Sometimes, Wheels Of Fortune Are On A Bus
‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you’d be good enough to gaze out the windows to your right. That fine home once belonged to the late Hollywood character actor Albert Salmi.
“It was in that house one April day in 1990 that Salmi shot his wife, Roberta, to death before turning the gun on himself. The unhappy incident took place two days before their 26th anniversary.
“And now we cruise to the lush grass of Hart Field, where Kevin Coe, better known as the infamous South Hill Rapist, once jogged for victims.”
Call me a sick puppy, but I’d buy a ticket to ride on a vintage bus and experience a “Dirty Laundry Tour” of Spokane.
A sightseeing excursion through this city’s seamy underbelly is only one of many ideas Jerome Green has for his new enterprise - “Spokane Scenic Tours & Shuttle Service.”
There will be plenty of conventional, tamer tours for people who want to soak up historic landmarks like the County Court House or Manito Park’s lovely Japanese gardens.
You have to hand it to this 36-year-old entrepreneur. He had the guts to buy three used buses and chase his dream.
It’s just too bad Green’s dream is so much larger than his wallet.
“How many people do you know who will buy 20 cans of spray paint and paint a bus?” says Green, laughing at the frayed shoestring of a budget he operates on.
“Painting a bus the regular way would cost me $5,500. Doing it this way, I’m out maybe a couple hundred bucks.”
Green grins. “This is the poor man’s approach, all right.”
From mechanics to promotion to driving his red, white and blue buses, Green practically does it all to keep expenses as rock-bottom as possible.
Whether enough paying passengers are around to support his idea remains to be seen.
And no matter how careful he is, there are some hefty built-in costs to running a bus tour business. Insurance, for example, is $500 per month for each bus.
Green’s rigs ooze character. The two elder statesmen in his three-bus fleet have each rolled a million-plus miles.
One of them, a 1954 former Seattle metro bus, still needs a facelift. Its 1953 cousin, originally bought by the federal government and shipped to Washington, D.C., is freshly spray-painted and looks cool.
You can almost picture Jackie Gleason squatting behind the wheel in the old “The Honeymooners” TV show. Green often drives it wearing a ‘50s bus uniform a la Gleason’s character, Ralph Kramden.
Couple that nostalgia with a kitschy tour - maybe a pub crawl to the area’s better microbreweries - and Green might get enough baby boomer business to make this thing work.
Green’s third bus is a wider, 1985 model. It’s square and genericlooking, sure, but he needed a modern bus with a wheelchair lift. Accommodating the handicapped wasn’t a big deal in the 1950s.
He’s talking to the hotel industry in hopes of landing some convention trade. The Subud religious group that met here last month kept him fairly busy with tours.
Green is an interesting guy, a bachelor who lives with his elderly mother. He earns his money as a private investigator, he says, mostly gathering witness statements for lawyers.
He once drove a Spokane-to-Canada route for a bus line, he says, eventually quitting to care for his mom. If he can make a go of this, he’ll gladly give up detecting.
“My friends shake my hand and say, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do it,”’ he adds. “But Spokane has so much to offer. It’s a town filled with different flavors that tourists should see.
“I’m going to try my best and see how it all turns out.”
Green can be reached at 625-9622. His tours cost $5-$10 for adults and $2.50 for kids.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo