The Greyhound Bus & America
Museum, Books & Archive
I read that Philadelphia is closing its Greyhound Bus station switching from terminals to curbside pick-up.1 I spent a lot of time on Greyhound buses especially the Chicago to Milwaukee and Chicago to Madison, WI runs. I read The Man Without Qualities on my Greyhound Bus trips.2
This got me thinking about the role of Greyhound stations and the history of Greyhound as an American tradition among the poor.3 Turns out there is a lot of literature and music where the Greyhound Bus is a central theme. There is even a museum and some archives for Greyhound.
Greyhound Bus Museum
Greyhound began in Hibbing, Minnesota where there is a Greyhound Bus museum. It includes 18 historical buses and a 1914 Hupmobile; AV exhibits; hundreds of artifacts and memorabilia; VCR presentation;18 vintage buses, diorama of a 1916 bus being built; outside exhibits of 1940 Art Deco Terminal & 1921 Flag Stop Station; 2 buses before & after restoration.4
Books about Greyhound Buses
Traveling With Greyhound: On the Road for 100 Years.5
Greyhound Scenicruiser : Flagship of the Fleet. 6
Going the Greyhound Way : The Romance of the Road. 7
Greyhound Buses : 1914 through 2000 Photo Archive. 8
Lake Success. By Gary Shteyngart. Random House.9
Archives about Greyhound Buses
Greyhound Bus Lines collection | University of Minnesota Archival Collections Guides (umn.edu)
The Hagley Museum and Library furthers the study of business and technology in America. The collections include individuals' papers and companies' records ranging from eighteenth-century merchants to modern telecommunications and illustrate the impact of the business system on society. Search in the digital archive for Greyhound photos.
Frautschi Dylan and John Dockendorf. 2004. Greyhound in Postcards : Buses Depots and Post Houses ; from the Collection of John Dockendorf. Hudson Wis: Iconografix.
A Documentary, “Ridin’ the Dog.”
Ridin' the Dog (1989) : A documentary that chronicles the stories, opinions and emotions of riders on the interstate bus system during a recent cross country trip from Seattle to Chicago.
Midnight Cowboy starts and ends on a bus.
The final scene with Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman always makes me cry. You can see it below.
Brey, Jared (July 17, 2023). Cities Seek Solutions as Bus Terminals Close, Pushing Riders to the Curb (governing.com)
Duttlinger, Carolin, 'Threshold States: Robert Musil', in Attention and Distraction in Modern German Literature, Thought, and Culture (Oxford, 2022).
Wellington, Darryl. 2010. Traveling with the Dog: Greyhound and American Journeys. Dissent 57(1):64–67; Kim, Esther C. “Nonsocial Transient Behavior: Social Disengagement on the Greyhound Bus.” Symbolic interaction 35.3 (2012): 267–283.
Greyhound Bus Museum; Explore Minnesota. Greyhound Bus Museum.
Gabrick Robert. 2014. Traveling with Greyhound : On the Road for 100 Years. Hudson Wisconsin: Enthusiast Books.
McNally Tom and Fred Rayman. 2013. Greyhound Scenicruiser : Flagship of the Fleet. Hudson Wisconsin USA: Iconografix.
Gabrick Robert. 2009. Going the Greyhound Way : The Romance of the Road. Hudson Wisconsin: Iconografix.
Luke William A. 2000. Greyhound Buses : 1914 through 2000 Photo Archive. Hudson Wis: Iconografix.
Shteyngart Gary. 2018. Lake Success : A Novel First ed. New York: Random House. Hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his three-year-old son’s diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart.
To add a little extra history to your post, the Greyhound station downtown here in Corpus Christi closed around 2016 to share a newer station with other lines:
https://www.101corpuschristi.com/blog3
The old station has been repurposed to become a mostly outdoor bar with plenty of room for vendors and bands. It's not bad. It's name? BUS aka Bar Under the Sun:
https://barunderthesun.com
I cannot imagine the number of 20th-century works of American fiction that utilize the Greyhound bus as a principal plot device. Robert Stone's A HALL OF MIRRORS and Charles Portis's NORWOOD, just off the top of my head. Pelagic America.
First paragraph of HALL OF MIRRORS: "The day before, Rheinhardt had bought a pint of whiskey in Opelika and saved it all afternoon while the bus coursed down through the red clay and pine hills to the Gulf. Then, after sundown, he had opened the bottle and shared it with the boy who sold bibles, the blond gangling country boy in the next seat. Most of the night, as the black cypress shot by outside, Rheinhardt had listened to the boy talk about money -- commissions and good territories and profits -- the boy had gone on for hours with an awed and innocent greed. Rheinhardt had sat silently, passing the bottle and listening."