The Majic Bus specializes in magical tours across the United States. In 1976, when Frank Perugi was 21, he lived for a summer with a friend in Montauk Point, LI, N.Y., in a bus. His friend was crazy about buses.
Perugi wanted one, but better yet: He'd call it The Majic Bus, a homage to a rock song by The Who called "Magic Bus." He would take people all over. They would eat on his bus, sleep on it, and explore America together.

Over the years, Perugi worked as a machinist, cook, janitor, and trucker. He saved his money. It was a long haul, but he got his bus. Just the same, something was missing. And then his dream started to come true, the way dreams often do-the way you don't expect. Doug Brinkley, a 31-year-old assistant professor of history at Hofstra University, loathed academia's regimen of classroom lectures, full of theory and empty of life. He wanted to take his students out to explore America, the way his mom and dad used to when he was growing up.

It turned out to be some course. The class visited 30 states and 10 national parks. They read 12 books by great American writers. They met authors and street people, stopped at battlefields and universities, heard electric rock and the Delta blues, saw Elvis Presley's Graceland and William Faulkner's Rowan Oak, branded cattle in South Dakota, and rode out a California earthquake.

Brinkley's account, "The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey" (Harcourt Brace and Co.) is a better bestseller. On the strength of a bus and a shared dream, Perugi has been transformed into a figure in literature. He's also gotten more business. Already, there's been another Odyssey and a second bus. More trips are expected-and more dreams.
Now Perugi wants to take inner-city kids on a Majic Bus tour across America with the help of corporate America. He believes an American Odyssey can help wake kids up and change a few lives along the way. Perugi imagines a kid getting off the bus, running to a friend who has given up on life, and shouting at him, "There's life out here, and we can live it".

That's the magic of the dream.