I no longer remember much about my night bus ride down the highway from `Frisco to L.A., probably because I must have fallen asleep on the bus and slept through much of the ride before the bus pulled into the Greyhound station in Los Angeles, just a few hours after sunrise, but an hour or two before the Monday morning commuter rush hour into Los Angeles had begun. I vaguely remember that the seat next to me on the bus had been occupied by a culturally straight-looking white guy in his 20's, who didn't seem particularly unfriendly or reactionary, but who, like me, had been more into trying to get some sleep on the bus during the trip to L.A., rather than having any kind of a long, spontaneous conversation between "fellow-travelers."
Inside the bus terminal in Los Angeles, I found an empty bus station locker to store my large knapsack bag for most of the day and then found out from the information desk which commuter bus would take me to where Disneyland was located in Anaheim and bought myself a round-trip ticket for the bus to and from Anaheim. Since I now had much less money in my pocket than the $100 I would need at that time to buy the Greyhound bus ticket that would take me back to New York City, I realized that I was now going to have to hitchhike back from the West Coast to the East Coast. But rather than spending a day checking out Hollywood, Santa Monica or Los Angeles' street life before heading back to New York City on the road, I somehow felt that before I headed back East I wanted to visit Disneyland.
As a child growing up in New York City, I had always wanted to visit Disneyland but had never done so. And, not knowing in the 1970's if I was going to survive economically or physically much longer, I somehow still felt that I wanted to see Disneyland before I died.
Arriving in Anaheim by an outgoing commuter bus later in the morning, I can recall walking down a road from the bus station to the Disneyland entrance and then spending much of my remaining money on the fee that was required in order to enter through the gates of Disneyland.
Once inside Disneyland, I was surprised to see that the rides and structures in Fantasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, and Tomorrowland seemed much smaller than I had imagined them to be when, as a child, I watched film of them on the 1950s Disneyland tv show. And after maybe spending 2 or 3 hours walking around Disneyland and checking out the 1970s Disnelyand scene, I started to get bored. So I got on a commuter bus that was returning from Anaheim to Los Angeles.
