BUS STORY # 481 (New York State Of Mind)

Downloaded from Gastrolust: Writing on (Eating in) the City of New Orleans.

I’m going back to New York City 
I do believe I’ve had enough.
 -- Bob Dylan, from “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”


My daughter told me this story which she heard from a friend in Brooklyn.


Myra* is a born-and-bred New Yorker. The first time she lived outside the city was when she got a job teaching at Tulane, in New Orleans.

After moving, she had a number of experiences -- getting an apartment, getting her utilities set up, and so forth -- which impressed upon her just how far from New York City New Orleans really is.

It was so different she had a difficult time thinking of it as part of the United States, and she ended up imagining it was really an island nation off the coast of America.

Because she’d lived in NYC all her life, she didn’t know how to drive. So when she got to New Orleans, she had to take the bus until she got her license.

The bus, like everything else in New Orleans, proved to be very different from what she’d known from back east. Her favorite story happened one morning when she was on the bus going to work. The driver pulled over to the side of the street, went into a corner store, re-entered the bus with a paper sack holding what everyone could see was tall boy, popped the top, and resumed driving his route.

Laissez les bons temps bus rouler!

__________


*Real name changed.