For most of his life, Jack Rhodes has cultivated an avocational interest in buses and the business of operating them. He is associate professor and director of forensics at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
"""Buses have been the neglected form of transportation in America. Few except their operators and their customers paid them any mind or attention. Songs were seldom written about them, love was seldom fallen in aboard them, gunmen seldom hijacked them. ""But that may be changing. There are signs of new interest in those motorcoaches that ply the roads in search of passengers and express, color and glamour. It's begun with a discovery of its history, with the stories of its pioneers who took old touring cars and their dreams and started bus lines in the early 1900's. It was a hazardous business that required as much in gambling instincts as it did in business sense. ""Jack Rhodes has made a significant contribution to that history with this book about the origins of the intercity bus business in Texas and its neighboring states. He tells the stories of the people who started it all. They are the stories that led to the Trailways and the Greyhounds of today. They are stories of visionaries with spirit and grit.""--Jim Lehrer"