In late 1923 or early 1924, Clarence H. Martin, “Tank” and his wife, Beth C. Martin “Bess”, sold their farm in Anson County, North Carolina and moved to a small town, in Union County, North Carolina. There they opened a bus station, on Franklin Street in Monroe, North Carolina. Clarence H. Martin, came from a family of nine siblings, seven of them brothers. He got his name by one of his younger brothers who could not pronounce Clarence. When his brother called his name, it sounded like ‘Tanes’ and eventually stuck as “Tank”. “Tank” had suffered an accident as a child which developed a disease in his hip, causing his left leg to be 1 1/2” shorter than his right. He wore a heavy, wooden lift in his shoe and walked with a cane. Every step had to be painful, but as I remember him, he never complained. “Tank” was the bus driver and Bess worked the ticket sales and food counter. The bus station was in the same building just below the Monroe Hotel, now demolished, and a half block from the old Court House. Franklin Street was, at that time, Route 74, a very busy main highway, which ran from Monroe west to Charlotte and east to Wadesboro. This became the first busline in this region and one of the first to operate in the state of North Carolina.
My Mom used to spend a lot of her childhood there after school and on weekends, remembering remarkable, vivid details of the inside of the station. The bus station faced Franklin Street. It was a good size with glass windows across the front and with a door in the middle. In the station, on the left side was a large desk and a long glass front counter. Behind the counter was a tall cabinet with front glass sliding doors in the top. There were three drawers and three storage cabinets below. Sandwiches, candy, pie, cakes, coffee, tea, soft drinks and cigarettes were sold there for the waiting passengers. There were also several Captain chairs for the waiting passengers to relax and wait for their trip. The station also had a center back door. As my mother tells me, she believed that the passengers caught the bus in the back, remembering them going out the back door where Daddy Tank parked his bus. The first bus my Granddad had was a soft top Buick and his route traveled from Monroe to Wadesboro. Daddy “Tank” was the only driver, driving to and from. During the summer, he would drive a busload of teachers to the Blue Ridge mountains to a school for their courses on teaching and drive them home again each night.
By 1928, Tank decided to retire the old soft top Buick and bought a new hard top Buick bus, increasing his busline distance to include Lumberton. But by 1929, the world changed. The Great Depression hit hard and the only two banks in Monroe, closed their doors. Daddy Tank had lost more than earnings from his busline, he lost quarter ownership of a gold mine from a Charlotte mining company, half ownership of a barbershop on Franklin Street and shares of a working local electric company.
All he had left was the busline.
At that time, one of “Tanks” brothers, James Flake Martin, who was sheriff of Anson County, teamed up with two outside businessmen, Frank Lowder and a Mr. L.A. Love, from Queen City Busline. They offered to buy the busline from “Tank” for $1000. “Tank” refused at that time and the three businessmen said “fine, but we plan on adding more new buses to our line, travel your line 10 minutes ahead of you. We will force you out of business.” “Tank” finally agreed to sell, still during the Depression, for $1000. Queen City Busline later was bought out by Trailways and later, my Granddads original line, was merged in with Greyhound’s expansion sometime in the 1940s..
To add more to the family history, one of “Tank” Martin’s brothers, J. Flake Martin was sheriff of Anson County from 1926 to 1932; his father, my mothers grandfather Samuel P. Martin was sheriff of Anson County from 1906 to 1911.
After the sale of the busline; “Tank” left to work as a gas station attendant in another one of his brothers’ business, a gas station in Louisiana. Bess and their children stayed in Monroe and Tank would send money home to her. It was still the Depression, but Daddy “Tank” was fortunate to find any work at all. My mother has told me that during the time of the Depression, her mother Mama Bess grew flowers in her small garden and sold them to area florists. She would sew flour sacks together to make dresses and shirts for her children to wear. My mother never tells me about any of the bad times she endured, but only hints now and then, of how truly hard life had become. At 86, she has a fond memory of her life back then and a wonderful outlook on life now. It amazed me how clear her memory was of the sights and sounds of that old bus station.
Reprinted in part from Buick Club of America magazine, April 2005.
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