The New York Bus Strike Story

1953

A True Story

About how my Grandpa Eddie Started the Orange Street Bus Line

Written 1/2010* 833 Words

#130 By Howard Yasgar

In 1953 I was 14 years old and very curious about my Grandfather Eddie.

I had always heard that Eddie Lazaroff had, in the 1930’s, started the Orange Street bus line in my hometown of New Haven Connecticut, and I always wondered if and how he did it.

However, trying to get any information out of my mother or her sisters was always difficult.

But little by little, and with some assistance from Eddie himself, I was able to put the story together, and it was quite a story.

One day in 1953, when my grandfather came to our house for a visit, I asked him to please tell me the whole story about who started the Orange Street bus line in New Haven.

He became hesitant, then wistful, but the following is the story that he told me.

It appears that in the 1930’s there was a rumor circulating in Connecticut that a major bus strike in New York City was imminent.

My Grandfather said that read about the impending bus strike, it was head- lines in all the local newspapers.

At the time Eddie was living in New Haven and working as a freelance plumber.

In his travels, he saw that there was an antique bus that was always parked along the side of the road in Milford Connecticut.

I say antique bus, because he said it was a very early style bus with open sides and a soft canvas roof, and I think he said it even had solid hard rubber tires.

The rumor was circulating everywhere that the impending New York bus strike could last for weeks and bring New York City to its knees.

Grandpa Eddie felt that if he could buy that old antique bus cheap, and somehow get it to New York City, he could possibly make quite a bit of money.

So, he checked around, found the owner, and my Grandfather Eddie bought the old bus.

At the time the only way to get to New York City was on the Boston Post Road, and Grandpa said the road was loaded with potholes, but after he got the bus running, he drove all day and all-night heading towards New York City.

In the morning at first light, he finally reached New York.

Unknown to him, the strike was already in force and at the very first corner he stopped, the people got on the old bus and each one gave him a nickel.

Within a few minutes his pockets were all full of nickels and there was even money under his feet on the floor of the bus.

That’s when he sent a young boy out to buy him some kind of bag to put the money in.

The boy came back with several horse feeding bags, it was all he could find.

Grandpa Eddie said that at night he slept in a horse barn, he used the feed bags filled with nickels as his pillows.

He did that because he feared he would be robbed or he could possibly possibly be attacked by striking bus drivers.

The next morning, he deposited the money in the bank, and then he went out and filled up the feed bags

many times, and he did this for about a week until the bus strike was over.

Once he was back in New Haven, Grandpa Eddie still had the old bus.

Everyone told him that in New Haven, Orange Street was poorly serviced by the Connecticut Transit Company.

So, my Grandpa Eddie, with lots of money and nothing better to do, started driving up and down Orange Street, and that’s how he started the Orange Street bus line.

My mother had said that at the time Grandpa Eddie was using up all his money to make trips to Russia bringing out more of his brothers and Lazaroff family members.

She also had said, Grandpa Eddie left the Orange Street Bus Company in the hands of relatives that he had helped to bring to America, and they managed to take control of the bus line away from him.

By the time I knew anything about the Orange Street bus line, all I can remember was that it was an impressive company, it had older buses, but they had modern token machines.

I asked Grandpa Eddie why he didn’t still own the Orange Street Bus line, but he didn’t answer, he just got up and walked away, he didn’t want to discuss it.

So, I did a little research myself, and I found that the Orange Street bus line had never developed a transfer system, so its passengers could never connect with any other Connecticut bus lines.

It appeared that Grandpa Eddie’s relatives had taken the bus line away from him, but they weren’t very smart about running it, and the Orange Street bus line was eventually sold to the Connecticut Transit Company in the 1970’s.