Tuesday, October 8, 2024 Buses, Bikes and Big Ugly Cars

The topic of transportation is a fairly dull one, but I will endeavor to impart something of interest in spite of that. I grew up on a busy city bus route in Minneapolis. If you missed a bus, you’d just wait 10 minutes and another one would come along. When other kids were learning how to drive and borrowing the family car, I was taking the city bus downtown with friends to go shopping or go to the movies. When the bus got close to your stop, you pulled on a cable, thus alerting the driver to your desire to get off.

By the time I got to college, I was spending a LOT of time on buses. In order to get to the University of Minnesota, I had to transfer routes, so when I entered the first bus, I asked for a transfer ticket, which allowed me to get on the next bus without having to pay again. It was a pretty sweet deal – you could go all over the Twin Cities for the price of one bus fare, which was around 25 cents (or was it 50 cents?) at that time.

I have a few memorable memories of riding the city bus. One time, my sister Leslie and I were riding the bus back home from downtown after watching the movie “Terminal Man” with George Segal. In one part of the movie, someone was guarding the main character, who was becoming increasingly dangerous. The guard was reading comic books and somehow allowed the guy to get away because he was distracted. Leslie and I were enthusiastically discussing the movie on the bus and one of us made a comment something like, “Could you believe that guard? Reading comic books! What kind of person would read comic books as an adult? Ha ha!” And the other one of us agreed heartily. Then we looked at the man sitting next to us – he was reading a comic book and could very clearly hear us talking. Boy, did we blush.

Another time, I decided to take a bus downtown by myself to go to a movie. I’d never done this before and felt quite adult and independent (I was probably in high school). I mishandled the coins when I entered the bus and put too much money in. I had brought only enough money for the bus fare and the movie, so this meant I wouldn’t have enough to get back if I went to the movie. Determined to see the movie anyway, I decided I’d think about my money issues afterward. Big mistake. I could hardly concentrate on the movie (a Woody Allen flick called “Sleeper” – I hated it, which made everything just that much worse). A sense of impending doom grew and grew in my mind. When the movie was over, I trudged outside into the cold reality of my predicament and realized that I’d have to go to the bus stop and ask for money from one of the other people waiting there. It was awful. One lady edged away from me when I asked, and another one told me she didn’t have any money for me. Finally I approached a man who looked like he was having hard times himself. I asked if I could borrow a quarter. He gave me a sardonic look and said, “Borrow?” I certainly wasn’t going to be able to pay him back, but asking to borrow money sounded better than asking for money outright. I asked if I could have a quarter. He dredged one out of his pants pocket and handed it over. I thanked him several times over and got on the bus, a much humbler (and hopefully wiser) person than I’d been when I started out that day.

Buses were often very crowded and it’s not uncommon to be sitting next to strangers if you couldn’t get your own seat. On the way home from college once, I ended up sitting next to a youngish-looking man, who immediately asked me a question about something. I was taken aback, but answered the best I could. “WHY?” he said loudly, “WHY IS THAT?” “Well, I don’t know,” I responded, desperately trying to put an end to the conversation. “WHY DON’T YOU KNOW?” he said, in the same penetratingly loud voice. I figured out by this time that he was somewhat mentally challenged. I tried the silent approach, but he wasn’t having any of it. He continued to blast me with very loud questions and then no matter what I said, he’d come back with “WHY?” or “WHY NOT?” and if I didn’t answer, he’d just repeat it. There was no escape, so I finally just kept saying “I don’t know,” to which he’d reply, “WHY DON’T YOU KNOW?” It was the longest bus ride of my existence.

When I was in high school, my friend Lori sold her bike to me, a smart looking red Raleigh with thin tires, and racing handles. It had such a sweet balance that I could ride for long distances just sitting up straight without holding onto the handle bars. I loved that bike and when it was nice enough for riding, I biked to school and work instead of taking the bus. It was a 5-mile ride with some fierce hills to get to the university, but I was in good shape then. When I got there, I’d lock up the bike and take the front quick-release tire into class with me, thus insuring that no one would steal the bike. I hate to admit it, but I felt like I was making a very cool statement by walking around with that front tire, like I was some sort of biking celebrity. I often had delusions of grandeur like that.

When I was 17, my friends and I made plans to bike north of the Twin Cities to a campground where we’d stay for a few nights. A lot of planning went into that trip, which included my dad being willing to drive all our gear out there and then pick it up when we were done. We certainly weren’t going to carry it on our backs! Dad might not have been as supportive as he was if he’d known that some of our guy friends knew about the camping trip and ended up coming out to the campground while we were there. Nothing happened except a lot of flirtation, but I felt kind of guilty about it nonetheless. I believe we biked a little over 30 miles to get to the campground; it was quite an adventure.

Unlike my older siblings, I decided to get my driver’s license when I was 18. I don’t remember now what motivated me to do so – I didn’t have a car and wasn’t likely to get a car in the near future. Furthermore, I had taken Driver’s Ed in high school when I was 15, and the films they made us watch were so horrifying that I didn’t think I’d ever want to drive. If you never had to watch those, consider yourself very blessed. The films were re-enactments of car accidents brought on by driver error, drunkenness, or just plain stupidity. In spite of all that, I became determined to get my license, looked up driving lessons in the Yellow Pages and paid a North Star Driver School instructor to teach me the ropes. He was a very good instructor and it wasn’t long before he declared that I was ready to take the test. His method of teaching parallel parking was so genius that it was a no-fail method, at least with his car. Once he taught it to me, parallel parking was like child’s play. We drove to the testing center and he handed me over to one of the examiners. Things went quite smoothly until my examiner had to use the brake on his side of the car (installed for the purpose of the examiner not having to put his life in danger if the student made a critical mistake). Uh oh. He had me pull over after that and said I’d failed the test. I cried. My instructor made an appointment for me to take it again a week later even though I’d lost some confidence. I passed it with flying colors the next time.

I ended up teaching my older sister Leslie how to drive when she finally decided she’d better get her license – she was married by then. We started out in the parking lot of her apartment building and I had her drive around for a little bit. When we got back into the parking lot, she was pulling slowly into a spot next to another car – very slowly since she was unsure about the distance between the cars. “You’ve got plenty of room,” I assured her and then she bumped into the other car. Oops. I never did have a very good sense of space. Unfortunately, the owner of the car was watching from his window and came running out to assess the damage. Keep in mind that his car was very old and Leslie had merely bumped very lightly into one of the many rusted out spots on the side of it. The car owner sensed an opportunity and began yelling at us, telling us how much it was going to cost him to get the car fixed. He ramped up about calling the police and his insurance company, so I said, “How about if we give you $50 and call it even?” I’m guessing he knew he wasn’t going to have much of a claim, so he agreed. Leslie wrote him a check for $50, to which I added on the back, “For payment in FULL to repair damages to car,” and that was the end of it.

Until I bought my first car, my mom used to let me borrow her cute little Volkswagen bug to drive to my job. I could zip that little thing in and out of the tiniest parking spot, putting my parallel parking skills to use. Best car ever!!! But I paid no attention to the parking limitations and got frequent tickets, which I would just throw in the back of the car, not really caring about what they meant. When Mom finally got some sort of summons in the mail about it, she was very upset. I don’t blame her. I paid off all the tickets and reformed my wicked ways.

My first car was a brown Dodge Dart Swinger. It was the ugliest car in the universe. I really wanted something snazzy and colorful, but my bank account felt differently. It got the job done, however, so I resigned myself to driving it. I got a flat tire once when I was in front of a friend’s house. “No problem!” I thought cheerfully, and with an excess of confidence I set about changing the tire. I’d watched my dad change a couple tires – it was a fairly straightforward process. It turns out that it’s vitally important to chock the tires before starting to jack up the car, a little detail which I had forgotten. When the car started to move forward as I was jacking it up, I admitted defeat and went to call my dad. Oh well…

I hope I didn’t post this story already – did I? I wrote it for something else and figured it would do for my blog as well.

When someone pulls the cable, I’ll know it’s time to delete this.