BUS STORY # 277 (Other Voices)


I remember when I first discovered there were other public transportation story tellers out in the blogosphere. My daughter sent me a link to The Subway Chronicles. Not only is Jacquelin Cangro an astute observer and talented writer, but her site featured an annual collection of wonderfully literate subway stories written by others, a new one posted each month.

Sadly, The Subway Chronicles is no more. Happily, Jacquelin’s blog, up to its final post in May, 2009, remains accessible. The monthly stories, however, are no longer available. (There is a book now with the same title featuring 27 of those entries.)

I don’t remember how I found Bus Chick. When I first discovered Carla Saulter, I learned that if I happened to be in Seattle on any given Saturday night, I might catch her “running for the number 27 in heels and a backless dress.”

Times have changed. Bus Chick married Bus Nerd (yes, they met on the bus) and is now the mother of Chicklet and Busling. And (yes, again) the whole family is still riding, and Bus Chick is still writing.

Over time, one bus blog led to the discovery of another, until I had a daisy chain of links which I began listing to the right of my bus stories.

Also over time, many of these blogs have come and gone. Some blogs were active for only a few posts, then languished like abandoned New Year’s resolutions. Some bloggers announced the end of their blogs (see Today on the Lightrail from Houston for an interesting explanation). Others simply quit posting. Some took their blogs off the web.

Today on the Lightrail

The ones that are still accessible I’ve grouped under the heading “Gone But Not Forgotten.” I use this rule of thumb: no posts for six months means the blog is inactive. My current worry is for the riders-written Bus Tales from Minneapolis-St. Paul. Stories seem to have dried up starting about a year ago, and there has been one lonely post since August, 2011. I confess I’m reluctant to apply my “rule of thumb” to this website.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that, taken together, these blogs present a wide variety of voices, styles, experiences, interests, viewpoints and concerns. Most of them have been the source for a “This Week’s Featured Link” at least once.

What does surprise me is I’m still discovering bus blogs out there that are not new. Just a few months ago, I stumbled across a Maryland blog, Another One Rides The Bus, that Nancy Luse has been posting to at least weekly since early 2008.

My latest discovery came from a lovely story featured in Muni Diaries which linked me to its source, Fog City Notes. Rachel has been “spying on [San Francisco], but nicely,” mostly from the bus, since mid-2004! She may well be the longest running bus blogger on the web.

Other such serendipitous discoveries include Bus Stories: Observations on Life In Transit (from Seattle since March, 2009) and Today’s Bus Story (from Louisville, Kentucky), the latter out there since 2010 and only discovered here within the last year.

How is it that, despite my regular and persistent ransacking of Google for weekly featured links, it has taken me so long to find these blogs? And how many more of them are out there waiting to be found?

I’m hoping some of you will point me to some of those sites I haven’t found yet. And I’m hoping that all of you -- especially you bus riders -- will check out some of these other links for yourselves. There are a lot of good stories out there.

BUS STORY # 276 (On The Road To Shenzhen)

On the bus 2, © All Rights Reserved, a photo by Roving I on Flickr.

I don’t know his name. I used to see him on the earlier bus all the time. We sat together a few of those times and made small talk, mostly about sports and his time in the military. Then my work schedule changed.

He’s boarding this morning, same spot as always, just an hour later. He sees me, joins me. I tell him he’s running later than usual. He tells me he overslept.

He worked late yesterday. He’s been working a lot. Lots of overtime. The money is good, but he’s beginning to feel like all he’s doing is working and eating and sleeping.

Weekends have disappeared. Used to be he’d work a couple of Saturday mornings a month. Now, Saturday’s just another work day, and sometimes he has to come in on Sunday mornings or afternoons, depends on what’s going on that Sunday.

It’s gotten so his wife and son don’t even ask anymore if he’s going in Saturday, or when he’s coming home. His son’s in high school, and he’d like to be around for him more than he’s been lately, before he leaves home. His son is a really neat kid, he tells me, and he likes hanging out with him.

His boss works 80 hours a week, and he expects them to do the same. They don’t want to do the same, and he gets frustrated with them.

His boss didn’t always work 80 hours a week. But several months ago, a manager left and the company decided it would be cheaper to split up the manager’s job responsibilities and assign different ones to the remaining managers. That’s why his boss is working 80 hours a week.

Not surprisingly, some of those new responsibilities seem to have become theirs as well, job description or no, like it or not.

His boss lives some 15 miles outside of Albuquerque. It's not all that far, but he’s decided he can get an extra couple hours of sleep a night by not going home during the work week. He’s converted an empty storeroom to a little bedroom. There’s a shower on site. He goes home late Friday, is back early Monday morning.

There used to be a sign-up sheet whenever overtime was needed. It wasn’t all that often, and there were a handful of folks who jumped at the opportunity.

The sign-up sheet started becoming a regular feature, and also taking up more and more of the page. Pretty soon, people quit signing up for all the slots. So the boss began signing them up himself.

Some of them refused to come in for their assigned slots. His boss would call the others at home and ask them if they could come in -- or, if they were already scheduled for later in the day, could they come in earlier.

He describes such a call. He’s sitting at the table eating breakfast with his family when the phone rings. It’s his boss. His boss tells him the guy who was scheduled didn’t show, and can he come in an hour earlier than he’s scheduled. When he tells his boss he cannot, his boss says oh, c’mon, you’re just hanging around the house doing nothing. But he held the line: he’d be in when he was scheduled.

He says he feels like he’s done more than his part, and he’s tired, and he wants his life back. He says he recently told his boss just that. His boss doesn’t understand his attitude, especially in times like these. He tells him there are folks out there who’d love to have his job.

I ask him why the company doesn’t just hire more people if the demand is so high. He answers when you factor in the training, the learning curve, and the benefits, overtime is a whole lot cheaper than hiring new employees.

We get to his stop. I tell him it’s good to see him again, and I wish him good luck. He gives me a wry smile. It’s not until we’ve already pulled away that I realize we didn’t even mention this past weekend’s spectacular Superbowl game.

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The photo at the top of this story is titled “On the bus 2,” © All Rights Reserved, and is posted with the kind permission of Roving I. You can see all Roving 1’s photos on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rovingisydney/

BUS STORY # 275 (Portrait # 16: The Couple)

Mestizo Series: Los Novios, by Amada Pena, a photo downloaded from the website AVANCE’s 10th Annual Toma Mi Corazon by busboy4 on Flickr.

They look like a couple out of an Amado Pena portrait.

I’d put him in his 40s. He’s not skinny, but he doesn’t carry any extra weight, either. Intense black eyes in a face that looks hard, but not mean. He’s not what you’d call handsome, but he’s definitely arresting.

She looks ten years younger. And while she gives me the impression she’s lived through exactly the same things that have made him look so hard (and very probably right there at his side then, too), her features are softer. She’s not beautiful or pretty, and certainly not cute. She is handsome.

Together, they look strong. I find it difficult to keep my eyes off them.

Sometimes there is conversation of a sort. He is the initiator. He leans in, and looking straight ahead, says a very few words in a very quiet voice. She responds in the same manner. They rarely need more than the single exchange.

My sense is that he is asking her about something that requires a decision or direction, or perhaps a confirmation. He defers to her without giving anything up. She knows how to accept that deferral without taking anything away.

This interaction doesn’t happen every time, and when it does, it only happens once on the ride. Still, I’ve seen it often enough that I’ve come to view it as ritualized, each word and gesture freighted with a world of shared understanding.

I’ve seen her on occasion by herself, and she is something less than when she is with him. I’ve never seen him by himself, but I feel sure it would be the same.

My wife would think of them as “soul mates.” I think of them as two halves, a male half and a female half, of a whole. The whole, of course, being greater than the sum of its parts.
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The photo at the top of this story is of a painting titled “Mestizo Series: Los Novios” by Amado Pena, and is taken from the website AVANCE’s 10th Annual Toma Mi Corazon.

BUS STORY # 274 (The Case Of The Purloined Bus Stop Sign)

The Case Of The Purloined Bus Stop Sign, a photo by busboy4 on Flickr.

I leave work late this evening, but my compensation is running into Vikram* on the ride home. I haven’t seen him in since he’s started his new job working at the university.

We’re having a good time catching up, and we are both amused that, for once, the layover by the Sunshine Apartments** is a good thing because we have a lot of catching up to do.

Our driver is a new guy, a young guy. Vikram nods at our driver and tells me one of his co-riders who also works at the university has another driver to train to stop at his stop.

I’m confused.

Well, his regular stop is just north of Marquette. Do I know that stop?

Sure I do.

Well, did I ever notice there’s no bus stop sign there?

As a matter of fact, I have not. I do know there’s a stop there because I’ve seen folks get off there. But I couldn’t tell you if it had a sign or a bench or both or neither.

Well, it used to have a sign, Vikram explains. But every time the city puts one up, it disappears shortly afterwards.

You’re kidding! Who’d steal a bus stop sign?

Somebody who doesn’t like the buses coming up this way.

Last Seen Right Here, a photo by busboy4 on Flickr.

Vikram asked if I remembered when ABQ RIDE cut off our route at Tramway. Yes I did. I wrote several posts about the experience between December, 2006, and the final restoration of the route the following April. I remember hearing at the time several variations on the theme that some folks -- or some one folk with clout -- didn’t like the bus in our neighborhood.

It is Vikram’s suspicion that a disgruntled neighbor is taking the signs down as his personal protest.

It can’t be the noise anymore, Vikram points out. Back then, they were running the 300s. But they use only the new 700s and 900s on the route now, and they’re significantly quieter.

I smile. I smile because this is a pretty good little bus story, and because I like how Vikram, despite his many years of living among us native-born Americans, continues to look for the rational in our behaviors.
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*Real name changed.
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** The layover was returned to the original layover on Chelwood Park on December 31.

BUS STORY # 273 (The Ruckus)

It's The Law, a photo by busboy4 on Flickr.

It’d been a couple of years since I’d last seen Pete,* and here he was, struggling aboard the bus with a walker, a shadow of his former vigorous old man self. (You can read about Pete here.)

The driver had put the bus in the kneeling position. Pete maneuvered, somewhat unsteadily, past the till, and found the bench seats reserved for the elderly and infirm full on both sides.

On the passenger side was an overweight white guy in his late 50s, and an overweight white woman in her early 40s.

On the driver’s side was a trim black school kid, maybe 5th grade or so. Next to him was an overweight black woman -- his mother, as it would turn out -- and next to her, another overweight black woman who, as it would also turn out, was unrelated to mom and son by anything other than chance seating.

At first, none of the five made any move at all. Then a sixth person, an older student sitting in the aisle seat of the first pair of seats facing forward, got up and headed for the back.

I didn’t hear what Pete said.

I saw the kid start to get up, then stop and turn and look at his mother.

I recognized that look -- remembered that look from when I was his age. Someone tells you to do something. You start to do what you’ve been told because you’ve been raised to be obedient and respectful of your elders, but you pause because something about what is being asked, or maybe in the asking itself, isn’t right. You are momentarily paralyzed by your inability to sort out what is happening that isn’t right, and not always fortunate enough to have one of your parents right there to look to for help.

Everyone heard what mom said. “You can’t talk to my child like that!”

The woman across the aisle interjected that those seats were for the elderly, as if her seat wasn’t one of “those seats.”

Mom told her she knew that, and that was not the point. The point was how Pete said whatever it was he said to the boy. “He can’t talk to people like that!”

The Pete I’d encountered a couple of years ago would have lit into the ruckus. But now, he was leaning against the partition behind the driver, looking like he would slide on down to the floor when his strength gave out, and saying nothing.

The kid looked like he wanted to be invisible.

The other black woman got up and took the seat vacated by the student.

Mom and the boy moved down one seat, and Pete settled into the vacated seat behind the driver.

Mom continued to give Pete a piece of her mind.

Pete twisted away from her in his seat and fixed his face toward the windshield.

The woman across the aisle rolled her eyes and looked back at the rest of us.

Mom and son exited a few stops later, and Pete got his tongue back. But his voice was too feeble for me to make out most of what he was saying. I did hear something to the effect that kids aren’t being raised right anymore. And I could see the woman across the aisle nodding vigorously with everything he was saying.

Later on, I watched Pete labor to get off at his stop. Out on the sidewalk, he paused, leaned on his walker, and looked into the sun. He looked befuddled. The bus pulled away and left me with that last image of him on the other side of the window.

Now, I don’t know what Pete said to the boy, and I don’t know how he said it. So I am once removed from the incident.

Like most everyone else, I don’t let not having all the facts stop me from drawing conclusions.

I do have previous experiences with Pete which suggest he has been provocative and cantankerous with other riders in the past.

And there is something I feel certain did not escape this black woman: Pete had decided the “black” row rather than the “white” row needed to accommodate him.

Perhaps even more provocative to a mother of any color, he bypassed the four adults and went for the child. Her child.

Still, I’m wary of the conclusions I’m drawing here. We have simple explanations for why people do what they do to console us for the fact that we cannot possibly know all the circumstances and their influences, nor understand all the algorithms, that go into the making of any human decision, our own included.

One of the best things about riding the bus is that you can take in what you see and let your mind wander wherever it takes a notion to go.

Mine wanders into “What if?” territory.

What if Pete hadn’t always been the thin guy we saw on the bus this morning? What if he’d been overweight himself sometime in his younger years? He’d know something about the extra effort it takes to gather up all your stuff, get up out of your seat, and move down the aisle to another seat.

What if Pete saw it would be a whole lot easier for the kid to give up his seat than for any of those other folks of all colors and genders in the designated seats?

And what if that effort is part of why all four overweight adults elected to make an equally poor choice to not surrender their seats -- seats which by law were more Pete’s than theirs -- to this decrepit old man, setting the stage for the ruckus to happen?

We all have our accounts, and sometimes, some of us even have hold of the tail-is-like-a-rope or the trunk-is-like-a-snake or the ear-is-like-a-fan of that vast elephant of the truth. We just have a hard time believing we don’t have the elephant itself -- the whole elephant, and nothing but the elephant.
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*Real name changed.

BUS STORY # 272 (Score!)

Deviousness Disguised with Freckles, © All Rights Reserved, a photo by Beth Crawford 65 on Flickr.

During the school year, we begin accumulating students bound for Jefferson Middle School somewhere around San Mateo. Pretty soon, all the seats are taken and the aisles fill up.

A lot of them are still what I’d call “kid cute.”

That cute quality is more than physical. There’s a still not-yet-fully-tamped-down exuberance and spontaneity that animates their expressions, and their mannerisms and behaviors. I know many of them are destined to evolve into what fellow bus blogger Richard Isherman calls the “Sullen Teens,” but right now, they’re bright-eyed and fresh-faced and fun to watch.

One morning, I watch two of them nab a pair of bench seats at the front when two adults get up for their stop.

One is a boy, probably a sixth grader, with long black hair, a black sweatshirt, and a skateboard. The other, sitting to his right, is a girl, with long black hair pulled back, a striped sweater, and a purse. She is obviously older, certainly taller, probably an eight grader.

They sit side by side and look straight ahead or away from each other or at their stuff.

Then I see the boy move his eyes to the right without turning his head, then up at another boy his size in the aisle, and the look he gives his friend takes me back a few decades.

It’s the “Lookit me sitting next to this hot eight-grade chick!” look.

I keep watching his face. It’s easy to see he’s trying to figure out how to take advantage of this unexpected opportunity -- what to say or do, and when to say or do it.

His opportunity comes when the bus brakes suddenly and she lurches sideways and up against him. He turns his face halfway to her and says something.

She turns to look at him, smiles, and says something back.

Score!

She goes back to looking straight ahead, and after a few minutes, I can see the look of pure triumph in his face give way to figuring out how to up the ante on that first success. He knows better than to look at her, and I’m guessing the next move is to turn that smile into a laugh.

But that second chance never comes. The bus arrives at the corner of Lomas and Girard and empties out.

I watch the girl go first, turn left, and quickly fall in with a group of girlfriends. She doesn’t look back.

The boy steps out, turns right, and joins up with his aisle buddy. He doesn’t look back.

Me, I’m thinking back to when I was his age, when all my brilliant strategies always came to me well past the window of opportunity. And even if they’d been timely, I would likely have experienced a failure of nerve. I’d’ve been sitting on that bench spinning my skateboard wheels and going nowhere.

But when I’d’ve gotten off the bus, I would have looked back. Looked back and sighed deeply, because I would have been watching another the love of my young life walk away oblivious to my existence.

But it all worked out for the best: I was available when my wife came along.

Score!
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The photo at the top of this story is titled "Deviousness Disguised with Freckles," © All Rights Reserved, and is posted with the kind permission of Beth Crawford 65. You can see all Beth Crawford 65’s photos on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22896082@N06/

BUS STORY # 271 (Shorts 23)

Untitled, a photo by chuckbiscuito on Flickr.

She looks like she oughta be a cheerleader: tall, slim, long blonde hair, conventional California-girl pretty face. But I know she’s not. It’s not just the custom, well-worn skateboard she’s carrying, either. That pretty face is also pretty cool. She’s got faded jeans (not tight), a gray tank top (neck and arm holes tight), and a leather band around her wrist. Before she sits down, she acknowledges someone in the back of the bus with a nod. Just a nod; no smile, no wave, no “Hi, there.” Kill Bill’s Uma Thurman comes to mind, followed by the image of some poor quarterback whose season ends early when he tries to move on this chick. Definitely not a cheerleader.

***

Standing room only, and the woman who’s just boarded and ends up just ahead of me is strikingly tall. And rising from the top of her head another good six inches is an assembly of beaded corn row extensions that lift up, then go cascading down over her shoulders. The next person who boards is a little girl. She walks up to the woman, stops, looks at the woman’s belt, then tilts her head back and looks up and up, until she reaches the top. She stands there staring, open-mouthed, like a kid who’s never seen a skyscraper before.

***

A woman boards the bus with two older children and begins haggling over the fare with the driver. The driver says he doesn’t cut deals with the riders. She gets angry and tells him what she thinks about that. He tells her to stop cussing him. She says she’s cussing the fare business, not him. She lectures him on the difference. He tells her to either pay the fare or get off the bus. She grabs a purse from one of her daughters, pulls out some change, and starts feeding it to the till, still carrying on the whole time. He tells her if she doesn’t like it, she can get off the bus. She says, you know what? She doesn’t like it, and she herds her kids off the bus and her right behind. When the bus pulls away, the guy sitting in the seat by the door tells the driver this same woman pulled the exact same stunt right here on the same bus about a month ago. Go figure, he says.

***

A rider pulls the cord. There is plenty of time between the pull and the stop, but the driver sails right past the stop. “Hey, driver! Stop!” The driver realizes his mistake and immediately pulls over. The rider heads to the front door from the back. We all know he’s got something to say to the driver. So does the driver, who apologizes for missing the stop. The rider replies he knows the driver is really busy and has a lot on his mind, and he appreciates his pulling over for him now. And then he says thank you, and steps off the bus.

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The photo at the top of this story is unititled and is posted with the kind permission of
chuckbiscuito. You can see this and all chuckbiscuito’s photos on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuckbiscuito/.

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Thanks to JM in Brooklyn for this week's featured link: One Year Ago In: Birmingham, Alabama