Now Loading In Track Two
August 9, 2013
Tom Poland
August 9, 2013
Part One: Inside The Bus Station
Enlightened types tout mass transit as a cure for social and environmental ills. I doubt many of these sophisticates would get near, say a bus, outside a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a sparkling new bus station. Deep down inside they’re like us. They love their cars.
We all love our cars and that’s why mass transit is a hard sell. Hop in and off we go, wherever we want, whenever we want, with whomever we want, and best of all we can travel solo. Just us and our thoughts, and if gas prices blast through the ceiling, so be it. That’s a tough hill to climb for those promoting mass transit.
Mass transit works in border-close Europe. In America we’re spread out, way, way out. Airplanes work as mass transit goes but smaller scales bring regrets, especially in big cities. Character is the issue and for many that’s why mass transit has a synonym: last resort. You have no choice but to go by mass transit’s schedule and your fellow travelers can make it a less-than-stellar experience as the author of an email shared.
I had a horrible time riding a bus from Columbia to Washington D.C. It involved rude people and an arrest. I could relate to her adventure, having ridden a Greyhound from Columbia to Charleston, West Virginia eons ago. Drunks raised hell all night. Sleeping was impossible. And then there’s my Amtrak adventure which some of you have read before. A drunken woman boarded the train in Savannah. She had an unruly head of hair and rowdy temperament. She went from man to man crying out, ‘My name is Mandy, and I have sweet candy.’ The conductor put her off at the next stop.
I’ve traveled through Italy and Spain by train and it was a beautiful experience, though I was warned to keep an eye on my luggage at stops. Loiterers snatch bags and make a getaway. Human nature—it’s amazingly consistent and that doesn’t bode good things for mass transit. I hear all manner of criticism for city buses too. Well there’s nothing like an insider’s view.
I worked as a ticket agent for Southeastern Stages and Greyhound while earning a Masters degree at the University of Georgia. To this day I’d rather sell than buy bus tickets.
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Athens, Georgia, 220 West Broad—1972. The dieseling engine of a red, white, and blue Greyhound revs up. A puff of black smoke smudges the air. That’s my cue. I key the public address microphone: Now loading in track two, Greyhound’s local to Hull, Colbert, Comer, Carlton, Calhoun Falls, Saluda, Columbia, Fayetteville, Raleigh, and points north.
People gather their belongings, board, and a clash of gears heralds the departure of another load of mankind. No sooner than they leave, another bus arrives, all sorts of humanity spilling out. From morning into the night the scene repeats itself … shipping people out, delivering students and ordinary folk, and attracting vagrants like few other places.
It was an odd time, the early 1970s. I worked with ticket agents and baggage handlers who were either in graduate school or working extra hours to boost day-job income. They came from places like Hartwell, Augusta, Wadley, Wrens, Tifton, and, as we announced, points beyond.
I received a good education in that blocky building at 220 West Broad—a Ph D in real life. Desperation, making do, skating by, dream chasing, an escape from a humdrum life, that, and more were part of the curriculum as were laughter, mean-spiritedness, and a dose of reality for which I was long overdue. Not long out of undergraduate school and fresh off a year of teaching public school in rural Georgia, I was a wide-eyed innocent seeing things I’d only heard about. Want to understand the gritty side of people and life? Work among folks who will shoot you.
It was in the bus station lobby that I saw for the first time men passing themselves off as women. Queens one of the ticket agents called these drag queens. Tall men dressed as women with ruby-red lipstick—beard stubble obvious—pitched their voices octaves up. They came to the half-door at the baggage room to inquire about missing bags. (They never had a claim ticket. Always forgotten or lost.)
And it was there in the lobby that I saw a man shoot himself. Wearing a soiled trench coat a la Lieutenant Columbo and bumbling a la Columbo he approached the ticket counter fumbling with something in a pocket.
BAM!
He dropped his gun, which fired upon hitting the floor. Shot in the leg and trailing blood he limped out of the lobby. I found the mushroomed bullet in a corner of the lobby. We never saw the blundering robber again. We did see prostitution, drug dealings, gambling, and petty crimes, rifled drink machines for instance.
Working in mass transit land had moments of terror. One cold Saturday night two days before Christmas M.E. Geer and I were closing down the station. It was late and very cold. We had all the cash from the day’s ticket sales and shipping fees, $7,000 or so, ready to go into the safe just below the shipping counter. Christmas of course is a desperate time. That was in our mind that night. We had just opened the safe and we each held several fat zipper-locked money pouches. Seven or so feet away was a heavy steel door we’d neglected to lock.
The door burst open and a wild-eyed hippie charged through. Gaunt, straggly bearded, with hair combed with a firecracker he looked like an addict. He had both hands thrust into the pockets of his army field jacket whereupon he slammed them on the countertop right at us.
Give me the bread, man.
M.E. and I looked at each other. The hippie slammed his concealed hands on the counter again.
C’mon, give me the bread, I’m in a hurry.
We said nothing. An eternity passed.
C’mon! Give me the dough.
Mine and M.E.’s eyes met and an agreement stenciled the air. (Later we agreed we each had decided to hand over the money.) Then this desperado said, Hurry up. We’ve got a shipment of pizza dough here.
He left and he left us nervous. We all knew but never admitted that our jobs put us in jeopardy. Guns and desperate people walked through our lives daily and nightly.
M.E. and I closed the shipping department’s big steel door and walked briskly through the cold Georgia night to our cars. Driving down West Broad my thoughts turned to Christmas and family. I’d be traveling to my hometown and later to West Virginia over the holidays. I was damn glad to be in my car, the captain of my own personal transit system.
Teaser of next week’s article:
Part Two of Now Loading In Track Two — Pranks, Meanness, & Fame
Every ticket agent lived in fear of that one call where someone wanted to go from Athens to, say, Maple Bay, Washington. The accursed agent would be tied up for an hour or more, plotting and making notes while the traveler patiently waited on the other end of the line.
Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]
Tom Poland is the author of six books and more than 700 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press just released his book on how the blues became the shag, Save The Last Dance For Me. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.
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