10/3 and 10/4/25. Shows scampers across the state along route 20 to Owasco Lake. Mission: meet up with the Back Home Boys. This crew is celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the infamous bus trip across the country in the spring of 1975.
A group of fellas, Bill Reich, Pete Gade, Steve Springer, Pete Empie, Bob Boynton, Craig Hynes and Paul Stevens and to some degree, Shows, bought a school bus from the Vestal School District for one hundred dollars. They chugged it up to Guilderland Center where it was parked for the fall and winter, into the spring while it was renovated and built up as a camper for a long haul around the country.
Plans? Not many. Money? Most of it went onto the bus. Bare bones – rip the seats out, build bunkbeds and a kitchen and a big living space. Important- make sure the bus is sound and mechanically solid.
How does this fit into Shows’ life? He was going to go on the trip and then, as many of you know who read Shows’ book The Footless Girls Of Camp C, he was recruited to go on a mission impossible. And he was stuck in the conundrum that he could not tell the guys why he suddenly could not go on the trip because of course it was a secret job, and he did not know when he might leave. Since there were no cell phones back then, he would be out of touch for maybe six months. What a dilemma. But he made his choice and planned to stick with it, so he endured weeks of ball-busting mockery for bailing on the cruise with this second group of merry pranksters.
Needless to say, the guys had an amazing adventure traipsing down south and across the southern states and eventually back home.
We will leave it to the guys to write that story someday if they want to. This was a chance to reconnect, re-live those adventures and play some washers, which apparently is now a mainstream thing because someone bought a set at a Buc-ee’s! It was a fine weekend full of mirth and merriment and reminisces of that amazing year.
Of course, up until recently the guys did not know the real reason Shows had to bail on the trip so he got the opportunity to dispel the 50-year-old myths and talk about his mission and his own adventure. A few of the guys already read the book and the rest will soon follow now that they have a taste of that story.
