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Let us go for a ride in your bus.

Brahmananda: In Boston, Hamsadutta had just gotten a school bus, the first bus in the movement. One morning Prabhupada called Hamsadutta and said, "Let us go for a ride in your bus." Hamsadutta excitedly said, "Oh yes." But then he realized that they had taken all the seats out of the bus. There was just the floor. Prabhupada couldn't sit like that so I got a chair from the temple and held it down while Prabhupada sat in it. All the devotees piled into the bus. Everyone was very excited. "Where are we going?" I said, "For a ride with Prabhupada." Vamanadeva was driving, and Prabhupada was giving directions, "Turn here. Go on this road." Nobody knew where we were going, and no one was bold enough to ask Prabhupada, but Prabhupada knew where he was going. While the devotees chanted on their beads, we got to the downtown area and finally came to the waterfront, the dock area. And then we arrived at Commonwealth Pier. Actually, no devotees had ever even seen it. Prabhupada was always talking about Krishna and didn't tell us so many details about his arrival in America. Even when we got there, we didn't realize where we were, but this was the place where Prabhupada had first entered America. Prabhupada started walking, and we clustered around him on this big pier with big roads, warehouses, and factories surrounding us. Prabhupada preached as he always did on his morning walk. He talked about pure devotional service to Krishna, and he used the word "unalloyed." It's exotic, this "unalloyed" devotional service, because an "alloy" is a metal made of many different kinds of metal. Prabhupada was always saying "unalloyed." That meant just one metal, not many. At a certain point he said, "Yes. Unalloyed devotional service" and he pointed with his cane. We all followed the cane, and there was a hundred-foot long sign on the entire side of the warehouse that said, UNALLOYED STEEL COMPANY. We all said, "Yes, unalloyed." That sign was one of the first things Prabhupada had seen when he entered America, and he showed it to us to explain unalloyed devotional service; a very simple instruction that he made so graphic. We were like Prabhupada's young students, and Prabhupada was our teacher. As a teacher writes a word on a blackboard and then takes a pointer to show the class, so Prabhupada was showing us.



Reference: Memories Anecdotes of a Modern Day Saint - Volume 1 by Siddhanta Dasa