Rural Greyhound passengers get last boarding call

"The real reason that service has gone down is that people are leaving those communities," says Elvis Latiolais, general manager for Carolina Trailways, a Greyhound subsidiary.

Some communities could replace the lost service through rural transportation grants from the Federal Transit Administration. Yet in April, before departing for a new post, FTA chief Jennifer Dorn warned state transportation officials: "Rural service is no longer a certainty."

The silver coach became a key plot twist in major life events, from elopements to enlistments to the journeys of budding small-town starlets trying their luck in Hollywood. For artists, the Greyhound has long been a symbolic way to depict a unique American wanderlust: Sometimes as a way out, often as a way home.

"Greyhound really brought America as a whole together, and it's always been more of an adventure than riding the train," says Gene Nicolelli, the director of the Greyhound Bus Origin Center, a museum in Hibbing, Minn.

The company, which first started making runs in 1914, did what the railroad couldn't by connecting flourishing small towns off the main railline. In the process, every American could take part in Manifest Destiny, riding on the cheap through the Rockies or dozing through Mississippi's cotton fields.

But since 1970, the Greyhound has gradually lost its importance and appeal. Ridership is down to 40 million from a 1970 high of 130 million. Where once the Greyhound stopped in 17,000 communities, it today pulls into only 6,000.

It's still a great way to ride, says Samuel Avent, waiting to catch a bus in Rocky Mount, N.C., a small Greyhound hub that remains active. "There's no wear on your car, you leave the driving to some one else, you have something to eat - and mostly you sleep," he says, leaning his head back and closing his eyes by way of example.

Back inPinetops, antiques shop owner Patricia Webb can no longer enjoy watching for the new stranger to step off the bus - always a good topic of conversation for across-the-counter gossip.

But more deeply, the end of the route means that little Pinetops, a struggling eastern North Carolina town of mostly African-Americans and older whites, where the bus stopped in front of the police station, is increasingly irrelevant to the world at large. "It's another sign that small towns like ours are being left behind," says Ms. Webb.

The route of Trailways driver Leonard Cofield wound past live oak swamps, tobacco shacks and Princeville, N.C., where he used to get a barbecue sandwich and chat up the locals.

The route has been discontinued. Instead, Carolina Trailways is adding new service to Wilmington and Charlotte, N.C., and Richmond, Va., most of them express buses and direct routes. Mr. Cofield, for one, bemoans the end of his own rural, two-lane line.

"It was a great route," he says. "I'm sad to see it go."

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