"Make the trip on pocket money"

Here's a sweet old magazine advertisement for a romantic winter vacation.  I just read that the Greyhound bus station in downtown Seattle closed, and the building will be demolished to make room for a fancy 43-story hotel. For over 80 years, tourists, workers, sailors, soldiers, lovers, job-seekers and assorted down-and-outers passed through that station.  There was an attempt to save it as a historic landmark, but the original building had been "renovated" so many times it lost whatever architectural interest it once had. In short, it was ugly.  The last time I was there to pick someone up was years ago, and it reminded me of a penitentiary waiting room. 

Before we had buses flying us across the sky, cross-country travel on Greyhound or Continental Lines was exciting and fairly luxurious. People smoked in their seats, relaxed, talked, read or slept and enjoyed the smooth ride.  My mother once told us about the bus trip she took from Philadelphia to Florida (alone!) on a Greyhound bus (to visit a boyfriend!) when she was about 18.  Right through the deep south in about 1940. Imagine that?  Then the exotic first sight of real, live palm trees. That thrill she must have felt stepping off the bus into a warm, humid Miami night.

So, all that's left of the downtown Greyhound terminal is the memories and pictures. Thank goodness for MOHAI.  Here's a few from their photo archive, taken in 1944: