On a weekday morning in July 1979, I stood in the dim and decrepit Cleveland Greyhound Bus Station thinking only about my destination: First Federal Savings and Loan in Ft. Lauderdale. The S and L held my $10,000 savings account, the money I needed to begin my freshman year at Tulane University in New Orleans. Classes would start in about five weeks.
Six years earlier, a drunk driver had plowed me down while I walked home from middle school in Pompano Beach. Fortunately, I woke up in the hospital a few days later in one piece, feeling remarkably well. (The rabbi’s prayers had worked!) I had no memory of getting hit by the car. But the accident set off a chain of events, including the collapse of my mother’s mental health, that led the two of us to move back home to Cleveland after only a year in Florida. My parents, who had divorced when I was two years old, agreed to put the accident settlement money into a co-signed college savings account.
But when it was time for me to launch my college career, my father wouldn’t sign over the money. He argued that I was a stoner, and he did not deem me college material. He had a point. I imagined him in his Hialeah construction equipment shop, shaking his head and sighing as he rewired a jackhammer motor, an unlit stub of a cigar hanging from the side of his mouth. His hopes for his only son to become somebody were fading fast.
So, my mother enlisted the help of a family friend and acclaimed lawyer named Marv to gain access to the money in the account. Given I was 18 years old, I thought it was clear that the money was mine, and this would be easy work for a big-time attorney. Well, Marvelous Marv didn’t get the money. (I am not sure he ever really tried.) With a month to go before classes started, I panicked.
Clad in jeans, Frye boots, and my beloved Olympia Beer t-shirt, I boarded the Greyhound bus for the 36-hour journey to Ft. Lauderdale to claim my ten grand. My only possessions on the trip were the savings account passbook, a hundred bucks, a few joints in a baggie, a Bic lighter, a portable Panasonic tape recorder with one earbud, and one cassette tape: Led Zeppelin II. For the record, the “portable” Panasonic weighed in at about three pounds. The Sony Walkman had yet to be introduced in the US; it was still the covered wagon days for personal audio entertainment.
Though there were plenty of open seats on the bus, I instinctively headed toward the back to stay under the radar from exactly what or whom, I’m not sure, and cozied into a window seat on the left. Soon, we were roaring down the freeway toward our first stop: Akron. In Rubber City, I had enough time to sneak a few hits from a joint in the parking lot. Once back on the bus, I settled into a mellow buzz and hit play on the Panasonic.
Younger generations will never understand how magical it was to listen to Led Zeppelin II on cassette through one earbud, over and over again, on an epic bus ride. It was the group’s breakout album and it hit on all cylinders. One moment you’re being propelled into the stratosphere by Jimmy Page’s guitar (Whole Lotta Love); the next, pounded into submission by a John Bonham drum solo (Moby Dick); or, brought to a literal dripping climax by Robert Plant who sings matter-of-factly about the juice running down his leg (The Lemon Song). And, of course, there was John Paul Jones’s bluesy, grooving basslines holding everyone together (What Is and What Should Never Be).
***
The journey was uneventful as we rolled south, up and down the increasingly hilly terrain. The driver was making good time; as my high school buddies would say, he was bookin’! He stopped every couple of hours, and I usually had enough time to grab a snack and some tugs on a joint discreetly behind some wall or building. Fortunately, no one sat next to me for several hours until dusk somewhere in Tennessee. That’s when a short, old guy with a crewcut, a fifth of whiskey, and a busty woman tattooed on his left arm plopped down on the seat next to mine.
He was unlike any character I’d met in my hometown of Cleveland Hts. Think Popeye, but old, arthritic…and drunk. He slurred with a strong southern drawl when he spoke, so I struggled to understand him. At one point, I heard him say something about torpedoes and “Japs,” so I surmised he’d served in the Pacific during World War II. As a teenage pothead, my conversation skills weren’t much beyond “Whoa man!” but my mother had taught me well to politely listen to strangers, so the sailor seemed to take a liking to me. I even helped him roll a couple of tobacco cigarettes; my joint-making skills had come in handy. We had an understanding, sailor to stoner.
But after waking up before dawn somewhere in Georgia, I saw the sailor had vanished like an apparition.
As the eastern horizon began to glow in pink, peach, and orange and Ramble On played through my earbud, we crossed the border into Florida. We were on the home stretch, and I felt energized and confident, as if I had crossed some personal threshold. Make no mistake: I wanted my tuition money badly. But at that moment, I somehow knew that whatever happened, I would be okay. I never had a Bar Mitzvah ¾ having been a Hebrew school dropout, but maybe I had felt like a 13-year-old who just finished reading the Torah.
The journey down the long Florida peninsula dragged. As they say, I was so close, but yet, so far. We made more frequent stops, took on more passengers, and the bus began to smell like a locker room. Welcome to the heat and humidity of the Sunshine State. The prospects for reaching Ft. Lauderdale before the bank closed were looking dim.
We pulled into the Ft. Lauderdale Bus Station at about five o’clock, and after a 20-minute walk along purgatorial US 1 past many modest lodging options, I wandered into the $29.99-a-night Surf-and-Sand Motel, slapped down thirty bucks on the counter, and took the key to my first-floor room. I was delighted to look out my window and see a Burger King across the street.
The room was surprisingly clean, though I did encounter one Palmetto bug the size of an aircraft carrier while smoking a joint in the bathroom. But the bug and I appeared to come to an understanding, I think he appreciated the contact buzz and he politely strolled back to the sink drain from whence he came. Despite the uncertainty of the next day’s outcome, I slept soundly through the gurgle and rattle of the air conditioner and traffic noise outside.
At nine o’clock the next morning, I waltzed into First Federal, and within 15 minutes, after the banker confirmed I was the troglodyte on my driver’s license, he handed me a $10,000 check. I had been right. Given I was 18, the money was mine, without question, free and clear. What the hell, Marvelous Marv?
***
A year later, after my hedonistic crash and burn at Tulane, I was back in Cleveland picking up the pieces, enrolling in community college. I had been humbled to say the least. My dad had been right ¾ I hadn’t been ready for a big-time college. I certainly regret the blown opportunity to do something meaningful at that pivotal time in my life. Decades later, I still have nightmares about it.
But that bus ride to Ft. Lauderdale taught me the importance of self-sufficiency, and that I could in fact get things done on my own when I had to. I began developing self-confidence.
A few years later, my dad died in an ICU while on a ventilator after lung cancer surgery. Fortunately, he lived long enough to see me earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Cleveland State and land a job in mainframe networking.
I knew he was proud of me, though I don’t remember him saying so. There was so much we never got a chance to talk about. Perhaps some things were better left unsaid. Thankfully, he never said “I told you so” after I failed so spectacularly at Tulane. And I never told him about my epic bus ride to claim my college money, and how great it was to feel unstoppable.
Ben Shaberman’s latest novel, The Kicker, was published by Broken Tribe Press in September 2026. His first three books – Retina Boy (novel), Jerry’s Vegan Women (short stories), and The Vegan Monologues (essays) – were all published by Loyola University (Maryland). His essays and commentaries have been carried by The Good Men Project, The Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, NPR, and a variety of other publications. His poetry has been published by Broken Tribe Press, Wax Poetry and Art, The Soliloquist, and other journals. Learn more at www.shaberman.com.
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Photo by Kyle Howeth on Unsplash
