Dr. D.B. “Doc” Rushing
© Copyright, 2009, 2022, Duncan Bryant Rushing
Contents
Introduction
Dedication
Author and Webmaster
The Name of This Website
The Reason for This Website
Under Construction
Styles and Preferences
Clicking and Reading
Very Special Articles
Contact Me — Please!
Legal Stuff
Introduction
Welcome to Bluehounds and Redhounds, your one-stop source for the history of Greyhound, Trailways (eventually), their companies, their coaches, and the coach builders, with special attention to the period of 1926-60, plus a few other more-or-less related topics and factoids.
Dedication
This entire website I lovingly and respectfully dedicate to the memory of Pop, my father, Ernest Bryant (E.B.) Rushing, the 37-year veteran (1940-77) old-style Greyhound coach operator, one of the old-time smooth operators, based in Nashville, Tennessee, starting at the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, who introduced me to the motor-coach industry – and on whose gravestone now rests the image of a Greyhound coach [an MCI M-9 (which he never drove) because, unfortunately, that’s the only model that was available through the monument shop].
Author and Webmaster
The author and webmaster is Doc Rushing, known also as D.B. Rushing, Dr. D.B. Rushing, or sometimes Duncan Bryant Rushing. [Only my oldest friends and closest relatives call me by my first name; others know me as Doc, D.B., or Moose.]
Longer than I can remember, I’ve felt thrilled, enthralled, enchanted, fascinated, and captivated by machines – mostly self-propelled machines – especially trucks, buses, trains, ships (especially submarines), and aircraft – most especially motor coaches and the intercity-coach industry – all against the pervading background of my enormous interest in words and communication. [Words is the central notion among the five items in the title of my autobiography (Wheels, Water, Words, Wings, and Engines).]
That early fascination with machines has never waned or wavered.
Even now, as a senior or elderly member of society (at age 83 in 2023), I still remain deeply engaged with all those objects of my attention.
More particularly, I have a serious, intense, and abiding involvement with the history of both Greyhound and Trailways – mostly Greyhound, of course – that is, the various regional operating companies which once made up the Greyhound and Trailways systems or networks.
After I die, and after a few other similarly inclined people die, then who will recall many of the nuggets or scraps of knowledge about many of the early events in the motor-coach industry? [One might wonder whether anyone then will care.]
Here’s my opportunity to share some of what I’ve learned throughout my life.
The Name of This Website
About 1948, while I was 8 years old, one of my neighborhood companions – playmates – “the girl across the street” – Lillian Symes Currie, a darling little blonde 2-year-old girl, contributed one important word to my vocabulary and led me to a second one. I was already a dedicated bus nut, even at the age of 8. Lillian had heard me to say much about Greyhound – over and over. One day, while Lili rode with her parents in their car, she happened to see a red bus – a Trailways bus – and she called it a Redhound. Ever since that time I’ve often referred to Greyhound and Trailways coaches – and to the companies – as Bluehounds and Redhounds.
What better name is there for this website?
The Reason for This Website
In 2007 I began writing my autobiography, which, naturally and predictably, contains a major chapter entitled “Growing Up at Greyhound.” [The title of the book, descriptively and significantly, is Wheels, Water, Words, Wings, and Engines.]
While writing that chapter I included so much historical material that I found it wise to move most of the historical matter into a separate chapter – not an autobiographic chapter but a chapter in my autobiography nonetheless – a chapter which I called “Bluehounds and Redhounds.” [Later I gave the same name to this website.]
By that time I had begun to feel much concern about the extremely low current availability of the research sources about this entire subject area. Several books and many magazine articles have appeared, mostly from the enthusiast sector, starting in 1954 or so. Most of those publications long ago went out of print. Most of the relatively recent periodicals are still available as back issues, but the surviving copies of the other items are buried in archival depositories and personal collections. It’s difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to obtain photocopies of those old materials.
That is, it had become hard for a newcomer to obtain accurate detailed information about, for example, the Pacific Greyhound Lines, the New England Greyhound Lines, The Greyhound Corporation, the Burlington Trailways, the American Buslines [sic], or the National Trailways Bus System. [Fortunately, I’ve been a member of the Motor Bus Society (MBS) since 1977, and I’ve kept my copies of the Motor Coach Age, the magazine of the MBS, along with many other references.]
After a while I began to ponder about what I might be able to do to provide a new way for others to learn about those old companies, their coaches, and their services and other activities.
Then I started writing articles and posting them on the website of the Wikipedia (a free online encyclopedia) – about a number of the Greyhound companies – plus a friendly and coöperative neighbor carrier (the Tennessee Coach Company). Eventually I posted 10 articles on 10 of those firms.
For a while everything remained OK. That is, nobody tampered with those articles – except for a few good-intentioned but ill-founded “improvements,” which I promptly repaired.
One of the basic principles of the Wikipedia is that any “user” may “edit” any article posted there. The intent is to seek excellence through continuing improvement through additional contributions by other well-qualified people with not only the requisite knowledge of the subject matter but also the requisite skills in writing, editing, revising, and rewriting.
That theoretical goal is a commendable ideal.
Sometimes things truly work that way – but not nearly always.
Unfortunately, the everyday reality is that, generally speaking, any posted article is subject to vandalism and to repeated and continued tampering, meddling, diddling, fiddling, and unsharpening – most often in attempts to remold the article into the shape in which the other person would have expressed it – that is, to cause the article to look as though the self-appointed “editor” had written it – to make the article say how the “editor” would have expressed it.
Regrettably, often those revising “users” do not have good skills in writing or editing – or wisdom or good or mature judgment. Often they do not have an effective understanding of the principles involved in grammar, composition, communication, and instruction. [Their work and their comments on the talk pages (spattered sometimes with bad spelling, poor punctuation, and faulty grammar) often reveal and demonstrate their lack or shortage of qualifications.]
Those other “users” often and typically get into ridiculous contests with one another, using absurd logic and screwball arguments, while seeking to impose their own personal preferences on the work of others, insisting, in effect, “I want your work to look the way it would look if I had written it.” [Some of them also forcefully promote their own social or philosophical ideas while trying to exclude the different views or preferences of others.]
{The official policy of the Wikipedia specifically forbids remolding an article merely to suit the personal preferences of a revising editor. On at least two occasions (and likely even more), the Arbitration Committee of the Wikipedia has said:
“When either of two styles [is] acceptable[,] it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change. …. Revert warring over optional styles is unacceptable; … it would be wrong to switch simply to change styles ….”
“Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.”}
Many of those “editors” appear to be college students or of college age or nearly so, several have disclosed that they are high-schoolers, and a few appear to have dropped out of college or high school.
A number of them seem (or have admitted) to have written no or few articles of their own; instead they devote their time and efforts to dictating to others how their work should read.
Some of that latter group appear to compete with one another – to accumulate huge numbers of “contributions,” merely by “revising” or “polishing” the work of others.
Those are the self-appointed and self-assured (and usually overconfident) hall monitors who presume to tell others what to do or how to do it. Mostly they’re long on zeal but short on knowledge, long on noise but short on experience, and long on arguments but short on qualifications. [One of them made many changes to one of my early articles, imposing one of his personal preferences on my work – but using a form which clearly and undeniably violates a specific point in the Wikipedia style manual (for what it requires or allows), whereas my article had previously complied with the manual.]
Of the several who severely criticized my products, not even one of them ever showed even slight interest in the subject matter (or an understanding of it), yet they decided what should remain in my work, and how it should look. [One young woman insisted on discarding my comments about the pronunciation of the name Fageol (“fad-jull,” rhyming with “fragile” or “satchel”), along with the uppercase T in The Greyhound Corporation (because the word the was an integral part of the official name). She insisted that the pronunciation of the name Fageol is allowable only in an article about the Fageol brothers, the Fageol companies, or the Fageol coaches, not in any of my articles, and she insisted that the capital T in The is what she called an “unneeded trivial detail.” That same young woman, while tinkering with my article about the Dixie Greyhound Lines, in describing the brother of Fred Smith the elder, changed from “two years younger than he” to “two years his junior,” thereby violating the principle of the Wikipedia to “defer to the style used by the first major contributor.” The latter expression is acceptable, but I find it to be too prissy or cutesy-poo, so I intentionally used the former words. She likewise unilaterally deleted my comment (from the article about the Dixie Greyhound Lines) about the enormously noteworthy facts that James Frederick “Fred” Smith, the founder of the Smith Motor Coach Lines (based in Memphis), which in 1931 became the Dixie Greyhound Lines, was the father of Frederick Wallace “Fred” Smith, who in 1971 founded Federal Express (FedEx), also based in Memphis since 1974 – and that a part of the cash from Greyhound (in the Smith family trust fund) served as a part of the seed money for the formation, early operation, or sustenance of Federal Express.]
The people in control of the Wikipedia refer to such as “improvement.”
It’s OK for anyone to be short on communication skills (or short on wisdom, judgment, experience, or common sense), but it’s not OK for an unqualified person to mess up anyone else’s work, and it’s not OK for any person (especially a young one) to behave – much as a schoolyard bully – in a rude, mean, snarky, sarcastic, impudent, insolent, haughty, arrogant, abrasive, defiant, dictatorial, presumptuous, high-handed, condescending, insulting, offensive, obnoxious, disrespectful, or confrontational manner – toward an elderly contributor who has not only the advantage of applicable qualifications and experience but also a rich practical real-world background (or toward anyone else). Sadly, at various times, starting when I made my first contributions to the Wikipedia, several of the other “users” or “editors” – some more than others – conducted themselves toward me exactly as I described in every one of those harsh words above. [One of them – one who clearly does not understand the concept of topic sentences or the proper use of them in the organization of paragraphs in English composition – at length jerked my chain in some of the rudest and most insulting behavior which I’ve ever seen anywhere – including a gratuitous verbal personal attack on me unrelated to the subject matter or the questions under discussion.]
Alas, such behavior results in part from the dumbing down of our educational system and from the breakdown of our traditional standards for social and business behavior and etiquette.
[Little people find it easy to act big, bad, and brave while hiding in the anonymity behind screen names (rather than using their real names).]
So I made the decision to remove myself from that unpleasant environment (at Wikipedia) – and to create this website – so that I can maintain the high quality of this material – without interference from unqualified and ill-mannered amateurs.
Under Construction
Bluehounds and Redhounds is still under construction, and it will remain so for some time, while I continue to add more.
So far I’ve written 19 articles – 14 on 15 of the regional Greyhound operating companies, one entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2,” one on the Tennessee Coach Company (a friendly and coöperative carrier until it joined the National Trailways association), one on the Scenicruiser, one on “Division versus Subsidiary,” and one from my autobiography). [A single article covers both the Ohio GL and the Valley GL.]
The first 14 of my articles about the Greyhound companies are (in the order in which I wrote them) the Southeastern Greyhound Lines (GL), Dixie GL, Teche GL, Florida GL, Atlantic GL, Capitol GL, Great Lakes GL, Central GL, New England GL, Richmond GL, Pennsylvania GL, Ohio GL, Valley GL, Illinois GL, and Northland GL. [Again, a single article covers both the Ohio GL and the Valley GL.]
Further, I finished and included a special article on the unique and beloved (but sometimes despised and frustrating) Scenicruiser (the GM PD-4501).
As time allows, I’ll continue composing more articles and adding more pages to this website. Next I’ll write about the Overland GL, Southwestern GL, Pacific GL, Northwest GL, Pickwick-Greyhound Lines (with a hyphen), and The Greyhound Corporation (the parent umbrella firm). At some point I’ll include information about the regrettable and disturbing saga of Greyhound and the Mount Hood Stages.
Before long I’ll start writing also about the National Trailways Bus System (the Trailways trade association under its original name), Continental Trailways, Continental Tennessee Lines, Continental Crescent Lines, Continental Southern Lines, Modern Trailways, Tamiami Trailways, Carolina Trailways, Burlington Trailways, Santa Fe Trailways, American Buslines, and maybe a few other member companies in the Trailways association (now named as the Trailways Transportation System).
One special piece will describe some of the differences between Greyhound and Trailways.
Another article will concern the Nashville Transit Company and the Southern Coach Lines, the city-bus carriers in my hometown. [Some readers will feel interested in (and maybe surprised about) the “coincidences” and connections involving the Southern Coach Lines, Brownlee Currey Sr., the Equitable Securities Corporation, the Beneficial Finance Company, M.E. Moore, the Continental Trailways, Fred Currey, and the present (second) Greyhound Lines, Inc., the present (second) GLI.]
Other articles will describe the products and the builders of several makes of the coaches – Fageol, White, Will, Mack, ACF, ACF-Brill, Twin, Yellow Coach, GM Coach, Flxible, Eagle, and MCI.
Sometime I’ll start to include graphics – especially images of route maps and photographs of the coaches. [I feel a strong need to include those graphics. They’ll come in due time. I can’t do all of it at the same time.]
One special document consists of a chapter, entitled “Growing Up at Greyhound,” from my autobiography, entitled Wheels, Water, Words, Wings, and Engines, which I started writing in 2004. That chapter is not well suited to every reader. For the most part it appeals only to hard-core bus nuts and other gearheads. Those who enjoy and appreciate such material, I invite you to share my memories of a rich and fascinating time in my life. [It’s long – the equivalent of 74 letter-size pages of single-spaced 11-point typescript.] If you wish to endure it, please click here.
By the way, I feel pleased to say that I’ve done all my own work while building the original version of this website, rather than hiring an outside expert to do it for me. During the process of creating that first version, I learned three more computer languages (CSS, HTML, and XHTML). I personally wrote every single line of the source code. However, while rebuilding my website, I’ve used WordPress.org. I’ve greatly enjoyed the intellectual stimulation each time. [This site is not fancy or flashy, but it’s attractive, and it does its job.]
Unfortunately, someone or something hacked the previous version of this website and compromised and contaminated it badly – so badly that, even with the help of the good people at both my hosting service and my online-security service, we did not succeed in finding everything which the hacker left behind in my files.
Therefore I completely removed all the old files, and then I completely rebuilt this website, using WordPress.org (not WordPress.com, the less capable system).
Styles and Preferences
As you likely have already noticed, my style of writing is conversational, much as the one which I would use while expressing myself if you and I were sitting in my study and chatting together about Greyhound or Trailways – much as I used while leading a classroom discussion during my time as a professor of business, and much as I used while presenting a sermon or a Bible lesson during my time as a part-time pulpit minister (in part while teaching at church-related colleges and at other times).
Because of my conversational style I tend to use many parenthetical insertions, which in type I often punctuate with commas, parentheses, brackets, braces, or dashes.
Because of that conversational approach I also tend to use a slightly Faulknerian style – that is, a style sometimes called “stream of consciousness.” That technique worked extremely well for William Faulkner, and it works well for me too.
That conversational emphasis does not make my work even slightly less dignified, academic, or professional than if I used a more formal formula; indeed, it makes it not only less stuffy but also more tolerable and understandable.
As a retired professor (and otherwise as a long-time speaker, teacher, and preacher) and as a retired writer and editor, I use many instructional techniques, which include repetition, restatement, reinforcement, emphasis, parallelism, contrast, and comparison, in not only my speaking but also my writing.
What matters is not how often I use italics, dashes, or parentheses, but rather whether I use them in a way which helps my words and ideas to flow smoothly, logically, and comprehensibly, without stopping one thought and one sentence and then restarting the same thought with a new sentence.
Unfortunately, a couple of my bitter detractors at the Wikipedia thoroughly lambasted me for my writing in such a conversational way.
Well, that’s OK. They’re free to write however they want to in their own work.
Although my style is conversational, I nonetheless carefully choose my words and the ways in which I put them together. For example, I use the active voice almost exclusively, using the passive voice only when I do not find a good or effective way to avoid doing so. That makes my writing stronger and more direct. [One of my outspoken critics seemed to have difficulty in recognizing what is or is not the passive voice.] I often use a form of the verb to become rather than an inflected form of the verb to be plus a past participle (or an even less correct, accurate, or dignified construction). Most other people do not speak or write exactly as I do, but that does not bother me even one little bit. [I’ve never felt reluctant to be an individual (or even a maverick), and I’ve never felt a need to become stuck in the well-worn ruts of others before me. For example, in the previous sentence I intentionally and purposely wrote “become stuck” rather than “be stuck” or “get stuck.”]
Many years ago I began to feel displeased about our standard North American practice in regard to quotation marks appearing with commas and periods, and I began to feel a preference for the standard British practice instead. [Most in the US place a closing quote mark outside a comma or period, whereas the Brits place a closing quote mark inside a comma or period.] The British style seems to be more logical and defensible.
While Marda and I lived and worked in Newcastle, England, in 2003, while serving as volunteers aboard the Mercy Ships, I gladly used the British usage on that point. [The Wikipedia style manual requires the British style for that on its website, and I heartily concur.]
Nonetheless, while back in the US, I again conform to the US style about quote marks and end punctuation.
My vocabulary, which, of course, appears throughout this site, includes a rich and curious mixture of terms from a variety of areas, including maritime affairs, aviation, railroading, and the bus business, along with a few Briticisms (after my living and working in England for a while).
In most stylistic matters I rely mainly on the Chicago Manual of Style and the Grammar Desk Reference of The Writer’s Digest. On points about usage I often refer and concede to Bryan Garner (the dean of writers and editors in the US) and his magnificent Garner’s Modern English Usage. I also pay attention to the late Theodore Bernstein, a long-time assistant managing editor of The New York Times (and a long-time adjunct professor in the School of Journalism at Columbia University), in several of his books, including Watch Your Language, The Careful Writer, and Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins. For spelling, hyphenation, and definitions I depend on the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which is the undisputed standard dictionary throughout journalism and publishing in the USA.
Clicking and Reading
Please click on any one or more of the internal links in the navigation bar at the top of your screen, and please read and enjoy.
Very Special Articles
Please check also my very special cornerstone articles at this website:
“Northland Greyhound Lines” (NGL): It tells not only the history of the NGL but also the origin and the early years of the overall Greyhound Lines, starting in 1914 in Hibbing, Minnesota. [The people and the events involved in the early part of the story of the NGL are the same people and events involved also in the origin and the early development of the larger Greyhound empire (including its many divisions and subsidiaries).]
“Greyhound Lines after WW2”: It describes:
the major mergers and consolidations (1948-75);
the changes in leadership at the top;
the move from Chicago to Phoenix (in 1971);
the sales of the Greyhound Lines, Inc. (GLI, in 1987, 1999, 2007, and 2021);
the purchase (in 1987) of the Trailways, Inc. (TWI, previously known as the Continental Trailways) and the merger of the TWI into the GLI;
the sad and regrettable deterioration in the level of service of the formerly great and formerly respected (but now utterly disgraced and discredited) Greyhound Lines;
and the latest development of Greyhound under the ownership of FlixMobility (a German firm) and under the oversight of Flix North America (with a recent Turkish immigrant as the chief executive).
“The Scenicruiser”: It covers the background, conception, evolution, development, design, creation, production, rebuilding, repowering, and operation of the GM PD-4501, the famous, beloved, unmatched, and iconic Scenicruiser (an exclusive coach built for Greyhound alone, which served in the fleet from 1954 until about 1975).
“Growing Up at Greyhound”: It tells about my growing up at Greyhound — as the title says — while my father worked as a longtime (37-year) coach operator for the Greyhound Lines, starting in 1940.
Contact Me – Please!
If you’re willing, please sign my guestbook; if you wish, please also leave a comment. [Only one guestbook exists for this entire website.]
If you prefer, please feel free also to contact me privately by sending e-mail to “DocRushing [at] bluehoundsandredhounds [dot] info” – or at “DocRushing [at] hotmail [dot] com.” [I purposely typed my e-mail addresses in that unusual way in an attempt to defeat the web-crawling spam-serving harvester spiders.]
If you wish, please feel free also to contact me via snail mail at 2211 Hollowridge Drive, Orange City, Florida, 32763, USA.
If anyone sees a mistake in the facts or my interpretation, or if anyone sees a typo or an error in my grammar, spelling, or composition, please tell me about it; I’ll sincerely appreciate your help. [But please don’t try to bug me about mere personal preferences in self-expression.]
If any of you has any difficulty in understanding any of my descriptions or explanations, please say so, and then I’ll try hard to improve my presentation.
Legal Stuff
Yes, I’ve obtained real copyright protection for this entire website and for each of the individual articles, and I reserve all the rights. [Since I posted the first 10 articles at the Wikipedia, I’ve revised each of them enough that I’ve lawfully copyrighted the later versions.]
However, I invite anyone to use any of this material in any way – provided that it remains unchanged, unaltered, unedited, or unmodified – for any personal, educational, or other not-for-profit purpose; in that event I ask only for an appropriate credit, citation, or attribution.
On the other hand, if anyone ever seeks to make a profit by using any of the products of my work, please contact me – because I may want a cut.
Is that fair enough?
:::
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Posted at 19:44 EDT, Sunday, 12 June 2022.
Revised most recently at 17:02, EST, Saturday, 17 February 2024.