I was watching one of my guilty pleasure movies the other night when I realized something I had never noticed before.
“Stealing Home” with Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster is a baseball movie that isn’t really about baseball. Harmon plays Billy Wyatt, who had been a promising young ballplayer whose life went off the rails when his father died unexpectedly.
He has pretty much hit bottom, living in a motel with a cocktail waitress, when his mother phones to tell him his friend Katie Chandler (played by Foster) has committed suicide. She asks him to come home and deal with Katie’s ashes.
The thing I noticed the other night that I had never realized before was a shorthand way of telling the audience how low Billy had sunk. He is far from home when his mother calls with the bad news, and even though it is a fairly long trip, he gets home by riding the bus.
Not a plane, jet or otherwise.
Not a train, although the short hop for the last part of his trip is by train.
Not a car, because he has apparently sunk so low he doesn’t even own a car.
The bus.
The only way that might be even worse is hitchhiking, and you don’t see that many people riding their thumb anymore. Riding the bus, especially on trips long enough to include overnight travel, is a classic example of down and out in modern America.
I’m pretty sure the last time I rode a bus on an interstate trip was 50 years ago, the year before I owned my first car. I traveled between my home in Northern Virginia and my grandparents’ home in Ohio. Yes, it was an overnight trip.
I swore IU’d never do it again … and I haven’t.