I’m attempting to rewrite this essay from an 18 year old memory. I already wrote an essay about this trip once. I placed 10th in the Writer’s Digest yearly competition for that essay in 1998. That essay is long gone. So far, my attempts to find a copy have failed. I know for sure what two lines were. Or at least very close. The rest? No idea. I think I will make it a project this Winter to see if I can find the original version of 8 To 9 In 66 Hours. I really want to compare the two. 

Zach and I got on the bus at 4:30 A.M. It was late July and we were riding a Greyhound bus from Wichita, Kansas to Tucson, Arizona. We had just moved to Wichita for my husband’s new job. Zach hadn’t started school yet and I hadn’t found a job, so we decided to join my husband, Randy, in Tucson.

Last minute airfare was out of the question. I wanted to see Tucson, though. I had never been to Arizona. I had grown tired of the exotic nature of Wichita in about five minutes. I wanted to see something new before we settled into being Kansans.

Randy was traveling by air. He still had 19 hours before his flight was scheduled to depart. He would still arrive in Tucson 11 hours before we would.

The bus was mostly empty. When we boarded, I did not realize how rare and wonderful a mostly empty bus could be.

The few bus travelers were stretched out across the bench seats, sleeping. Zach and I both looked at these travelers like we were passing a cage at the zoo. We settled into a seat and I told Zach to talk in a whisper so that we didn’t wake anyone up. Inside though, inside I was thinking ‘What are these people doing? I’m not laying on a bench like a homeless person’.

I have no idea what I was thinking. I knew the trip would take 33 hours one way. Did I really think that we would be able to stay upright for well over a full day?

We had made the trip between Kansas City and Wichita a number of times and I was familiar with the odd, stark beauty of The Flint Hills, but in no way was prepared for what Kansas really looks like.

Kansas was fascinating with long flat expanses of land stretched out like an ocean. I had never seen anything like it. Kansas went from fascinating to painfully dull by early afternoon.

The route the Greyhound bus took from Wichita to Tucson looked like it had been designed by a 4 year old with a crayon. We zig-zagged and backtracked and the only places we stopped were McDonald’s, tiny town bus stops, and bigger city Greyhound bus stations.

People got on or off and we switched buses half a dozen times. It was after we got off the first bus that we realized the luxury of a half empty bus. Only, I am a pessimist, I saw the bus as half full.

It was late in the day, though still daylight, when we were passing through Colorado. The scenery was amazing, but Zach and I had been sitting for so long and were so bored that we missed most of Colorado because we were too busy hissing at each other. Also, there was a pinching incident. On both our parts.

I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy out loud to him until neither one of us could stand the sound of my voice.

We found ourselves on a layover in the big, mostly deserted, Albuquerque, NM bus station which seemed unfriendly and hostile. It was around 3:00 AM and we were exhausted. People looked strange and scary as I held my 8 year old son in front of me like a shield.

We sat in bolted down plastic chairs in back to back rows. Zach and I sat down just as some young girls who were speaking German sat in the chairs behind us. The back of one of the girl’s heads bounced off the back of Zach’s head. She turned around and I could see her entire mouth was lined with cold sores. She either apologized to Zach or cursed at him. I don’t know. I don’t speak German. Zach didn’t cry, but I could see he was struggling with the tears.

We got in line 30 minutes early to board our bus. We both were ready to put Albuquerque behind us.

I was tired and uncomfortable. I wore a sundress on the trip down. I carried a bag of big hard back books as a carry on. I didn’t bring anything to lay our heads on and I brought a completely inadequate amount of drinks and snacks. I could have written the perfect travel article on how to do everything wrong when traveling by bus.

A tattooed Latino man approached me and said “Excuse me, but you see like you know what you are doing. I’m not sure if I’m in the right line. Can you help me”?

The fear, tiredness, and the shear stupidity of wearing a dress crashed down on my head. “I look like I know what I’m doing? You think I look like a person who travels by bus often? Is that what you’re saying to me? I look like I belong here?

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just have never had to ride a bus before and I don’t know what I’m doing”.

I looked him up and down. “I’ll make you a deal. You stand close by because you’re a little scary looking. You be our body guard and I’ll help you with your ticket”.

He agreed to my terms. Turns out, he was on the same bus as Zach and I. We boarded a bus and found that it was blessedly empty. We each grabbed a bench and stretched out on them with feet to the windows and our heads to the aisles.

I don’t remember the Latino man’s name. I know he delivered a classic car to someone in Albuquerque and needed to get back to Truth Or Consequences, NM. As we rode in the dark, we could only hear each other’s disembodied voices. I remember struggling to stay awake, but ended up falling asleep to the sound of my 8 year old son talking to a strange man who was very kind to us, even though I yelled at him. I was sorry to see him leave when he reached his destination.

The final leg into Tucson was miserable. The bus was too full for Zach and I to sit next to each other. I spent the last hours reading High Tide In Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver sitting next to a man who sniffed and twitched without pause the entire time. I have never so badly wanted to beat someone to death with a book before.

We arrived in Tucson, exhausted and battered. The air was hotter than anything I had ever felt. Randy wasn’t able to meet us at the station and had arranged for a woman from his office to pick us up and take us to our hotel.

She looked at Zach and I, carrying our heavy bags with denim jackets draped over our arms. “You brought jackets? To Tucson? In July“?

Zach looked her up and down and with a condescending tone that made my heart swell with pride he said “We used them as pillows“.

Our week in Tucson was amazing. I fell in love with Arizona the moment I stepped out of the bus station. Gorgeous, exotic, and with different smells, Tucson seemed like another world to me. The only other time I experienced love at first sight was when I had Zachary.

8 years old when we left Wichita, Zach went from 8 to 9 over the course of our trip to Tucson. We spent his birthday at the Sonoran Desert Museum. We spent the days swimming in the pool and spent the evenings exploring the desert. We tried to not think about the trip home. We were no longer ignorant of what a 33 hour bus trip was like and it was looming.

The week ended, as they do, and we found ourselves back in the Tucson bus terminal. Randy would be home a full 24 hours before we would arrive at the bus terminal in Wichita. Zach and I boarded the bus for the return trip and scanned for empty seats next to each other. That first leg, we were able to sit together. That wouldn’t happened again until we left the Dallas bus terminal at 1:00 in the morning.

We met the Elvis people in the Dallas bus terminal.

We were sitting in a cafe that had long cafeteria type tables. A couple who had just come from Memphis and were returning home to Wichita Falls, TX sat across from us. Zach had hot chocolate, I had coffee and we talked to the Texans about their trip to Graceland.

She was a large woman, very tall and probably 50 pounds beyond ‘sturdy’. He was short and skinny and eating a chicken dinner with an efficiency that spoke of extreme hunger or the memory of growing up with a lot of brothers and sisters.

The woman dabbed at the corner of her eye. “When I saw the king’s grave. I cried”.

Zach leaned over and whispered to me “Mom, who is the king”?

“Elvis, sweetie”.

She told me that they bought the full Graceland pass and that entitled them to tour all the grounds, including Elvis’s private jet parked at Graceland. “I was too tired by the time we got to the jet, I couldn’t make it up the steps. I am so sorry I didn’t go, though. Honey…you tell her. Tell her what you saw”.

Her husband put down his fork. I was as fascinated by how tenaciously the kernels of corn were hanging from his beard as the I was by how easily he told such a fantastical lie. “Well, you know the king’s jet is called the ‘Lisa Marie’ right?

I shook my head. I did not know that.

“Well, it is. And do you know who was sitting on that jet when I got up there”?

I shook my head again.

“Lisa Marie, herself. She was sitting in the Lisa Marie”.

I don’t know if I even tried to not sound skeptical. “Lisa Marie Presley was just sitting in a parked jet at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee? Just sitting there? In a parked jet”?

“Yes! She was. I was so glad, too. I got to ask her just what she was thinking when she married Michael Jackson. She told me she was sorry she ever married that man”.

Only he didn’t use the word ‘man’, he used a slur that I’m not willing to write down.

Zach looked at me and I could see the question on his face. Are you going to call him out on that slur or am I? I just faintly shook my head. We will let this go. I’m tired.

The subject did need to be changed, though.

It seemed to me that the times printed on the schedules and the actual times of arrival were ball park at best. I asked the Elvis people if we were in central standard time in Dallas. The wife looked at me and blinked. “Why…we just have regular time here in Texas”.

So, that would be regular standard time.

I gave up trying to calculate the time. We’d get home when we got home.

After boarding the bus in Dallas, I watched a woman try to coordinate getting on the bus with her five grandchildren. The ages of these children were between under a year old to around 8 years old. Zach and I watched as she struggled. No one else was going to help her. Without a word we both got out of our seat. He started grabbing bags and helping kids to a seat and I offered to hold the baby until they got situated. We probably were on the road for nearly an hour before I handed her grandbaby back. “We’re trying to get to my daughter. She’s in Nebraska”.

Our trip suddenly seemed a lot easier to take.

We were in the final 4 hour part of the journey home when we stopped at another bus station. I don’t remember where the station was, but I do know my money had dwindled to under 10 bucks and we were hungry. Zach spied the cafeteria and started talking about all the things he wanted to eat. I gave him what I had and told him to just get me some coffee and to eat whatever he wanted.

He came back with coffee, a drink for him, and two stale donuts. I know he didn’t want a donut, but he wanted us both to have something to eat. I was tired and his kindness made my fill up with tears.

We arrived home and all I wanted to do was sleep. Randy picked us up and said he would make breakfast for us as soon as we got home. Zach told him he wanted pancakes and sausage and bacon and eggs and toast. Randy promised to make it all.

I can’t remember if I got up to eat when Randy was finished cooking. I remember laying down in bed as Zach called my mother back in Kentucky to tell her about our trip. I remember him excitedly telling my mother “Grandma, it was just like being in an airplane, except you never leave the runway”.

8 to 9 In 66 Hours, Part One.