
Riding the Long Bus: People & Places
I am on a $20 ride from Louisville to ATL on a Mega-Bus. We sat under a bridge in a tough area of Louisville while the bus was supposed rambling towards us. Another spot between another spot onwards.
The hour felt long as the sun rose higher. First thing that strikes me is the amount of men, lying flat on the ground. A concrete mattress from the night before. Some with shirts, some without. Some coming to for the morning, others eerily still.
The bus still hasn’t arrived. I meet Deion who is adamantly from Atlanta yet is compulsively and melodramatically searching for a mysterious White Castle. He got on the bus later, after being annoyed at my lack of White Castle spatio-awareness. He mentions this was a second or third attempt to get on Mega Bus in recent weeks after buying a ticket in advance. Each time he’d somehow missed the bus, he left me wondering if the White House carving had thwarted him previously.
Mary is pained yet patience. She leans over her large silver-grey suitcase, the kind with hard cover with a fair share of scratches. She is Latino and her two kids spin in circles around her as they take straws for Hi- C juice boxes. Looks in mid-thirties, yet her expression tells a longer story. She asks me about the bus’ lateness as I end my phone call. Everyone is waiting on this bus, the bus coming for us and going somewhere.
The bus arrived. The driver deftly distracts a shirtless conspiratorial man who wandered in front of line for the bus door. We march up the stairs.
Sarah sits down next to me. She’s become a grandmother last week and now eagerly sits, pulled away from the seat back heading towards her daughter and new grandchild. She seems pleased that I don’t smell bad and the fact I am fiddling with headphones in my hands. She has artificially red cropped hair, pale white skin, and a canvas hand-crafted-looking Guatemalan bag. Her headphones are in and off to Facebook she travels.
Trees are in full green-ness, crowns pulling skyward. I-65 winds thick through the rolling hills and knobs of Kentucky and on to Tennessee
Batman building with his modern twin spires rises over Nashville on the horizon. Soon we are stopped. A sea of cigarette smoke hovers outside my window as the driver leads our break.
The bus empties and fills under the old plastic signage of the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. Red letters: Mary J. Bilge & Slayer this month.
The bus is an American salad bowl of a crowd and mostly on the lower end economically (remember this is the $20 ride across a few states). The salad has a bored sadness for dressing. A few with joy of companions or hopeful smiles for what’s next, but most dejected with eyes looking for something more with little hope for what or ever will be.
Conflict erupts over ‘seat taking’ and reservations. The combatants (new norm core riders, high waisted jeans, ironic hats) deal in iphones reservations, awkwardness, sorry’s and stares. The whole bus leer and some offer jeers, ‘well so-so was sitting there I think he’s in bathroom, she is on the a smoke break, I have this seat, well can I sit here? Or move this stuff? What about that seat?’
The cultural clash feel ripe over the idea of reservations. Something that costs slightly more and needs more planning. Yet doesn’t seem to be the norm for Megabus etiquette between more regular riders.
Yet. the bus rolls on. Seats are taken. Everyone is somewhere else on the silent bus other than faint bump of Gucci Mane emitting from the back seats. No one dares to speak up over the noisy headphones to the offending listener or to anyone else.
Murfreesboro, fields, sunflowers, valleys, we whistle by with cows mooing yet silent behind the bus’ glass. Chattanooga, we stop. Sun bakes the pavement around the lonely bus stop and I feel microwaves as walk with haste. We have 20 min. I begin to wander. Smoke cloud forms as tobacco burns. People lay in the weeds and spread out their things, longer rides past Atlanta I assume.
The bus leaves again with little warning. I make friend in the row behind me, Jeremiah, who then proceeds to share the gospel with the older gentleman beside him. I pray silently for my bold and eloquent brother as he shares. The man is intrigued and the silent bus is no longer so silent.
Traffic springs out of the asphalt like a wall with blinking red lights as we creep towards the green highway signs of Atlanta. Anxiety ripples off our brake pads and into the smelly cabin. Sweat plus food from the Chattanooga stop has throughly mixed and makes the ride feel more like camp. Inspired by Jeremiah, I re-engage the Facebooking grandmother from earlier beside me. After while she begins to open like an onion, layers giving way to layers.
First, proud of kids and all is well. Then family deaths. Then deeper stories of being raised in a Jewish home and Christ saving her as an adult. Then trauma of family and ending with tears together and sharing about how God has met us with love time and again. I am no voyeur of other stories, I share my own about what Christ has done, how I fall short and the hope I have. Conversation is more than encouraging. God seems to always have appointments for me on the roads and planes of life.
Rain begins to fall, we press on, people and places in motion. Stories and moments flowing in the cabin. Line always forming, and re-forming around the first level bathroom. We roll on.
Thanks for reading, time to see my family.
