cattle truck; garbage truck; painted bus

The painted bus sounds like Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters (see The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), or some other '60s bus (I remeber seeing those painted buses and VW minibuses). It was common enough to become a cliche. If anyone's read that book, or one of the other late Beat or early Hippie books, there may be such a sequence of vehicles. -John Bishop