Three pre-COVID bus stories

1. I’m on a city bus, heading downtown.

An older lady in the seat in front of me turns and gives me a once-over.

She asks if I am any relation to a priest she knows.

I tell her I am not.

“You do look a lot like him,” she says.

“Uh huh.”

She turns back in her seat.

About thirty seconds later she turns around again.

“Actually,” she says, “you’re a lot more masculine-looking than he is.”

“Oh. OK.” I don’t know what else to say, but fortunately she turns back in her seat again and that’s the last I hear from her.

2. I’m on a bus in another city.

A few seats away, another older lady is happily chatting with someone.

At one point she talks about her dog.

“He’s really smart,” she says. “He reads the paper every day.”

Then, after a moment of silence:

“Well, he doesn’t really read the paper — he just scans the headlines.”

3. I’m on a Greyhound bus on the New York State Thruway.

I’m sitting near the front. A few seats behind me a young woman is talking to someone.

And I get this odd feeling, a feeling I’m not sure I’ve ever had before — or since.

I can’t help feeling that someone is looking at me — that someone’s eyes are on me.

And I begin to get the idea that maybe the young woman’s eyes are on me, and my male vanity — such as it is — is piqued.

On the other hand, I know this is silly — she’s not talking about me at all. And there’s no reason to believe that she or anyone else is looking at me. So I go back to reading my book.

But every so often I wonder whether someone is indeed looking at me and if it’s indeed the young woman, even though she still hasn’t said a word about me. And I go back to reading my book.

We finally get to our destination. I get off the bus and go into the station.

After about a minute I hear a voice — someone’s calling out for help.

It’s the young woman’s voice.

I turn and see her. She’s tall and maybe in her thirties.

And I see that this woman, who I thought might have been looking at me, is using a cane and is about to walk right into a wall filled with lockers.

I intercept her just in time. I ask her where she needs to go, and she tells me.

I lead her to the door where someone is apparently supposed to pick her up. I ask her if she needs anything else.

“No,” she says. She’s polite, but it’s clear from her tone that I have served my purpose.

Perhaps in the future I should ride in the back of the bus.

Where have you been, hexachlorophene?

The other day, while watching the closing credits on a Perry Mason episode I had probably seen only fifty times, I noticed something quaint and endearing in the bottom left corner of the screen.

It was a collection of products made by whoever sponsored the episode when it first aired.

For the most part, they were products that are no longer available. Products like Florient air freshener and Wildroot Cream Oil. (Remember that jingle? “Get Wildroot Cream Oil, Charlie; it keeps your hair in trim.” I used to hear that all the time, even though they never said who “Charlie” was, and come to think of it, what in God’s name does it mean to “keep your hair in trim”? I guess Don Draper of “Mad Men” took these secrets to his grave.)

Another product shown still exists: Colgate toothpaste. But the toothpaste pictured was a different kind of Colgate. It contained Gardol.

Gardol. Hadn’t thought of it in years. It seemed to be Colgate’s “secret ingredient,” though how “secret” can anything be if you’re spending millions so you can blab about it on national TV?

Gardol. What the heck was it, and where did it come from? Was there a Great Gardol Mine? Did a hardy, courageous crew of miners work it every day? Did they bring a canary with them to warn them of possible danger? (“Uh oh! Tweety’s teeth are gettin’ kinda yellow — we’d best get outta here!”)

And where did all the Gardol go? Has it been secretly stockpiled by some mysterious Organization of Gardol-Exporting Countries?

I’ll have to leave these questions to better minds than mine. And once they have arrived at the answers, there’s something else I want to ask them about: Hexachlorophene.

Remember that? I sure hope you do, because I don’t want to have to try to spell it again.

It was another special ingredient. Maybe more than one toothpaste had it, but I particularly remember it as part of a product known as Stripe toothpaste.

As a brand name, “Stripe” was simplicity itself. It completely and succinctly described the product: You squeezed the tube, and out came the toothpaste — but with stripes on it!

To a generation as easily amused as mine was, this was neat stuff. No sirree, we would never think of throwing a tantrum to pressure our parents into going to the toy store to demand that somebody invent Nintendo. Who needed Atari? We had Wham-O, makers of the Frisbee and the Super Ball, whose ads ended with its logo: Wham-O, “Since 1948.” (“Yes, son, when you’re looking for the best in whoopee cushions, always go with the old, established firm.”)

As I was researching this article, I came across another old toothpaste: Ipana. And if you remember Ipana, you remember its mascot, Bucky “brusha brusha brusha” Beaver. And I also learned that Bucky’s voice was provided by that balladeer of the baby boomers, Jimmie Dodd of the Mickey Mouse Club. I found an Ipana ad on YouTube; I think they speeded up Jimmie’s voice a little, the same way Ross Bagdasarian futzed around with his own voice a few years later and gave us Alvin and the Chipmunks.

I was fond of Jimmie and the Mouseketeers, though in retrospect I’m not sure whether Jimmie hung around the clubhouse because he “liked me” or because he was fond (paternalistically, of course) of Annette.

I do remember one piece of advice Jimmie often gave us: “A wise man thinks twice before he speaks once.” An excellent philosophy. I guess it’s about time I followed it.