10-7-10
“It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.”
--Charles Dickens
I arrived in Temple, Texas this evening to a warm greeting from a friend of mine named Donahue. The journey there, however, was something entirely unusual. I hadn’t planned on writing anything more on this blog until my journey in Central America begins next Tuesday. Well, unbeknownst to me, it began last night at a Greyhound bus station in Denver.
I had decided in August that I would bus down to visit him, and then fly to Costa Rica out of Austin. I didn’t want to take my car because upon my return I’d have to drive it back to Colorado in December weather. “No.” I said. “Taking a bus down there is a lot easier. Then I’ll just fly back to Denver in December.”
Seemed simple enough…
As I was soon to find out, there is nothing simple about it. There is nothing simple about multi-state bus travel. The slogan is so simple and catchy: “I go easy, I go Greyhound.” There is noting easy about going Greyhound. It is a lot like the military. It involves intense surges of Hurry-Up followed abruptly by long drawn out periods of Wait. During this carnival you’re surrounded by people whose ideas of refinement would make Larry the Cable Guy look more like Lawrence the Monopoly Guy. I learned this before even entering the building to the station in Denver. It was outside on the sidewalk that I was met by a man digging his pinky-finger deep into his nose--like he had lost his car keys. I’m not sure, but perhaps there was a $100 bill in there somewhere . I’m talking third knuckle deep. Whatever it was he was looking for, I sure hope he found it.
I boarded the bus in Denver eager to start my trip. This was the first moment where the whole trip began to seem real. Until then, it had seemed more like an “I could do this.” But the moment I boarded the bus, it became “I am doing this.” I chose a seat and sat down, setting my pack on the seat next to me to mark my territory. I had one of those smiles that you try to hold in because people will think you’re crazy. My enthusiasm was quickly extinguished when I began to detect the smell of ass wafting through the air. There’s just no other word I can find to describe it. I could spend hours searching through a thesaurus and I would still come back using the very same word to relay this smell to the reader: ass.
Each Greyhound bus is set up the same. There are two seats on either side of the aisle. There are about 20 to the back and at the very back there is a bathroom. Before this trip a good friend had warned me that I wanted to stay as far from the bathroom as possible. So I made sure to get a seat in the front row. As people boarded, I began to worry that as seats filled up, people may need to sit right beside each other. I did not want a seatmate. Unlike airplanes, there are no assigned seats. So, when the last passengers board, they can basically choose who they want to sit next to. I quickly decided to do something I had always sworn to myself that I would never do. It was time to let the gut hang out. In an effort to look like the least appealing seatmate possible I swallowed as much air as possible and pushed my stomach out as far is it would go. The bigger I looked, the less seat space a potential neighbor would have. I’m convinced I presented the least appealing option on the bus and alas it paid off. I had both seats to myself! Soon we were all boarded and ready to depart.
The bus driver got our attention and gave us a thorough overview of the rules. The wera A) Don’t smoke anything, and B) Respect your fellow passengers. I was struck by the fact that he did not say “don’t smoke cigarettes,” but rather “don’t’ smoke anything.” My mind raced with what the “anything” might be. He followed with a speech about what a safe, fast, and generally amazing driver he was. Soon we were on the Interstate. I threw on my ipod and quickly distracted myself with music. I learned right away that the key to surviving lengthy travel is finding innovative ways to disassociate.
Soon enough we were in Colorado Springs. The bus driver, still beaming from the pep talk he gave us in Denver, had somehow already gotten lost. It took him over 30 minutes of driving around the city roads before he found the terminal. It was only with the help of a passenger that he ever found it, or else we’d probably still be winding around the back roads of the Springs at this very moment. All this to drop off one passenger! Soon the passenger was off and so were we. After another 30+ minutes passed by, yet again lost in the labyrinth of streets. Now another passenger offered assistance, and eventually we were back on track. By this point there had already been a series of GPS jokes. He apparently didn’t have one. This was the first of many areas I was to find that Greyhound cuts their costs.
After what seemed like ages we made it to the bus station in Pueblo. Like back in Colorado Springs: as soon as the bus stopped 2/3 of the passengers quickly piled out to squeeze in a few drags of a cigarette before they were again trapped in the metal capsule for a to-be-determined amount of time. This was a ritual they would repeat on an hourly basis. There were only a couple of new passengers waiting there. This was good. It meant that I might not have to play the seat territory game again until at least Amarillo. Soon enough everyone re-boarded the bus and for a brief moment the smell of stale ass was exchanged for the smell of cheap cigarettes. This was like potpourri considering the alternative. Everyone resettled and awaited the driver’s return.
And that’s when the feature star of the trip arrived. We began to hear the grumblings of an old man outside the bus who seemed to be yelling at the driver. The grumblings got louder and we soon realized what he was now beginning to yell. “Give me a damn minute. Some black punks broke my back with a baseball bat!” That would be the least offensive statement we were to hear from this man all night.
He was an older man of at least 70 years. He had a large protruding belly, and as he made his way up the steps we all learned that apparently he had been too busy to make the effort to buckle his belt, which was undone and hanging at his sides. With the smell of B.O. on his clothes and the cheap whiskey on his breath he was hardly being warmly received. He grumbled with every step. He had a very distinctive raspy voice that suggested he had never met a cigarette he didn’t like. He was nearly bald, but the last few absurdly long follicles had been charged with covering as much real-estate on his scalp as possible to hide this fact. This hairdo was epic. It is easily in my all time Top Five Best Comb-Overs.
We soon named him “Brokeback” because he must have told the story about “Those Black Punks” five more times. As Brokeback continued to yell and swear at anyone or anything he saw, the bus driver showed amazing patience. I heard the driver tell a passenger just before we left, “He paid his dues somewhere along the way, I’m sure.” And thus we began an exercise in tolerance that would last for hours. A cycle began that would go all night long. At each stop, he would wait until the last possible moment, then get off the bus and light a cigarette. The bus driver would honk the horn; which was like our recess bell, calling us back aboard. Everyone would re-board, sit and wait. Brokeback pretended not to hear or see any of this. The driver would then yell at him to hurry back on board. Brokeback would respond with obscenities and racial slurs using innovative combinations that would have made Mel Gibson proud. Finally, after being threatened abandonment, he would put out his largely unsmoked cigarette and re-board while continuing his verbal tirade. This was to be the routine on at least six more stops all the way to Texas.
In Lamar, even more hammered than his premier episode, he came close to being arrested at a gas station. Stumbling into the store, he began yelling at the clerk to get a lighter for him. He couldn’t find them. This guy was so plastered that he couldn’t see three cases of lighters right in front of him. There were literally hundreds of lighters right in front of him on the counter. He was blinded by his rage. While I sat at the only table in the gas station trying to find an outlet to charge my phone, this nonsense continued for several minutes. Luckily I had the best seat in the house, but was far enough away to remain uninvolved. Soon, one of the clerks said they had called the cops, and the bus driver quickly had us re-board. The bus driver must have apologized five times. Somehow he felt responsible for this mayhem. I think he had regretted ever allowing him to board back in Pueblo in the first place. The rest of us were surprised he didn’t just leave Brokeback right there in the middle of nowhere alone with his misery.
Re-boarded, Brokeback stumbled to the back of the bus and clumsily fell into a seat. I was in the front, so I didn’t hear much from him all night. I could tell that his neighbors were antagonizing him all night long. Occasionally I could hear an audible obscenity with his trademark raspy voice. I found myself dozing off from time to time; catching 30 minutes of sleep here and there.
Soon, we were nearing Amarillo and I was awoken by people gathering their things like students at the end of a lecture right before the bell rings. We were told that we all had to exit the bus and we would be re-boarding another bus soon. We were all just happy to get off the bus. I got off and entered the station. Amarillo in Spanish translates to Yellow in English. This couldn’t have been more accurate. This station was the building that time forgot. Everything was yellow. Not like a happy “Good Morning World!” kind of yellow, but more like a pea-green “why did I ever try Heroin” yellow. The tiles were yellow, the walls were yellow, the bathroom floor was yellow, and in the bad florescent lighting everyone’s skin looked…..yellow.
In spite of the fact that it was something like 4 in the morning there were people everywhere. I am convinced there is no more diverse place on this planet than a bus station at 4 am. It’s like Ellis Island, but with more ex-cons.
Amid the throngs of strangers in the terminal, I noticed that all the passengers from our bus had somehow congregated in one corner. We were all headed onto different buses and towards different parts of the country, but in spite of that we had a grouped together again. Without anyone saying a word, we had all gathered and found our own intimate corner of Amarillo. Somehow, without the words being spoken, we had initiated ourselves into a community. A social contract had been signed. Just as I began to marvel at that fact, someone mentioned that we hadn’t seen Brokeback since we got off the bus.
A few minutes later, we looked out the window to see Brokeback stumbling off the bus yet more wasted than the Lamar. After stumbling down the last step, one could easily see he was eyeing the wall of the building for his next resting spot. There is no word to describe the actions involved in his moving to the wall outside. If a run and a fall had a baby, whatever that move would be….that’s the move Brokeback made. Soon he had galumphed his way to the wall and leaned on a trashcan for his life. We couldn’t hear him from inside, but we could see he was yelling. We joked how he had probably found a way to blame his current condition on Mexicans, Jews, or Blacks (his trinity of hatred).
Soon an employee from the station approached him and could tell instantly that Brokeback was in no condition to travel. You have to be in pretty bad shape for Greyhound to tell you you’re not fit to ride their bus! That’s like McDonalds telling you you’re not fit to order a value meal. Yet, Brokeback somehow found a way to fall into Greyhound’s category of too twisted to ride.
The employee asked for his ticket. Brokeback straightened up and leaned against the wall so that he could free his hands up to fish into his pockets. Every few seconds he had to pull a hand out to again brace himself against the wall. It was a delicate balance between trying to appear sober, using his hands to find his ticket, and yet still not fall. It was like some sort of drunkard ballet. Of course, he couldn’t find it. The employee somewhat forcefully grabbed him by the upper arm and began to escort him somewhere down the sidewalk.
That’s when several from our newly formed community sprang into action. Two of the men who had been antagonizing him all night in the back of the bus jumped out the doors and went over to help Brokeback! One of them ran back onto our bus trying to find his ticket, while the other tried to schmooze the employee into leaving him alone. This was a huge surprise to me. The one who ran on the bus was Latino, and the one trying to smooth talk the employee was black; the two subjects of most of Brokeback’s tirades! Somehow that didn’t matter. He was a part of our newly formed community, and thus we apparently had a responsibility to him. I didn’t think so. He had shown no regard for any of us. As far as I was concerned he could go sober up in jail and receive a sample of the mistreatment he showed everyone else. But to some in our corner of the terminal, none of that mattered. I was touched by this generous act of humanity. Everything was yellow in Amarillo but there were no yellow-bellies. I was touched by the forgiveness these two men displayed.
Despite their best efforts, Brokeback was eventually taken away by the police. Soon enough, things began to quiet down in the terminal. It’s a shame to think that he was so drunk that when he woke up today he probably didn’t even remember the unbelievable acts of kindness the “Mexicans” and “Blacks” had shown him the night before. Eventually the laughter dissipated as one-by-one people began to split up heading to their various gates. A part of me felt strange when we split up. It was becoming familiar, maybe even comfortable.
Now I was thrust into to a new bus and a new group of strangers. It felt like I was entering the Denver bus station all over again. In line waiting for my next bus to Dallas, I was surrounded by an even more absurd cast of characters. There was a woman who had no shoes on, and stood behind me for a short while breathing on the back of my neck. I wasn’t about to lose my place in line because the farther up in line you are the better your seating options are when you board. She was deeply involved in a conversation about why Broadway shows were better than films. Curiously, I turned around to see whom she had been talking to when I realized there was no one else behind me but her. She had been talking to herself the whole time. I turned around facing the front again just hoping to ignore her antics.
Distracting myself with thoughts of the white sand and blue waters that awaited me soon, I tried to disassociate once again. To my left was a doorway. Just past the doorway were a couple vending machines. Just next to the machines were a few vacant outlets being used by two people charging their phones while several others looked in like starved hyenas. Everyone wanted their phones charged so they could Facebook, text and call friends to disassociate like I had learned to do hours earlier. I felt confident knowing I had charged up my phone while Brokeback ran interference with his lighter escapades back in Lamar. Just to the right of the salivating hyenas was a man all of five foot tall. He must have been about 35 years old and when he removed his hat it revealed a receding hairline. In fact it was revealed quite often because “Disco Stu” as I have named him was engaged in a provocative dance. In his dance, he put his hat on and off with a stylistic flair that only Disco Stu could.
Apparently he was unaware that he was: A) thirty-five, B) in a bus station at 4 am, or C) a terrible dancer. While blaring some shameful excuse for music on his phone, his dance entailed taking his hat on and off, spinning it, and some weird arm movements like he was trying to brush off thousands of fire ants. All the while he would occasionally stop, check himself out in the reflection of the window, and finish with a big spin. Suddenly I was hopeful that this oddity might be on my bus to entertain me until Dallas. But then just as suddenly I was frightened at the possibility this one-man circus could just as easily be my seatmate. Suddenly Disco Stu was not so cool to me anymore.
Again I reserved myself to facing forward in line and ignoring the oddities. I began to overhear a conversation between a couple guys at the front of the line next to ours. They were exchanging experiences from having just gotten paroled. At first I thought they meant they had gotten paroled recently. But then I realized they meant just paroled….as in just that last morning! Apparently Greyhound is the regular mode of transportation used by correctional facilities to ship off released inmates. I had never thought about it before but that makes sense for obvious reasons. They each had oversized white t-shirts on with equally oversized baggy blue jeans. One of them was wearing those trademark lace-less shoes you see on the prison shows. They’re kind of like Keds but with no laces. With them they carried mesh bags like the ones that onions come in at the grocery stores. They were mesh so that, presumably in prison they could not hide anything in them. One of them, named Tony, was headed home to Houston to get married to “the woman of my dreams.” As he described her, Tony displayed the brightest smile I saw on the entire trip.
Soon we all boarded the bus for Dallas and were on our way. Everyone sat quietly in the darkness, most sleeping until the sun came up. Around 8 am people began chatting and I started to talk with a woman who introduced herself as Rebecca. She was a middle-aged woman who had traveled to her former home of Pueblo recently to attend the funeral of her infant grandson. She was on her way home to Austin. She had old sweats on and a grocery bag full of bite size chocolate candies. She was in such disarray because someone had stolen her luggage three weeks before on her way up at the Dallas station. This was our next stop so my first order of business was to gather my checked bag immediately. She was nice and we shared some laughs as the hours slugged by.
We stopped in a town ironically named Jolly Texas. We were allowed a fifteen minute break to eat, stretch etc. I grabbed a quick bite, and walked around outside stretching my legs as I ate. I could tell I looked weird because I was basically doing laps around the pumps of the gas station. I didn’t care, it was my only chance I had to move around in the last six hours. I saw a guy from the bus standing alone near me and he nodded hello. I walked over and we exchanged pleasantries. His name was Craig.
Craig was a tall skinny white guy with stubble a few days old. He was young, but you could tell that in his few years he had lived a lot (good or bad). Soon, he began to confide in me that he had come all the way from Wyoming and was headed to Alabama.
“Alabama?” I asked surprised.
“Yea, that’s where my kid is. I haven’t seen her in three years.”
Already unsure of what to say, I just continued to ask questions.
“Three years huh. How old is she now?”
Without a pause he responded, “oh she’s three years old.”
Craig had not seen his child since her birth. He was nervous about how it would go. He said that his kid still wasn’t calling “the new guy” dad and he was relieved by that. I could tell he was pretty nervous and I tried to relieve his nerves by making my trademark useless banter until the driver honked and cued us to re-board.
Most of the trip to Dallas was uneventful, and I was thankful to have someone normal to talk with in Rebecca. After a series of delays we finally arrived in the Dallas Terminal. We were a half hour late, and I missed my 1:05 connector to Waco. This meant that I was forced to sit in the terminal for two more hours if I was to catch the next bus there.
The depot was huge and there were people everywhere coming and going. Rebecca had told me horror stories about this stop, and I was relieved that none of the types of things she described appeared to be going on at that time. I saw several more parolees with the trademark shoes and mesh bags. It didn’t really bother me because I was fairly comfortable that since they had just gotten out, they probably were still too fresh out to be interested in stealing my things or hurting me. I was hardly worth it. Suddenly my worthlessness became very valuable!
Throughout all of this chaos there were very few employees. There was a security guard and three “information” people. Only one person was working at the ticket counter the entire time I was there. The others appeared to be on breaks for my entire visit. I went up to the counter and after waiting in line for 20 minutes I was given the rare privilege of asking a question. I asked the lady if there was going to be another connector from Waco to Temple (my final destination), as I was now going to miss that out of Waco too. She typed some buttons on her keyboard and I’m still convinced she never even typed anything real in. She said she couldn’t see that on “her side.” I asked her if she could call to ask someone, and she responded with a “no.” For miss attitude, just saying “no” wasn’t nearly enough. She had to say no with a rude tone and demeanor as if to say “stop bothering me.”
With my question unanswered and feeling like an alienated leper, I went back in line with little faith that I would still be able to get to Temple that night. In the corner of my eye I glanced at Craig, who was in the corner crying for some reason. I was somewhat shocked. He seemed like a strong guy. Whatever he was crying for it must have been important. Part of me felt bad for him, but I was so caught up in my own predicament I had no time to investigate.
We were all standing in line when the security guard very authoritatively walked up to me and asked me where I was standing. I paused, confused if this was some clever riddle.
“In line?” I said.
Angrily he replied “No you’re not!”
I looked around at Rebecca and the others standing next to me. We all looked at each other confused by this strange man with the gun. No one knew what the hell he meant.
“It’s a single file line!” Rebecca and I looked at each other astonished. It felt like we were now in prison too.
I wanted to mouth off so badly, but the worst thing that could happen was that they might not allow me to board the bus to freedom and finally be done with this wretched place. I swallowed my pride and moved into a single file line. I felt like my most basic liberties had been stripped away. I was being chided for standing 1 foot too far to the right. I felt like a prisoner. I couldn’t ask questions, I couldn’t seek help, and now I couldn’t even stand in line correctly. I felt like trash.
The truth was that out of all the crazy characters I had interacted with in the last day, none of them were trash. They were all people with stories to tell. Some flawed, maybe, but who the hell isn’t. They were all trying to get somewhere to someone, and all the while they were treated like animals. They were men like Tony; headed home to marry the woman of his dreams. And they were women like Rebecca; headed home after morning the death of her only grandchild. They were kids like Craig trying to reconnect with his 3 year old daughter. They weren’t trash. They were human beings. The only trash I saw on the whole trip were the people wearing “Greyhound” on their shirts.
I kept telling myself in my head “I’m the customer!” It didn’t matter. No one cared and if I didn’t comply with their strange set of norms, I was never getting out of there. I had become a second-class citizen traveling by second class means. I was saddened to think that a great many people there were treated that way a lot. With my money I could normally fly. At the airports they treat you with much more respect. They treat you like a customer. But many of these people were never able to travel like that or live like that. We were treated like rats in a cage when all we wanted to do was get to our destinations and see our family and friends; a most basic desire.
I wondered how long it would take being treated like a second-class citizen to start acting like one. I was already fighting the impulse to shout obscenities. And for a moment I had wished that Brokeback was there to help me tear into these assholes. But he wasn’t. Finally I boarded the bus and soon we were on our way. The moment the bus drove away from the station I felt like I had escaped Alcatraz. I called Donahue and had him pick me up in Waco. I was nervous to ask him because for the last 24 hours every request I had made was returned with a “no” and garnished by attitude. Unlike the useless Greyhound employees, Donahue was more than happy to accommodate.
Two hours later I arrived at the bus station. There, waiting in his Prius was Donahue eager greet me with a smile and a joke. When I got in his car I felt relieved. As I entered the Prius and shut the door I felt like I had left behind me all the negative sensations and emotions of the last 24 hours. But the memories remained. I had felt scared, and I had felt inspired. I had felt compassion, and I had felt rage….isolation and community.
I wanted to convey all these experiences with him, but I was so exhausted from it that I couldn’t muster the energy. One might wonder if given the choice would I take the bus over again. Absolutely I would! In that 24 hours I learned more about humanity and compassion than perhaps any other day in my life. Behind every weary traveler you pass, there may very well be an equally stirring story. Thank you Greyhound… money well spent.
So, now here I am in beautiful Temple Texas. The sun is shinning and the air is warm. On Tuesday morning I fly out of Austin to Costa Rica. My main source of transportation throughout the entire trip will be busses; and I wonder if the experiences could even rival the cast of Brokeback, Rebecca, Craig and Disco Stu! I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out.
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