Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990 TAG: 9003032921
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In Des Moines, Iowa, arriving passengers said they were shot at three times as their bus left Chicago. There were no injuries. A small area on the windshield was broken and covered with tape.
"When the window cracked, everybody thought they were throwing rocks and then they hit it again, and they shot again," said passenger Terry Fisher. "They chased the bus and threw cans and garbage cans at us. I didn't think we were going to make it to tell the truth."
In Raleigh, N.C., Carmen Bartee said she's been all over the state in her quest to get to Wilmington from Texas.
"Greensboro, Winston-Salem, where else did we go today? We've done a little bit of everywhere. I don't know how I got here. If you ask me, I think they should go back to work and let people go home," she said.
Rob Wilkins, 22, of London, said the strike had disrupted his plans to tour America by bus. He was trying to get from Minneapolis to Memphis, Tenn.
"I'm not going to see Elvis," he lamented. "I come to bloody America and they're on strike."
Sam Byler, an Amish farmer from Fort Plain 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y., took a Seneca Coach Line bus to Syracuse, hoping to board a Greyhound to reach a wedding in Pennsylvania.
"We didn't know about the strike, because we don't have radios and TVs like you people," Byler said. "If we had known, we probably would have stayed home."
Some passengers complained they did not know a strike was looming and criticized Greyhound for selling tickets when it was likely they wouldn't be able to complete their trips.
"They haven't even apologized," said Lisa Olkon, who was stuck in Atlanta while trying to get home to St. Paul, Minn., from Florida. "I called about an hour before I went to get on the bus" and was told nothing.
"I had heard of a possible strike, but I had no idea they were going to dump us," said Jennifer White, waiting in Indianapolis to return to Cleveland from a business trip in St. Louis.
"Because I'm afraid to fly, I chose Greyhound to leave the driving to them," she said, laughing.
After spending the night on a hard floor in the Indianapolis bus station, Frank Rzepski of Philadelphia had little sympathy for the drivers.
"It's getting to the point where we're ready to go out there and fire one of the buses up, run over the strikers and say, `See ya,' " he said.
"I sympathize with them [passengers], but sometimes it comes to this," said Dwight Moody, an 11-year driver from Charlotte, N.C. "We're not asking for an arm and a leg, just a little something. A couple of cents a mile."
Moody said despite Greyhound's ads that say first-year drivers can earn about $24,000 a year, he only earned about $16,000 in 1989.
"I got a W-2 [tax form] to prove it."
Robert Eldridge of New York City said his trip home from San Diego came to a dead halt in Washington, D.C.
"It was 2:30 in the morning and Greyhound said we would have to finish on Amtrak. It's about nine blocks from the bus office to the train, but it's the middle of the night and the people at Greyhound said that a cab's $3," Eldridge said.
He said cab drivers were soliciting riders at the Greyhound counters. When he and two fellow passengers arrived at the station, they were charged $16.
by CNB