Hooray for yesteryear!

Ninety-four years old, and ready to go back to work! This from today’s San Francisco Chronicle is a story of an old “iron monster” that has been sidetracked for 50 years, but is now all spiffied up and ready to return to the streets of San Francisco. It’s good to see people getting their money’s worth from their investment instead of junking anything that’s no longer the latest and greatest. Whenever I’m on Market Street, I can’t help but feel good when I see the parade of old streetcars filled with happy passengers go by. I doubt if the airlines, who are parking literally hundreds of their older less-efficient airplanes, will ever bring them back for old times’ sake.

In the early 1960s when I was attending the Navy’s electronics school in San Francisco, I went home for a Christmas break. It cost about $10 to take a Greyhound bus at the time. There was a heavy demand due to the season, and Greyhound rolled out bus number 560, a true antique (at the time, the buses were numbered in the 7,000s). It probably was manufactured in the late 1930s and had corrugated aluminum sides and a rounded front end and a tapered, rocket-like back end. The seats were what really intrigued me, though. They were made of a cushion to sit on, and a curvy back frame, probably of wood, maybe of metal, with a sheet of heavy velvet-covered rubber upholstery, kind of like a luxurious hammock. You could see the impression of the sitter’s back. Odd looking, but super comfortable. The engine purred as if it were just tuned up, and I had a memorable ride. Greyhound was smart to preserve that old buggy for those many years.