Riding Around on a Bus!

Here we are with our oldest brother. Yikes! Notice the cars!

As I look at these photos, memories come flooding in. When we were very little; we used to ride the Dayton Public Transportation Buses by ourselves. Yes, that's what I said; "by ourselves". These were the huge yellow buses that traveled all over Dayton.  I don't remember our exact age, but, I do know that it was in the early 1960"s. Donna used to talk me into anything. She still does! You can't see me, but I am pointing my finger at her. As it happened, the bus stop was right in front of our house. Children rode for free, so we would wait until a crowd formed and got on the bus. I have no memory as to whether or not anyone questioned our being on board. We would then get off at the shopping center along with everyone else.  I remember looking in the shops, that's all.  We were too little to have any money. Then we would ride the bus back home. You've got to understand that we were probably four or five years old at the time. We did this regularly. One time while we were waiting at the bus stop to come home, we saw our Mother go by in a taxi. I screamed and Donna grabbed me and we "hid" behind the big red and blue mailbox, which caused us to miss the bus. As you can guess, I, being "the girl", started crying. I just knew we were never going to see Mom and Dad again! Boo! Hoo! Donna,on the other hand, told me she could get us home. She said we could walk home; all we had to do was to follow the railroad tracks. Boy, was I gullible! Can you believe that we followed the railroad tracks?  I know if I were reading this, I wouldn't believe it either. Well, we made it home. Many years later, after we had both grown up, we finally told our parents. We both assumed that Mom and Dad knew about it. I don't know what made us think that. Apparently they did not know. I thought we were going to get a spanking right then and there. I hadn't heard Mom use words like that in a long, long time. Looking back, I can't believe we did things like that. I know times were different, but... Yes, there were others. We had no fear at all...well at least Donna didn't. What is truly amazing is that we couldn't even tell time, and yet we knew when to come home. Donna was definitely the "ring leader".