One of the institutions of our day was the bus which met students from Pomona who came to North Pomona on the “dummy,” which I recognized as the discarded, first means of transportation between Long Beach and the outside world. Down there it had been known as the G. O. P., “Get Out and Push,” because frequently the male passengers had to dismount and help propel it when it hesitated in its progress from Thenard, the junction on the main S. P. line near Wilmington, to the little camp-meeting settlement on the bluff, Long Beach. When it was superseded there it evidently had been transferred to the remote service between Pomona and the new Santa Fe railroad to the north of the town.
The bus was very rickety, two long seats whose cushions sprouted excelsior, a somewhat tremulous canopy top, a rear step that swung loose so that it required great skill to mount, especially since there was a hole in the floor where one would naturally place one’s foot in entering. It must have been a gift bus, into whose mouth one must not look enquiringly.
Bret Harte, a high, bony, bay horse, and Amos Obediah Jonah Micah, a roly-poly squat sorrel were the mis-mated pair who provided locomotion. I was once told that the bones of one of these horses is preserved in the college museum, but an after thought on the part of the informer, suggested that the historic skeleton might have upheld one of the steeds celebrated a year or two later,—Bismarck or Gladstone or Mephistopheles. Speaking of the latter reminds me of a story once current in Claremont concerning
