BUS STORY # 290 (Shorts 25)

Today, In The Parking Lot, © All Rights Reserved, a photo by dan.castro on Flickr.

There’s a bit of a traffic jam at the Yale-Kathryn intersection this morning. Seems there’s an unattended lawn mower waiting to make a left turn onto Kathryn.

***

Kid gets on the bus just past Skateboard Park. He’s carrying his skateboard -- in three broken pieces.

***

He’s into it. 15 or thereabouts, phone in left hand, wire running from phone to left ear piece, and he’s drumming on his thigh and moving his head, mouthing the lyrics and no holding back, with facial expressions that surely express the lyrics. For a moment, his right hand quits slapping his thigh, grasps an invisible drum stick, and bangs away.

***

“[Ashrita Furman] has the record for the fastest mile with a milk bottle on one’s head: seven minutes and forty-seven seconds. In New York, in 1998, he walked 80.96 miles with a milk bottle on his head, which took twenty-three hours and thirty-five minutes. While he was training, children sometime threw stones at the bottle and shot at it with slingshots. A man hoping to startle Furman into dropping the bottle sneaked up behind him and barked like a dog. People stopped him and asked for directions. A bus driver swerved into a puddle to drench him.” -- Alec Wilkinson, from “Higher, Faster, Madder” in The New Yorker, December 19 & 26, 2011, p. 62.

***

A bunch of kids are exiting through the front door for Cesar Chavez. The driver calls out, “Have a good day. And no fighting, hear?” There is some kind of response that the driver hears but I don’t. He points to one of them and says, “I heard all about you trying to fight the whole school yesterday. Try and behave yourself, OK?”

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The photo at the top of this story is titled “Today, In The Parking Lot,” © All Rights Reserved, and is posted with the kind permission of dan.castro. You can see all dan.castro’s photos on Flickr at: www.flickr.com/photos/72935557@N00/

BUS STORY # 289 (Field Trip)

City Bus at La Cueva High School, a photo by busboy4 on Flickr.

This morning, we pull up to the stop just past Wyoming, and a guy in a bush hat steps on board, shows the driver something, then announces, “Field Trip!” About 500 La Cueva High School students then board the bus.

OK, 500 is an exaggeration.

But there are an awful lot of them, and they fill all the empty seats and aisle and every spare nook and cranny in between. They’re on their way to UNM and an anatomy lab. I consider making a joke about the student body going to the anatomy lab, but think better of it.

Our driver does a wonderful job of looking out for the riders who need to exit between Wyoming and the stop by University Hospital. It’s impossible to hear the pull cord signal back here, so either she’s closer to the speaker, or else she’s got a visual signal of some sort up there. When she does stop, she keeps her eye out for the riders exiting. It’s taking them a while to worm their way to the doors.

By the time we reach San Mateo, where the junior high kids going to Wilson start boarding, there really is no more room on the bus. The driver stops for each clump of kids and assorted adults and explains we are full and apologizes.

She doesn’t have to do this. She could have changed the signage on the front of the bus and on the sidewalk side to read “Sorry. Bus Full,” and just sailed on past the stops. She’s a sweetheart.

One of the high schoolers standing beside me notes a lot of “those kids” at the stops have skateboards. “Dude, it’s all downhill from here.” He’s referring to the fact that every west-running street east of the Rio Grande runs downhill from the mountains toward the river. Theoretically, they could push off from any of the stops and just coast all the way to school.

Then he adds: “They buy these expensive skateboards, then just walk around with them.”

Even at my age, I know better. The little kids are into tricks. They’re the ones over at Skateboard Park when school is out. And at the bus stops, they practice standstill jumps and pivots and balancing while everyone else who’s older is texting or tweeting or otherwise working their electronic toys. It’s the big kids, like the ones I see around the university, who use them for transportation.

So how is it this old man knows so much about skaters?  All those field trips on ABQ RIDE, that’s how.

BUS STORY # 288 (The Continuing Adventures Of The Man Whose Chevy Nova Is A Toyota Corolla)

Happy Car. Happy Life., a photo by busboy4 on Flickr.

He joins me at the corner of Yale and Randolph where I am waiting for the 50.

“When’s the next bus?”

I tell him five minutes or so.

He tells me he’s just come from an administration office where the city sent him to take care of two tickets after he called the number on the tickets and asked where he needed to go, only after he got here and filled out all the paperwork, they told him he was in the wrong place and needed to go to Municipal Court.

He was already irritated by just getting the tickets. One of them says it’s an abandoned car, which it isn’t. It threw a rod a while back is all. He took it to Jim’s over on Lead, near Washington -- I tell him I know the place. They’re good, he says, but pricy. They told him they could fix it for twenty-five hundred.

Well, the car isn’t worth twenty-five hundred, he explains. So he got it back in his designated parking space at his apartment where it sat until the management told him he couldn’t park it there anymore because it was a junker. Never mind he was paying for that space and it was his car. So he moved it out onto the street.

The bus comes right about here. During the break while we’re boarding, I’m thinking there is something familiar about him, but I can’t put my finger on it.

I sit on the bench seat on the driver’s side, and he sits on the bench seat across from me and continues his story.

He was sure he could either get the engine fixed for a few hundred dollars, or else find an engine from an old Chevy Nova -- or a Corolla -- they’re the same car, transverse engine --

Bam! Now I remember. I ran into him about a year ago at the bus stop on Lomas, across from University Hospital. (You can read the story here.) He told me all about his car troubles then, and it sounds like I’m picking up right where he left off.

He doesn’t look quite as dapper as he did last year. He’s unshaven. The straw hat has been replaced by a worn baseball cap. I think his hair’s shorter, too. The big sunglasses are gone, replaced by a pair of large-lens plastic glasses. He’s got a light blue denim work shirt on over a T-shirt, and a pair of pants without the drape of last year’s trousers.

I look for the missing front teeth, but I can’t see them. I figure I must have been sitting on the bench the first time and looking up at him. We’re level with one another now.

He’s been explaining how, if he could get the car fixed up, which he could do if the Feds would just give him his tax refund which he’s been trying to get since 2008, then he would have something to drive instead of having to do so much walking and waiting for the bus. Or else he could sell it.

He explains he’s been out of work, and he’s having difficulty getting financially stabilized. The last place he worked was at the Circle K which was all right until a Canadian company came in and bought up the franchise.

He also describes some regional area business deals which I can’t keep up with. One of those led to his transfer, against his wishes, to another store in town where, contrary to his understanding with his old regional manager, he was moved to the graveyard shift. When he protested, his new manager told him it was the graveyard or no job.

He worked until he developed an inguinal hernia which a fellow employee who used to be a nurse diagnosed and told him he needed to get fixed before it strangulated and killed him.

By this time, we’re at Central, but he’s not getting off, and I decide to ride on over to the campus, then walk to Lomas. As it turns out, he gets off at the same stop, and we are heading over to Lomas together.

He is describing the frustrating experience of trying to access health care in the public health environment -- lots of waiting, lots of misdirection -- until one day he walks in and they take him right in. By this time, he’s in real pain, and isn’t sure he can continue working since work involves lifting heavy pallets of soft drinks for the store room.

They work him up, schedule him for surgery. He goes to work that night, tells his manager. She says, well, he’s got a week of vacation he can use...

We are halfway to the duck pond when he tells me he’s heading to the right. He smiles, and there they are -- or aren’t: the missing top front teeth. I wish him good luck and walk on.

Somewhere past the duck pond, it suddenly strikes me he’s taking his own usual way to the same bus stop I’m heading for, the bus stop across from UNMH where we first met. I’m sure he’s wanting to catch the 5, and that I will see him again when I get there.

I get there just as the 5 does. But he’s not there. I scan the campus behind me, ready to ask the driver to wait up, there’s another rider coming. But he doesn’t show. The Blue Line comes and goes, and then the 11 arrives some 10 minutes later. There’s no telling where he went.

BUS STORY # 287 (Bridging The Generation Gap)

Old and new, © photo Ken Coton (Ashwater Press), , a photo by Ashwater on Flickr.

I take the aisle-facing seat behind the driver. A junior high kid takes the seat across from me.

I notice him because he’s more dressed up than I’m used to seeing from junior high kids. Nothing particularly fancy: a sports shirt, tucked into some khakis, sneakers. Clean sneakers. Hair’s cut neatly, too.

A few stops later, a trim young woman boards the bus.

She’s dressed for success: black blazer, at-the-knees gray sheath skirt, black tights, low heels.

I can't help but notice how nicely filled those tights are, and without being really aware of it, I’m set to track them as they walk past me.

But I’m distracted by the kid sitting across from me who seems to have made the very same appraisal, and the very same plan.

I lose his face as she walks between us. But on the other side, I see him following those legs up the aisle.

She’s a few rows past us when I see his eyebrows rise appreciatively. And then he swings his face back toward the front windshield.

I’m grinning. The kid’s just taken me back to when everything was still new. My own eyebrows were up most of the time.

Now I become aware of my thoughts, and I laugh out loud. The kid and the other riders sitting across from me look up. I shake my head in a “never mind” kind of gesture.

The kid’s probably pegged me for one of those crazy old men who ride around on the bus talking and laughing to themselves.  But hey, kid, turns out we’re not so different, you and I. 
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The photo at the top of this story is titled “Old and new,” © photo Ken Coton (Ashwater Press), and is published with permission. You can see Ken Coton’s photostream on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ashwater

BUS STORY # 286 ("We Will")

Northbound Yale Bus and Smith's, a photo by busboy4 on Flickr.

We’re picking up the after-dinner crowd from Project Share. I always see a mix of new faces and old familiar ones, but everybody boarding always seems to know everybody else.

This evening, there’s a couple I haven’t seen before. I don’t realize they’re a couple until she sits in his lap when there aren’t any seats nearby. He makes a show of how heavy she is, but they are both having fun. The guy across the aisle gallantly offers her his seat, and she takes it.

I’m guessing they’re in their late 40s-early 50s, but they are wearing the patina of the street, and may look older than they really are. He’s in jeans and a flannel shirt jacket. She’s wearing her blonde hair in a pony tail.

After she moves across the aisle to her own seat, she calls out what a wonderful dinner they’ve just had. She repeats, a wonderful dinner, then adds, thank you Jesus.

She doesn’t get any amens, but she happily plunges into the hubbub of conversation filling the bus.

A short while later, we are approaching the Smiths at the corner of Yale and Coal.

She points out the window and says that’s where they used to live, about four blocks east of Smiths. She remembers one snowy evening she and her husband were pushing a grocery cart full of groceries back to their apartment.

Her husband takes over the story. They were pushing that cart down the street, down a tire track pathway made in the snow by passing cars. They had four hundred dollars worth of groceries in that cart. There was ice under the snow, and it was slow going. And every time they heard a car coming, they had to quick get the cart and themselves into the snow by the side of the street.

She adds, it took them two hours to get home that night.

Four hundred dollars worth of groceries in that cart, he says.

We had a freezer back then, she says. And then she adds, half to him, half to us, "Don’t worry, we’ll get back to where we were. We will."

BUS STORY # 285 (Portrait # 17: Poster Child)

HE HIT ME. AGAIN., a photo by busboy4 on Flickr.

The bus is crowded. People are standing in the aisle even up here on the back platform.

Through all the shuffling of standing riders, I pick up on the quick, small, involuntary jerking movements of the young woman sitting across from me and one seat over.

She’s a small, delicate blonde girl, late teens or early 20s. Even though it’s already dark outside, she’s got on sunglasses. But I now see her mouth is twitching, and she can’t seem to get comfortable. She is, I realize, terribly agitated and trying very hard not to cry.

Then I see the bruises. One on her right cheek, one near the right corner of her mouth. They are small bruises. New bruises. “Knuckle-size,” I find myself thinking. Later, when she turns her head toward the back of the bus, I catch sight of a third small bruise on her left jaw.

She has earphones connected to her cell. She periodically looks at the cell, and then texts furiously. Later, I pick up on the fact that the cell lights up when she gets a text. That’s when she looks, then replies.

The process aggravates the twitching.

Once, when the cell lights up, she looks at it and just shakes her head, ever so slightly, no.

Up by Manzano High School, we pass an electronic billboard. Among the repeating images for local television and businesses is the full-face view of a battered young woman not much older than my young co-rider. To the left of her face, the caption reads: “HE HIT ME.” To the right: “AGAIN.” Beneath her face, the billboard urges us to “stop the cycle of abuse” and gives us a number to call.

But she doesn’t see the billboard. She’s looking at her cell phone again.

BUS STORY # 284 (The Smile)

Mona Lisa on Bus Shelter, a photo by sameold2010 on Flickr.

Mom and child board the bus and take the bench seat behind the driver, right in front of me.

The little girl looks to be either a pre-schooler or a first-grader.

Both of them look out of sorts. Neither of them is talking to one another or even looking at one another, and neither is anywhere close to a smile.

Maybe they’ve just had some sort of argument. Maybe mom isn’t a morning person. Maybe neither of them is a morning person.

The girl stops at the bench seat, then turns and waits to see what mom is going to do.

Mom finishes the fare business, then heads for the first seat behind the driver. The girl takes the third seat, directly in front of me. Mom puts her purse in the middle seat, between them.

They still haven’t exchanged looks. If it hadn’t been for the girl turning and waiting to see what mom was gonna do, I’d be questioning my assumption they are together.

The girl hangs on to a plastic book bag. The bag has brightly-colored, big-petaled flowers, rainbows, and a peace symbol in the middle.

I look back up from the bag, and that’s when I notice her hair. Or rather, I notice the rows of little square islands of hair, each island pulled up in the middle and threaded through a colorful bead, and separated by perfectly even rows of skin running front to back and side to side.

(Thanks to the wonder of Google, I will learn these are called “box braids,” and that this little girl’s hair is too short to handle more than a one-bead braid.)

Top view of her new do, © All Rights Reserved, a photo by eg2006 on Flickr.

I am awestruck, not just by the geometrical artistry, but by the skill and patience this had to have required.

And not just the patience of mom. I am trying to imagine this little girl sitting still while her hair is being done. This would be team patience!

Maybe that is why the two of them are out of sorts with one another.

At this point, I have been staring intently and so preoccupied with her hair and my speculations about the two of them that I get caught staring.

I realize the little girl has just turned to look at me straight on. She must have sensed me staring at her.

We can’t be three feet apart, and before I can recover from my surprise, her face breaks into an impossibly open-hearted smile. So much innocent, unguarded joy!

I smile right back, almost as big. Can’t help myself. She has utterly disarmed me.

She holds my gaze, and I am the one who looks away first. I look over at mom who is either ignoring what is going on, or, more likely, is preoccupied herself.

I want to tell her her daughter just made my day.

I want to tell her daughter she just made my day.

But I don’t say anything to either of them. I hope my involuntary return smile said it for me.

At the end of the day, I still remember that smile perfectly, and I am still in thrall.
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The photo at the top of this story is titled “Mona Lisa in Bus Shelter,” and is posted with the kind permission of sameold2010. You can see all sameold2010’s photos on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29923994@N03/

The photo in the body of this story is titled “Top view of her new do,” © All Rights Reserved, and is posted with the kind permission of eg2006. You can see all eg2006’s photos on Flicker at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elijahgarcia/