dodginess came ever more
apparent. There also were passenger trains for long distance travel, but
air travel was less common. Having a car was less necessary, especially
for daily travel to work, and shop, and errands for there were
streetcars and such. Old people who never learned to drive, college
students, military servicemen, and people with little means looking for a
new town rode the buses. But at one point, something changed in
America. This company was not managed well and sold a few times,
employees were not treated well. Terminals were not maintained. Some
people that habituated the terminals were rough, crazy, and had criminal
interests eager to engage (this was true then too, but it grew).
Travellers did not like to be there, and felt discomfort and unease.
William Strudwick Arrasmith was the architect of some sixty plus of
these puppies. The first being in Louisville Kentucky (where he was
based) in 1937 (now gone for more than a generation). He applied the Streamline
Moderne style of industrial design to architecture. Cleveland's was the
first completed after WWII in early 1948 and the last in that style and
the end of Art Deco. The Louisville depot's exterior was porcelain
enameled steel in Greyhound blue, Cleveland's (then the largest) is in
limestone with aluminum.
The neon dog used to be on both sides until recently.
Collinwood High was built in the 1920s, and once was the largest high school in Ohio.
lion head ornaments, and lightning rods on finials
one of two John Marshall High's owls, now in Jefferson Park
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