No-fool zone

By Amy

Another reason why Big Mama bus driver is an exceptional person:

ADDLED MALE PASSENGER TO BIG MAMA: Good afternoon, sir.

BIG MAMA (without the slightest pause): I ain't no sir, sir. I'm a ma'am.

COMMENTARY: I appreciate a woman who says her mind. She didn't get angry, and she didn't ignore the mistake--as I probably would--out of apathy or to spare that man's embarrassment. Another fool learns a lesson to pay a little more heed to the human beings around him.

Breathe, stupid, breathe!

By Amy

A tweaker guy takes a long, final drag of his cigarette, and is about to climb aboard the crowded No. 6, but then Big Mama Bus Driver stops him.

BIG MAMA: You make sure you blow your smoke out before you step in here.

TWEAKER: What? What do you mean?

BIG MAMA: You know what I mean. Nobody wants to breathe that mess.

COMMENTARY: It's a sad reflection on our country when someone has to be told to leave his smoke outside. It's even sadder when he takes offense and argues with the driver over it. What in his life has brought this man to this point? What would his own mother say? This reminds me of that old Warner Brothers cartoon "Dough Ray Me-ow" in which the cat is so stupid that he forgets to draw breath: The parrot has to slap him and shout "Breathe, stupid, breathe! You forgot to breathe again."

Blessed are the bus drivers

By Amy

 

I was waiting for the bus at night in the South Park Blocks, in the glow of an old-fashioned streetlamp. The earliest traces of autumn rode in on the wind, seeping through my summer clothes and chilling me to the core—the warm, sunny afternoon had tricked me into leaving my sweater at home. Pacing back and forth with my arms crossed, I tried to stay warm.

 

My bus appeared, at least seven minutes late. At least I thought it was my bus, but its sign said CENTER GARAGE instead of the line number and the destination. As it came closer, I recognized the scowling brunette behind the wheel as the usual bus driver at this time on the route.

 

She saw me on the curb, and shook her head no while making a slicing gesture at her neck with her hand, like a mechanic signaling to another to cut the ignition, or a bartender telling a drunk no more, you are cut off. Then she blasted right past me.

 

Now, you have to understand, my previous experiences with this driver have not exactly been pleasant. But they haven't been so unpleasant that I'd go out of my way to report her to TriMet in hopes that she loses her job—it's not that serious. But I do have a few minor complaints.

 

For one, I don't like the way she drives. She brakes too hard and too late, as if red lights were annoying afterthought instead of a crucial means of controlling traffic. If I'm sitting, I brace myself to keep from shattering my kneecaps on the seat ahead, or if I'm standing, I have a death grip on the pole to stay upright.

 

And another thing: either TriMet has assigned her a bus with no shock absorbers, or she manages to roll over every single bump and pothole possible on the road. When I used to work on a Forest Service fire crew, we'd tell our co-workers with this driving habit to pay attention to where they're going and "stop hammering our kidneys."

 

She also annoys the hell out of me by speaking at a volume that only a woman who has mothered at least three children can achieve—the telltale shout used for herding kids. She sounds like Ethel Merman, had the legendary Broadway singer been a drill sergeant. For example:

To a driver who nearly T-boned us: "Can't you see the sign says yield YOU STUPID IDIOT."

To a bicyclist: "I told you FIVE TIMES to turn your bike the other way on the rack. WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO ME THE FIRST TIME?"

To a hippie girl boarding the bus: "Sweetheart, if you stand back in the darkness like that I CAN'T SEE YOU." (To which the girl replied: "I'm not your sweetheart.")

 

On the other hand, she deserves props for not holding a grudge. One night, after I had rung the bell, she drove past my stop, which I confess is nearly completely hidden by trees. "HEY, THAT'S MY STOP!" I shouted, completely overreacting, but maybe subconsciously mimicking her trademark yell. The following night, although her bus was noisy and crowded with teenagers, she went out of her way to shout "GOOD NIGHT, DEAR," to me as I exited the back door, no trace of sarcasm in her voice at all.

 

On a different night, a homeless man boarded. As he balanced a halfway-smoked, snuffed-out cigarette on his bottom lip, he proceeded to search his pockets one by one for his transfer. He checked his jacket pockets; his shirt pocket; the front, back and leg pockets of his cargo pants, and then he moved on to the half-dozen or so bags he was carrying. The driver set the emergency brake and waited with her arms crossed in back of her head, as though she were sunning herself in Cabo, while he dug through his belongings. I seethed in my seat. Why doesn't she kick him off? This fool is just pretending to have a transfer. He's trying to break her down so he can get a free ride. After no forward motion for five minutes, which in TriMet time is 20 minutes, the man shouted "Aha!" and had held up the tiny slip of paper for her to see.

 

So if she could be so nice to Sir Many Pockets, why did she leave me shivering and alone in the Park Blocks? What a stone-cold bitch.

 

I flipped open my cell phone and called the transit tracker. The mechanized white male voice on the other end told me the next bus would arrive in 26 minutes. I cursed the voice and hung up. During the wait time, I marched down to the Safeway and bought a half-gallon of milk and a six-pack of beer.

 

When I left the store, my bus was just pulling up. I boarded. A burly young man was driving. I told him my regular driver failed to stop for me earlier. "What gives?" I asked.

 

"She had a customer-caused accident," he said. "I'm a fill-in driver."

 

I thought about possible scenarios. After so many near-misses with merging cars, did she finally get in a wreck? Did a fight break out on the bus? Did it involve guns? Did the stress become too much for her and she just up and quit?

 

"You could say she was in a hurry to change her uniform," the driver said.

 

"You mean someone vomited on her?"

 

"Yep," he said. "That's one of the risks you take with this job. Especially tonight, with the holiday weekend just starting. Lots of crazies out there."

 

Vomited on by a stranger. She didn't deserve that. Nobody deserves that. She was just trying to drive a bus, for Chrissakes. Make some money to pay her bills, like everybody else. I tried to imagine how I'd feel if someone on the bus barfed on me, or if someone leaned over my cubicle wall at work and let it fly. 

I felt ashamed that I was so quick to make her the target of my anger. Who really was the impatient person here, the one quick to judge? In my heart of hearts, I knew the answer: I was the true bitch of the bus.

 

P.S. St. Christopher, the patron saint of bus drivers, please keep our TriMet operators safe.

Results may vary

By Amy

Another day, another spin in the vortex of humanity known as the Mighty 6. Yesterday's ride in was so bleak that for a moment, after I got off the bus downtown, I began to doubt why I write about this topic in the first place.

Sure, like any halfway decent bullshitter (I majored in English in college), I can rationalize my habits: Since I am a captive audience on the bus twice a day, five days a week, anyway, why not share my quirky experiences and get some writing practice in to boot? Or, my favorite: The bus ride is a microcosm and metaphor of the overall human experience, so work with it. Explore it. Feel it. Analyze it. Well fuck it, I say. The best reason is that it gets me to write, which is something I couldn't claim three months ago, and writing is something I care about.

But I still can't answer the question: Why the bus? And on bad days: Is there something wrong with me for focusing on this depressing shit?

And yesterday was especially heinous. One of my all-time favorite quotes, from Snoop Dogg, seemed to apply: "If it ain't one thing it's a motherfuckin' other."

First, there was the driver, a silent, poker-faced man in a cop mustache who neglected to turn on the air-conditioning, even though it was hot and humid and the bus was stuffed full of people. Also, you can learn a lot about a driver's capacity for compassion by how willing they are to engage with the people in the front passenger seat opposite them, what in the bus operators' parlance is known as the "creep seat," "drone throne" or the "fool stool" (This precious insider knowledge is brought to you thanks to the public transportation 'zine The Constant Rider). This driver was having nothing to do with the talkative, eager and most likely mentally ill woman sitting there, though she had adjusted seats for two people in wheelchairs, fastened them in after they boarded, and alerted the driver when the bus reached their stops.

No seats were open, so I stood. I tried to avoid clobbering the sitting passengers in the head with my purse. To my right sat two young women who looked just out of their teens. One, in a short, flimsy brown dress, was talking loudly on her cell phone, saying "Where you at? I'll meet you on 82nd. I'll call you when I get there." After she hung up, she said to her seatmate, "With that motherfucking punk ass, I'm not Tanika. I have to remember that. My name is Ashley. My name is Ashley, Ashley, Ashley, Ashley." Both women busted out laughing.

Ashley and her friend got off at the MAX stop and a new pack of passengers replaced them. A clean-looking white couple scootched past me, and I, along with some other standing passengers, recoiled when I saw the brown-red bloodstains on both upper sleeves of the man's button-down shirt—two matching spots right over his biceps. The couple got off at the next stop—having ridden only about three blocks.

Toward the front, the lady in the fool stool had made a new friend, and the two women were having a lively discussion. Another passenger boarded: this time a big black man, probably in his late 50s, who looked like he could put some serious whup-ass on someone if he weren't so loaded. He teetered down the aisle, wearing a sports shirt that had the word "RESULTS" on the front in big letters. If he were the results, I thought, then I would not wish to undertake the endeavor that brought him about. He looked weary: The lower lids of his eyes sagged in red crescents like a basset hound's. "Spare some change," he chanted in a monotone over and over as he made his way to the back of the bus.

Seats were beginning to empty up front, so I grabbed one near the window, adjacent to the women in the fool stool. I wasn't there for very long when Results sat next to me, hemming me in.

"Spare some change," he said to the women.

"WHAT?" one of them yelled, and she looked at him as though he were covered in raw sewage.

In just those few seconds, I knew an invisible trigger had been cocked. There would be a fight. I would be pinned in.

"Excuse me," I said to the man, and he popped up to let me out. I scooted over to what had been his seat and was about to stand up, but hesitated because it seemed like he was going to remain standing while he argued with the women.

No luck. He glared down at me. "If you say 'excuse me' then get the hell off the bus," he said. I got the hell out of his seat. Quickly. He continued to shoot me dirty looks for the remainder of his ride, after I had found a new seat toward the back.

I no longer question my instincts. Although I chose not to fight that battle, I walked away in rage, which eventually deteriorated to depression stemming from a feeling of powerlessness. Then I had to go to work and stare at a computer screen, all pumped up with adrenaline.

A while back I watched a similar situation go down on the bus. A young man, maybe a PSU student, had the window seat, albeit there was a wall where the window would be. A hardened-looking woman in the seat next to his was arguing on her cell phone and gesticulating wildly. The two obviously weren't together. The man ignored her, though her hands at times flailed awfully close to his face. I got the feeling that something bad was going to happen. It did. The woman, screaming at someone on the phone, jumped to her feet and slammed her fist into the wall, inches above the man's head. He didn't do anything but sit there, motionless, and stare ahead.

Was he frozen with fear? Was he high on tranquilizers, or in a deep state of meditation? Or was he just dumber than me? Or braver?

Do your stuff

By Amy

I was waiting for the No. 6 bus at the stop on MLK and Fargo on a terribly hot afternoon, one of those glaring days when the sun lit up every crevice of the boulevard, exposing dried up grass and weeds and cigarette butts in the patches of dirt that escaped being covered with concrete. Things were hopping: Cars whooshed past me, adding to the gritty, heavy aroma of exhaust hanging in the air, and workmen were pulling their trucks into the parking lot for a lunch break at the Popeyes chicken across the street.

 

About a block away from my stop sits Reggie's barbershop. Reggie's building displays one of my favorite neighborhood works of art on its northern wall: a painting of a bespectacled barber and his young client, both smiling a little too broadly. In the left lower corner of the mural, there's a blue ghostlike figure that never fails to fascinate me. What's it doing there? Are the men wearing happy faces to conceal their fear of the blue specter? What were the intentions of the mysterious artist "Lissette"?

 

In front of Reggie's some children had set up a table and chairs—a lemonade or Kool-Aid stand, I assumed. I could tell from afar that they were young kids by the way they couldn't sit still—popping up and down out of their chairs and bopping to and fro around the table like ants near a hole to their colony. The kids reminded me of my 5-year-old nephew, Tavish, who on Thanksgiving, wearing pajama bottoms and a towel fastened around his neck like a superhero cape, ran about 60 laps around the first floor of my house—through the dining room, living room, front entryway, kitchen, dining room, over and over—while Beck's CD "Guero" played. Sometimes when he passed us, he would tilt his skinny white shoulders in a sly little dance move in time to the beat. My brother and I, creaky and weary from L-tryptophan, aging and the necessity of having to work long hours for those things that were freely and happily provided to us when we were small, wished aloud that we could harness about one-fourth of his energy for ourselves.

 

The bus wasn't coming anytime soon, so I started to walk the block toward the stand. I don't have children, and for me, happening upon one of these beverage rackets, designated by their construction-paper signs written in shaky childish block letters, can be as rare as seeing a bear in the woods. But following this summer's trend among the preschool set, even Tavish had put on a lemonade and cookie stand at his home near Seattle. Over the phone, I asked him about his sales pitch. "I told them you can have some strawberry lemonade and cookies," Tavish explained, "but first you have to give me the money." He ended up raking in the bucks. Sometimes being direct pays off.

 

As I approached, I saw that three little boys manned the stand on the sidewalk in front of Reggie's. Except these kids weren't selling mere lemonade—no—they had a snow cone machine, a clear plastic box filled with ice of the rare consistency and texture to hold its shape when served in paper cones, which these tiny entrepreneurs also had in supply, along with paper cups.

 

"You want a slushie?" a flirty little boy in French braids asked me. "How much?" I asked. "50 cents . . . I mean a dollar," he said, grinning. "You mean a dollar for two slushies," I said, citing the price advertised on their sign. 

"What flavor do you want?" all the boys asked me, talking over one another. "We have cotton candy, cherry and blueberry." And indeed, they had professional quality bottles of syrup, the kind found at ballpark concession stands—not anything so lowly as fruit juice or Kool-Aid or things their parents could buy at a regular grocery store.

 

I chose cherry flavor and the boys set to business. As I watched them scramble around the table, it slowly dawned on me that each boy had a designated chore: The charmer in braids was the salesman, the boy at the machine filled the cups with ice and provided the straws, and the third kid, who had waves and curlicues shaved into his close-clipped hair at the temples—probably the son or grandson of Reggie—was in charge of flavor.

 

I chose a paper cup, figuring it would be easier to smuggle on the bus than a cone, and after a loud and long discussion and negotiation, I went with a straw with a spoon built into the end instead of their other model, a spoonless straw that bent near the top.

 

After Mr. Ice packed my cup to maximum capacity, he handed it off to the boy with the designer haircut.

 

"All right Syrup Man, do your stuff!" the salesman shouted as he performed a crazy bendy-legged, stretchy dance. Syrup Man drowned the ice in red cherry syrup, pouring it on so heavily that he elicited a loud "Whoa!" from his partners. I gave the salesman two quarters, and they all thanked me for my business.

 

That cherry syrup was mighty powerful stuff—my tongue remained red and the back of my mouth tasted like Robitussin for the rest of the day—not even Extra Polar Ice mint gum or strong coffee could cloak it. Maybe I should have chosen cotton candy instead. Funny how tastes change over time. When I was those boys' age, while walking home from Beaumont kindergarten, I'd buy bubblegum ice cream from Rose's on Fremont, not caring if it stained my mouth a bright blue. Now I'd prefer an organic green tea gelato drizzled with raspberry coulis, please.

 

 

File under 'WTF?'

By Amy

Sometimes actions speak volumes, but this kid had a lot of volume, taking up more than his share of space on the bus with his two giant pieces of luggage that blocked the back-door exit. Even this kid's hair was voluminous: His dark curls had been combed out into a tidy eight-inch Afro that radiated from his scalp.

The trouble was, the bus was crowded, and it took passengers, some with small children, a long time to weave their way through the aisle of bodies to the back door and then squeeze through the sliver of space between the young man's luggage and the barrier to get out.

The bus driver noticed the slowdown by the time the people who needed to had stepped off the bus. "Clear the back door," he yelled. "I need you to keep the exits clear."

A woman, in her mid-50s and a wearing a pink T-shirt, who up until then had been sitting quietly next to me, shouted back at the driver: "The doors are clear and they're already out, SHITHEAD!"

Along the route: Popeyes

By Amy

A little over a week ago, the Oregonian ran an article about a Mr. Tremayne Durham of New York, who was accused of killing a Gresham man in an ice cream truck deal gone wrong. Tremayne had special-ordered the truck, probably the kind that plays cloying tunes like "Music Box Dancer," from an Oregon company for $18,000, but later changed his mind and was unable to get his money back. So, as any reasonable person would do, he crossed the United States by bus, police believe, to Oregon, looking to exact revenge on the company's owner. Tremayne ended up tracking down a former employee of the ice cream truck company, Adam Calbreath, and shot him to death instead.

 

Two years later, Tremayne appeared before a Multnomah County judge, facing the death penalty on aggravated murder charges. He cut a deal: He would plead guilty to the accusations in exchange for a fast-food chicken dinner from Popeyes. The judge agreed to the offer. That afternoon, the newly minted murderer feasted on Popeyes chicken (with some KFC chicken thrown in, too), mashed potatoes, coleslaw, carrot cake and ice cream.

 

Although I don't understand Tremayne's reasoning regarding his plea, I can empathize with his addiction. I face Popeyes twice a day at the No. 6 bus stop near my house. The sight of the mustard-brown-and-red restaurant triggers my craving for a deep-fried, golden-battered, artery-obstructing temptation that comes with a spork: a two-piece Popeyes chicken dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy and a buttermilk biscuit.

 

When an east wind blows, the aroma of Popeyes chicken wafts into my backyard—it's as if the restaurant had stored the pure essence of fried-chicken scent in a pressurized tank and pumped it out of a rooftop vent to tempt everyone living within a half-mile radius. Sometimes, I'll be outside mowing the lawn or gardening and the smell of it will hit me and I'll drop what I'm doing to get some. I'll drive the half-block and use the drive-through (I have never sat down inside—for no reason except that I prefer to order and eat Popeyes in private). And if it's well into the evening, such as when the bus drops me off after work and the restaurant doors are locked, my behavior is even more shameful: I will walk through the Popeyes drive-through, aware that people are staring as I belly up to the window to collect my bag of food. But I'm not the only one—on a weekend night not long ago I saw two teenage girls in short skirts standing amid a line of cars and Cadillac Escalades, their skinny legs appearing vulnerable in the headlights as they waited for their order.

 

In 2005, when I was buying my current house in the Eliot neighborhood, the previous owners—a white, professional couple in the advertising industry, stapled their own word-processed addendum about their impressions of the neighborhood to the official seller's disclosure form. Under "Things We Love," they mentioned Wild Oats organic market (now Whole Foods), the easy bicycle access to the eastside esplanade, and Acadia (an "awesome Creole restaurant"). Under another heading, "Things We're Most Disappointed With" (not "Things We Hate," mind you, but are disappointed with, as when parents are most disappointed when their 5-year-old smacks another kid at playgroup), they mentioned the people who go door-to-door and beg for money and the junkman who used to live across the street and pick engine carcasses apart in his front yard. As for Popeyes, in their Love list they called it "the best fried chicken in town," but they were Disappointed with this disturbing trend:

 

 "Some inconsiderate people throw their trash from Popeye's chicken right on the sidewalk. About once every three weeks, there's usually a piece of it somewhere on the front parking strip or the retaining wall."

 

I haven't found many chicken bones in my yard since moving in, but I am pleased to have discovered that the time it takes to walk from Popeyes to my house is exactly the time it would take to consume a piece of chicken smaller than a breast. [Also, if the couple who sold me the house is reading this, I'd like to say I'm most disappointed that you failed to disclose the fact that the refrigerator and dishwasher leaked, that the basement had a tendency to flood during a heavy rain, and that during our final real estate negotiations you tried to sell me your houseplants for $450 because you couldn't ship them to San Francisco. But, on the other hand, you did have someone redo the wood floors and paint all the rooms pretty colors, so thanks for that.]

 

See where it takes you

By Amy

It was a hot and humid summer day, and everybody on the bus suffered. Even the air-conditioning on the bus couldn't make up for the unrelenting heat. All of the seats had been taken, and the people without seats filled the aisle from end to end and spilled into the yellow-bordered zones near the front and back doors, where passengers usually are forbidden to stand.

If you were wearing shorts, sweat dripped from where your knees and thighs touched. People who already stank got stinkier in the heat. Students pushed their heavy backpacks into their neighbors' bodies just to gain a little personal space—a bus move I call "backpacking," and the people who sat along the aisle had to endure having a standing person's backpack, purse or ass in their face. It was altogether unpleasant.

But the bus driver, a big-boned, tough woman with short, gray hair who looked like she would be at home doling out cooked cabbage to inmates in a prison cafeteria in the former Soviet Union, kept picking up more people and cramming them in. Apparently, our bus was late, or the bus ahead of us was early or simply forgot to pick people up. Each stop meant at least eight more bodies, adding to our misery.

A tiny, mousy, middle-aged white woman in the back stairwell couldn't take it anymore. She was talking on her cell phone, loud enough for everyone to hear: "Hello, is this TriMet? I have a complaint. I'm on the No. 6 bus, and the driver keeps picking up more people even though the bus is full. It makes absolutely no sense, and I think it's a safety violation."

The other passengers rode quietly, ignoring the woman and trying to endure the discomfort. Relief was ahead; the MAX station, where most people debarked on the route, was just a few stops away. In the back, a baby started to cry.

The woman in the stairwell kept up. "I'd like to talk to a supervisor." She again repeated her complaint, apparently to a different person on the line. "No, I said I want a supervisor."

The bus rolled up to a stop near Northeast MLK and Broadway. More people crammed inside. The woman in the stairwell continued to rant.

But something was wrong. Two minutes had passed, and the bus wasn't moving. An outcry erupted from the passengers.

The driver got on the microphone. "If you don't like the way I'm driving, I guess I'll just wait here until a supervisor shows up."

Everyone's attention turned toward the woman in the stairwell, who was still on the phone. "This bus is over capacity," she said. "I want to talk to someone in charge."

Shut up, I thought. Shut up or I'll be late for work in my air-conditioned office building. I imagined punching and scratching my way through the crowd to get to her. It would be bad for anyone in my path.

A grandmotherly black woman dressed for church in a cobalt-blue suit and matching hat turned in her seat and faced the woman in the stairwell. "Shut the hell up," She said.

The complainer's eyes widened. Soon everybody was yelling at her to shut up. Faced with a mob of angry people, she called for the driver to open the back door and got off, but not without a parting shot to the driver: "I'll have your job for this." 

We started rolling again. Two greasy white toughs stood near me. Both had what looked to be blue jail tats on their faces and hands. One man's hair had been shaved to the skin on the sides and left long in back—an extreme mullet of sorts, but more menacing than comical. He stared at the woman on the sidewalk as the bus pulled away.

"Snitch," he hissed.

The roughest ride: a question

By Amy

The passenger must have lived a hardscrabble life. Deep furrows had been etched into the leathery skin of his face, and his short, dishwater blond hair looked dried up and wind-whipped. Incongruously, he wore one of those Bluetooth earpieces that make people look like the Borg from Star Trek.

He was talking to two white, middle-aged, mom-types also riding the No. 6., both with short hair and decked out in T-shirts, one lime-green and one coral, that probably were 100% organic cotton. One woman wore dragonfly earrings, like the kind you could find at Backyard Bird Shop or a natural clothing store.

"The roughest buses are the 4, 72 and the 6," the man told the women. "Once you've survived those, you can survive anything."

I thought about what he said. I've traveled many a mile on TriMet, and the roughest bus for me, at least psychologically, was the No. 10. When I took it, about 6 years ago, it passed Fernwood Middle School just as the kids were getting out. 

The kids had no boundaries or self-control. I would find myself, an adult, sitting in the middle of sunflower-seed-throwing fights and children shouting obscenities at one another. I always wanted to ask them "Did your mama teach you those manners?" but I refrained. That was a battle for another day.

So, readers, I ask you, what do you think is the roughest bus, and why?

Rashaan and Juliet

By Amy

 

I'm on the bus for five minutes and already I'm dropping down into everybody's business like Spiderman on his thread. I have my sunglasses on and my face behind a magazine. Perfect cover for my mission. Hell, I'm so stealthy I should work for Homeland Security.

 

Two men in seats across from me are talking, but it's more like they're orating; their voices are loud enough for the benefit of all passengers. One's in his mid-20s at the most and wears a crocheted Muslim skullcap. A red T-shirt strains against his bulging, muscular chest and arms. The other's a long, lean elderly gentlemen in a black baseball cap, green Army-issue jacket and gold-lensed aviator sunglasses.

 

"So I gave her an ultimatum," the young man says. "You can choose me or the money. She chose the money.

 

"Her family was white and upper middle-class. They didn't like their daughter being with a black man, and they threatened to cut her off if she stayed with me. So she chose them."

 

The young man lets that soak in, and then continues.

 

"But for a while there it was cool. They lived on some property near Monmouth. Her dad had a boat. And they had horses.

 

"In fact, that was how we met. She came to Job Corps to teach us how to ride horses. That was the first time I ever touched a horse. I was good with them. I was the only one in the group who could back one up without it kicking."

 

"That rodeo talk," the old man says. "I don't know much about rodeos."

 

Outside, on MLK, a cop car guns past the bus, sirens wailing.

 

"I thank God for police officers, the old man says. Without them it would be the wild, wild West."

 

"People are jackals," says the young man.

 

"Well I thank God for the police. They saved my life," the old man says.

 

"I been in jail twice," the young man says.

 

"We all make mistakes. That's what we do," the old man says, with genuine compassion. "I thank God for police, lawyers, doctors. Authority. That's what they represent. Authority. Saved my life."

 

Little dog

By Amy

Sometimes after a stressful night at work, or if I'm simply in a cranky mood, I don't want to deal with anyone on the bus, even though since I started this blog I have made it my mission to be on the lookout for bus stories.

When I'm in stress mode, I cease to observe. I cross my arms and try to keep my leg from touching that of the person sitting beside me. I stare out the window, avoiding eye contact with passengers as they board or turning around to find out who's causing a ruckus in the back seats.

I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to hear anybody's drama. I shut down.

But on this particular summer night, as I waited under the antique street lamp in the South Park Blocks for the No. 6, I felt open to life. I wore a summer dress that let the warm breeze play on my arms and legs. The tall, gnarled trees smelled moist and lush, and the park, with its formal concrete walks and benches below a canopy of green, reminded me of the parks in the historic district of Savannah, Georgia, one of my favorite places. All that was missing were whispers of Spanish moss draping from the tree branches.

I forgot, for a few sweet minutes, my usual worries: about being 40 and childless; about being completely dependent on a job that I like a lot but has social-life depriving hours. I forgot about the people whom I had loved and lost, and how I wronged some people who had loved me.

In the park, at that moment, I had hope for myself and for humanity, for the present and the future. If someone had asked me for money right then, I would have gladly parted with a dollar.

Giddy and bright-eyed, I got on the bus and sat in one of the forward-facing seats. After we traveled a few blocks, something brushed against my ankle, giving me a start.

"Excuse me," someone said.

I turned around. There sat a woman, a husky blonde of about 50, in a flowered blouse and beige slacks that looked like they came from Sears. She looked like the type of woman who had given up and let her looks go, who had left behind her hopes of romantic love the day she crossed over into women's plus sizes. Indeed, she wore no wedding ring.

I smiled at her. "I thought a little dog brushed my leg." I said. "Made me jump."

"A dog?" she said. Her voice rose. "That wasn't a dog, that was my purse." Her eyes were small and beady beneath a pair of plastic-framed, utilitarian glasses. 

She spoke as if she were spitting the words at me. "Why would I bring a dog on the bus?" she said. "Who would think something so crazy and stupid?"

"Excuse me for fucking living," I said. I could barely get the words out, and I'm not sure if she even heard me. I turned away from her and faced forward in my seat. My breath became shallow and my throat tightened. Good old fight or flight.

Then the tears came, and I knew I was a goner. Once I start crying, it's very hard for me to stop. Crying when angry runs in my family: My mother is a chronic case, and my brother used to be until he hit his teen years. Hair-trigger criers completely undermine any semblance of toughness or dominance or nonchalance they are trying to put forth. It should be considered a disability.

Teardrops splashed on my dress, leaving dark, wet circles, but I kept silent. I didn't want anyone to know I was crying, and I didn't want anyone to feel sorry for me, especially HER. Irresponsibly, she had allowed her meanness to roam off-leash, and it bit me in the nuts. Fuck it, I thought. I give up.

Heading north, we passed the darkened storefronts and dimly lit bars along Southeast MLK. If anyone had stepped on or off the bus I didn't notice—I was that upset. But, by the time we crossed Burnside into Northeast, I had managed to calm down somewhat.

We reached my stop. As I was about to stand up, the woman tapped me on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry I was mean to you earlier," she said. "That was inappropriate."

That was all she said. No "I'm having a bad day." No "my dog just died." No explanation. No excuse.

"It's OK," I said, avoiding her eyes as I made for the door.

After I stepped off the bus, I began to cry.

 

Ba-dum dum

By Amy

A woman with long, pink and glittery artificial nails was talking on her cell phone:

"Hi. This is Grandma. I just wanted to tell you I'll be at the courthouse today to see what's going on with Destiny. She's supposed to show up there around three."

In other words, Grandma has a court date with Destiny.

Holy driver

By Amy

From a male bus passenger who sat in the seat closest to the driver:

"Holy driver, you've been down too long in the midnight sea

Oh what's becoming of me.

Ride the tiger

You can see his stripes but you know he's clean

Oh don't you see what I mean

Gotta get away

Holy driiiiii----va---ahhhhhh!"

(An aside: Behind me live some twentysomethings in a punk/metal band. One weekend they had a blowout party, and I heard Dio emanating from their house into mine, like a rainbow in the dahhhhhk!)

No longer the observer

By Amy

Last month, while working out with my personal trainer (I love saying that), I broke a bone in my right foot, the fifth metatarsal--the bone between my ankle and little toe. Since then, I have been wearing this big, black orthopedic boot that hits me right below the knee and is square-shaped and oversized around the foot. I wish I had a matching boot for my left foot, then I would wear miniskirts and stomp around like a bad-ass Bride of Frankenstein.

But instead, being off-balance, I walk with a limp, and if I remain standing long enough, my foot begins to ache. The doctor gave me Vicodin for the pain, but that seems excessive, like blasting at flies with a shotgun. 

Last week I was standing at my usual bus stop on MLK on my way to work. The bus didn't seem to be coming anytime soon, and my foot was starting to ache, so I walked the few blocks south to the covered bus shelter, which has a bench with two seats. On the way to the shelter I passed the Friends of Trees house with its unwelcoming, overgrown yard; the office of the mysterious accountant G.A. Sosanya; and the bright yellow Battery-X-Change, where, at least according to their sign, they will swap your dead car battery for a new one ad infinitum.

An overweight white guy in a baseball cap and T-shirt, I'd say in his late 50s, was standing near the shelter. As he watched me lumber toward him in my oversize boot, he set his cup of coffe on one the bench seats, so I was forced to take the other one, despite having the sensation that this man was standing too close, invading my personal space. But I get that feeling every time I share the shelter with another stranger--it's a tight fit.

As soon as I sat down, I pulled a book out of my purse and began reading, which in mass-transit commuter language means Do Not Fuck With Me.

The big man looked down at me. "Tell me," he said, "do you know if Lake Grove is near Lake Oswego?"

"I don't know," I said. I really didn't know. I went back to my book. Get a clue, buddy, I thought.

The man paced back and forth in front of me for about three minutes, humming a happy and ridiculous tune over and over, as if to fill the silence between us. I looked down the street for the telltale white rectangle of the bus with its black sign and comforting orange letters. It wasn't coming.

Another man stepped into the shelter. 

"It's not easy being green!" he yelled. 

He was chunky, black and around 50 years old, wearing a baseball cap, polo shirt and pristine white sneakers that glowed like they just came out of the box.

"Hey, isn't that from Kermit the Frog?" Humming Man asked.

"I am an American Negro," the black man yelled, and then began singing another loud song. He was so close enough to me that I could smell the beer on his breath.

I put my book face-down on the bench. "Hey, guys," I said. "I have a broken foot and it hurts, and I just want to sit here and be left in peace without both of you in my face."

The black man continued to sing, loudly. I got angrier. 

"Look," I said to him. "I'll give you a dollar if you just be quiet until the bus comes." I dug my wallet out from my purse and opened it. Two fives and a ten.

"It's your lucky day," I said. "The smallest I have is a five." I gave him the bill. 

The man wouldn't stop talking, confirming my suspicion that he was not of the ilk that could be persuaded with mere money.

"I am an American Negro," he shouted. "What are you?" he asked me.

"I'm white."

"Yes, but what are you?" he asked.

"German, I guess," I said.

"Hey, I'm German too," the white guy said. 

Right then the bus pulled up, and the black man was mumbling to himself about how he was "going to buy a hamburger and beer with my $5." He never did board the bus. 

Schadenfreude

By Amy

You could say the bus driver was in a bad mood. Earlier on the route, he had to kick off a thirtyish-looking man with a baby face for trying to start a fight with some teenagers. 

"I let you ride for free, and this is how you pay me back," the driver said to Baby Face.

Baby Face got off without a fight, but flashed some gang signs at the teens as the bus drove away.

A while later, we braked at the on the east end of the Hawthorne bridge, the last stop before it crosses downtown into Fareless Square. Passengers board, including a guy in business attire.

"I don't have any change," the businessman says, showing the driver his empty hands.

"Then you going to have to walk across," the driver says. 

The businessman steps off. The driver slams the door after him and moves on.

Little red lie

By Amy

Snippet of a cell phone conversation overheard one night last week: "I can't come over, sweetie. I'm covered in fake blood."

Swing shifter

By Amy

I catch the No. 6 bus to work in the afternoon on weekdays and ride it south on MLK, over the Hawthorne Bridge and into downtown Portland, where I get off on Southwest Third Avenue. After work, at night, I wait at a poorly lit stop in the Park Blocks on Columbia until the bus picks me up and deposits me near a Popeyes chicken restaurant in Eliot, the Northeast Portland neighborhood where I live. The commute is about three miles each way.

I ride the bus for the wrong reasons.

I don't ride the bus to save the environment, although by using mass transit I help reduce pollution and the use of fossil fuels and gasoline (now above $4 a gallon). Plus, the city buses run on biodiesel, a fuel made out of what used to be the cooking medium for some poor soul's Chicken McNuggets.

I don't ride the bus to save time. When I drove, it took me five minutes each way to my work (which shall remain unnamed) --a straight shot over the Fremont Bridge and onto I-405 through downtown. No problem. But on the bus, my ride is usually 30 minutes each way, provided nothing goes down to slow it up. And on this line, shit can go down at any given moment.

No, I ride the bus because about a year ago, sadly, the hotel lot where I secretly, shamelessly, flagrantly parked for free for two years came under new ownership, and the new owners caught on to my game pretty quick. And parking downtown is pretty expensive, at a minimum for me at that time about $5 a day. So over the course of two years I saved--well, a lot of money. The point is, I got one over on the Man--the hotel space was empty, so why not use it?

I didn't want to pay to park downtown--parking prices kept going up. Plus it sucked trying to find parking amid the constant construction that is still going on right now. Then my work offered employees a new program that lets us buy bus passes before the tax is taken out of our checks. So I bit. A lot of us bit.

So I'm busing it. I share space in a box every day with strangers, other sentient beings, who, as the Buddhists say, have the potential to repel me, attract me or completely escape my radar.

My coworkers, friends and I who've gone public transit enjoy swapping bus stories. I'd like to share my stories, and let them share their stories, with you.