by Mark Morelli
“We enter the world from these fortress like garages, whose doors operate like inverted drawbridges, cranked shut by invisible operators behind the ramparts of steel-walled sport utility vehicles. Cars allow us to isolate ourselves within our own social strata and to have no physical contact with people at other levels. This leads inevitably to a lack of understanding, alienation, and mistrust those of those who are different. Instead of providing direct contact and the opportunity for everyday kindness, the car erodes social bonds.”
-Katie Alford, Divorce Your Car! (Ending the love affair with the automobile)
A few years ago I lived on the east coast. A commuter bus took me from my New Jersey home into Manhattan. Unlike the city bus, with the commuter bus there was no stop-and-go every few blocks. The commuter bus was usually quiet as a church and, like a congregation, most of us closed our eyes, bowed our heads forward and drifted blissfully.
For most of the ride, I read. But as the bus winded its way past the Meadowlands of Secaucus to the concrete cloverleaf in Weehawken, I closed my eyes in the long dark Lincoln Tunnel beneath the Hudson River. I wanted my mind to detach for one last restorative moment. The bus in the tunnel was a womb within a larger womb. Fully dilated, the tunnel squeezed the bus into the cacophony of Manhattan.
One hazard of commuting is that strangers recognize you for unflattering traits. Once, in my New Jersey town, I recognized a fellow shopper but I could not at first place him. Then it hit me.
He was the snorer.
Too often I watched this burly guy conk out on the bus like he was a brandy-filled great-uncle at a family dinner. He snored like a rusty squeezebox. Once, a lady tapped him and said gently, “Sir, please wake up.” Another time a man shouted, “Sleep at home!” Yet another time, even the bus driver yelled harshly at him. This slovenly, blobby moptop grossed out everyone with his glottal rattling. One day, on our ride back from the city to New Jersey, he was out cold, snoring obnoxiously. He slept through his stop, which was close to mine. I could’ve wakened him but I didn’t. And I am glad.
He must have gotten home eventually because there he was, at the grocery, loading up on paper towels. I wanted to bounce around the store like Daffy Duck, throwing into his grocery cart No-Doz, Coke, coffee, chocolate -- anything containing caffeine.
When I lived in Dayton, Ohio I took the city bus to Wright State University. My wife worked at a hospital and she took the bus, too. The bus stop was almost right in front of our home. We got on together, and chatted for fifteen minutes, until it was time for me to switch downtown and catch the bus headed for school. It was our time to people-watch and whisper sweet-newlywed-nothings to each other.
We recognized a regular gallery of daily riders. A man with a white mustache, tweed cap and cane who got on the bus just two stops past our own -- we called him Mr. Lipton because he looked like the character on a box of Lipton tea. An old short Chinese man at the next stop puffed furiously on his cigarette as the bus approached. We called him Charlie Smoke. Soon it became a comfort to see the regulars. And when they weren’t there, I wondered if everything was okay.
And Lady Celt. She was pregnant. Her long mane of red hair added luster to her maternal radiance. We smiled watching this radiant young woman board the bus. She and three other downtown commuters always sat in the front and chatted. One morning, during her eighth month, they surprised her with a mass-transit baby shower. They gave her a big carrot muffin and three little gifts. She reddened with pleasure and gratitude as she opened the rattle, the book of nursery rhymes and the miniature University of Dayton sweatshirt. Every one else on the bus looked on with glee.
In 1981, when I was a college sophomore, I took a Greyhound from Salem, Ohio to New York City. I was alone until Pittsburgh, when a very young Haitian woman got on the bus, holding an infant boy. She sat next to me. It had grown dark and the passengers were silent, nestling in for the best sleep one can get on a bus.
The woman was very dark and her baby even darker. I was a blanched and scrawny, baby-faced 20-year-old. I told her that her baby was beautiful and she nodded, but she didn’t understand English. In my elementary college Spanish I repeated myself. It was getting cold. Ice crystals webbed the windows. She spread the blanket over her lap, then she put the blanket on my lap, too. She was dead tired. I was popeyed with coffee. In primal Spanish I offered my help. She rested her head on my shoulder and slept while I held the bundled baby most of the long night’s drive to Harrisburg, her destination.
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