BUS STORY # 86 (Picking Up Strangers)

Picking Up Strangers is the wonderfully perfect title of the blog of a Minneapolis bus driver. Her name is Jeanne Ree, and her stories are straightforward and from the heart. It only takes a few postings to see she’s one of those legendary “Middle Americans” – an individual with an admirable conscience and an equally admirable heart of gold. “Salt of the earth” is what comes to mind after reading only a few of her posts. It also takes reading only a few posts to see that being a bus driver is a good deal more than driving a bus around town for several hours a day.

This is exactly what makes this blog remarkable. We’ve got a lot of venues for the riders’ experiences. This blog tells the stories from the driver’s perspective. Makes me think whatever they’re being paid, it ain’t enough! It also makes me grateful for drivers – well, shoot – for folks like Jeanne Ree.

Here’s one of the sweeter sides of her job:

I won a stuffed tiger the other day on one of my layovers. I gave it to this adorable little boy. He was about 3 years old. He had the biggest brown eyes I've ever seen.— “Fuzzy Tiger, Smiling Boy”

Next week: The Subway Chronicles

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Photo by Mike Hicks. Posted from Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. This is one of the Minneapolis Metro Transit’s articulated buses in standard livery.