Photograph by Lee Russell
Greyhound’s Streamline Moderne buses weren’t any fleeter, but the curves and racing stripes suggested they might be part rocket ship; they rolled into matching terminals with curvilinear walls, porthole windows, and in-terminal cafés. The New Madrid halfway station, smack dab between St. Louis and Memphis, had a coffee counter, though traveling salesmen and farmers still stuck near the steps, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and drinking coffee from Thermoses. Here, it’s early spring: László Bíró has just patented the ballpoint pen, Superman’s debuted in Action Comics No. 1, and the Aviazione Legionaria, under Franco’s orders, has showered Alicante with bombs. Just as the first steamship on the Mississippi was thought to portend the New Madrid earthquake of 1811, a fashionable new bus depot—one issuing cheap tickets—could augur disaster for a little town. The river didn’t run backwards; houses didn’t fall; green lightning didn’t flash out of fissures in the earth. But young men and women donned Army uniforms or sweater suits and packed their pasteboard suitcases. They stood on the chrome bus stairs, waving goodbye, echoing the words of those superstitious farmers who watched the river change its course and cried, If we do not get away from here, the ground is going to eat us alive.
