The Meandering Jew : Yet Another Bus Story

As most of you know, my preferred method of conveyance around town and country is the bus. The ability to get back and forth across road and city without having to navigate or worry about fuel, tolls, or bathroom breaks is a huge weight of my shoulders. Travelling is tiring enough. By delegating those efforts to another, I can kick back (albeit not too far back), read, listen to music, or flirt shamelessly with the prettiest girl aboard; her road-bound captivity my romantic good fortune. I can daydream, write letters, and even catch an interesting sight or two along the way.

Some very interesting things happen on bus rides that, most likely, would not occur on more expensive or exclusive modes of travel. It is not as if the upper echelons of high society and culture are commuting via Greyhound on their way to the Preakness or some yachting expedition out on the islands. Most of those who ride buses have no choice, some because of money, and others because of the anonymity of this particular form of travel. (The “Runaway Bride” was smart to use the bus as a cover for her wedding day escape plan.) No one checks identification, no one asks what you are doing, and no one cares where you come from. Overall, the bus is the still the best place to hide when you need to inconspicuously move around the country. This is yet another reason I enjoy bus travel.

There is no doubt that at times I have shared hours of conversation with some of society’s lesser loved personages. I’ve struck up a dialogue with an ex-convict or two, or even a person currently wanted by the police for one crime or another. I don’t know or care what they did or who they are really; their story is what I’m after. I’ve sat next to unshowered migrant workers, among raucous Marine recruits on leave, and with grandmothers traveling hundreds of miles on their own to visit family and friends out in the countryside. Every roadside chat, every unbelievable story, and every human voice from those trips left a profound effect on my person. The easy-going banter, initially intended to help pass the time quicker, quickly grew into something much more meaningful.

This story takes place in a part of the USA that I call “What The Hell Am I Doing Here?”

Omaha is a quiet town by any standard, and I was privileged to spend a few hours within her city limits on a bright and crisp Sunday morning in September. Downtown Omaha is a ghost town on Sunday mornings, and I have a hard time imagining it being more ‘hustly-bustly’ on Monday afternoon. My first thoughts when stepping off the bus were to the famous “Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom”, a nature show that even some of us religious Jewish kids were able to watch at a relative’s home where television was permitted. I half-expected to see huge billboards all over Omaha in tribute to the famous insurance carrier, but I was to be disappointed. Omaha turned out to be just another plain, boring town along the way to the other plain, boring town that was to be my final destination. There are some emu and ostrich farms on either side of Omaha, but not much else appeared to be happening from where I was standing that morning. Granted, my view from the bus terminal was somewhat limited.

It is important to note that when on the bus, the driver is king and lord-master of his realm. If you have any ideas or suggestions as to when or where to stop or go, you would be best advised to keep those musings to yourself. This vehicular autocrat at the front cannot be cajoled to do anything outside of the predetermined scheduling. Power comes with responsibility, however, and bus drivers are responsible for making sure that whoever is on the bus belongs on the bus. They have the dual role of driver and security guard, and like others, whose jobs also require multitasking; sometimes one work requirement overshadows another, leaving the other undone. On some of the smaller bus lines; drivers usually function as makeshift mechanics as well, adding yet another burden. In spite of their seeming omnipotence, bus drivers also have human needs, and Virgil, stoic and taciturn as he appeared, was no exception. At each rest stop or station, Virgil would slowly and carefully aim the bus into one of the lanes provided and perform his necessary private functions in the designated location. It was during one of these potty breaks that things got weird in Omaha.

In this case, Virgil neglected the ‘security’ function. In his eagerness to get the bus back on the road and back on schedule, he forgot to recount the passengers. During his short, but necessary absence, two new passengers had boarded the bus without his knowledge, and on a bus with no more than 20 people total on board; it should not have gone unnoticed. Virgil’s lapse of duty became particularly striking in light of the fact that our stowaways were almost completely nude. One would think that a naked person would stand out on public transit, and if by chance that number simultaneously increased by yet another unclad soul, one might rightly assume that all hell would break loose. No such thing happened, however. Virgil returned to his air-cushioned spring-loaded throne, checked his mirrors, adjusted his Ray-Bans, and started the engine. Maybe bus drivers have to ‘zone out’ a bit to tolerate the long hours behind the wheel, and once Virgil entered his driving ‘mode’ there was nothing else, at least in his mind, going on.

Now even if our ‘birthday suited’ fellow travelers went somehow undetected by Virgil, not one of the other 20 or so passengers on board failed to notice them. If you have ever been caught among a small group of people placed in an awkward situation, then you will most likely know what happened for the next 30 miles or so en route to our next stop. The clothed members of our still-clothed entourage looked back and forth and at each other in shock, and without a syllable uttered between any of us. We may have all been waiting for the bus driver to finally realize what was going on behind him, or, as might have been equally plausible, Virgil knew there were naked people on his bus and did not care. Either way, there was dead silence, except, of course, for the constant banter between the naked people. One had to wonder if they even knew they were naked at all.

Now when I say they were naked, I’m exaggerating a bit. They were wearing those blue-green paper hospital slippers and caps that routinely adorn the expecting dads in maternity wards brazen enough to enter the inner sanctum and behold the miracle of childbirth up close and personal. One did have a hospital gown on, but it was so small when compared to her large frame that it left little to the imagination as to what lurked above, below, and around the gown’s poorly hemmed perimeter.

It is a sad coincidence that people who end up butt-nekkid in public generally aren’t the most attractive people, even when fully clothed, and our new friends, both very obese 30-something females, would likely not have been chosen to grace the cover of ‘Livestock Monthly’, let alone ‘Cosmo’ or ‘Vanity Fair.’ If a super-model or porn star does happen to show up naked somewhere, the chances, considering my luck, are that I will never even know about it, let alone be present to behold the gala event. I wondered then as to how I might react to being caught naked in public, and boarding a bus, going to another town, and all the while behaving as if nothing is amiss, are not among the things I would find myself doing under those particular circumstances. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

As if the offence to my visual faculty wasn’t painful enough, it got worse. On Greyhound busses, there is a small cramped restroom at the back of the bus. In order to keep down the smell of urine or feces, especially for the extended amount of time on the road, the bus company places a super-duper powerful deodorant of some sort in their toilets. Yet, the scent of this deodorant is so nasty that at times one wishes for the aroma of fetid cesspool to dull its effects. If you’re riding in the back of the bus where the stench is strongest, it could literally take hours to get used to it. (It remains a toss-up as to which smell is actually worse). This is one of those smells one never forgets, and for days after my trip, that scent would remain trapped in the nostrils, and everything smelled like Greyhound urinal cake.

Now I am relating this bit of information to tell you something else about the super-sized and unappareled duet that joined our expedition that September morning. Aside from offending the sight and logic of everyone on the bus (Virgil excluded), these women stunk to high heaven, possibly the combination of horrid body odor and a diabolical government experiment gone awry. The stench wafting from off these behemoths made you want to run into the Greyhound bathroom, remove those nuclear-powered deodorant cakes from the toilet, and shove them up into one or both of your nostrils. I doubt that would have masked the smell either, but it was worth thinking about the possibility of such relief in the moment; much in the same way a starving man finds things that would normally be highly unappetizing rather tasty.

So about half an hour goes by and Virgil has managed to remain the only one not to see or smell two giant masses of ‘celullitic’ nudity sitting less than 15 feet behind him to the left. All of the sudden, the shrill cry of police sirens were heard approaching our bus from the rear. Since there is no window at the back of Greyhound busses, we had no idea how fast or close the police were until they came up alongside the bus. A Nebraska state trooper, leaning out the passenger window of his cruiser, and after some effort, flagged Virgil down, and directed him to pull off onto the shoulder of the highway. By that time, we were all fairly certain why the bus was being stopped. The naked fat people, however, true to their earlier form, were oblivious to these recent developments and continued in their conversation unabated.

The bus came to a stop and the doors were opened. A tall, sharply-dressed trooper with a regulation police haircut and huge grin stepped onto the bus, explained to the perplexed driver his reason for stopping the bus, and then turned to us, announcing, “Anyone without pants please step to the front of the bus.” Without hesitation, the two ladies stood up, (once again blessing all of us with the full panoramic view of their immensity), lumbered obediently up to the officer (who was doing his best to keep a straight face), and after a few whispers between them, followed the trooper off the bus and into the back of his cruiser. The officer then returned, apologized to everyone for the delay, spoke a bit with Virgil, and cut back across the median with his captives in tow, his rear bumper almost scraping the pavement of the highway as they headed back to Omaha.

The two women turned out to be patients from one of Nebraska’s state-run mental health hospitals, and had apparently decided, spur of the moment, to take a little bus ride on a sunny Sunday morning. They were not, however, aware that bus rides are not ‘clothing optional’ or require tickets. (C’mon now, this isn’t France!) Just to illustrate for you how dead the city of Omaha is on a Sunday, the facility these mammoths migrated from, almost stark naked mind you, was at least six city blocks away from the bus terminal! If you calculate their rate of speed times the distance traveled (even discounting for time window shopping or sorting through trash cans), these ladies were walking for at least a full hour through downtown Omaha without being noticed by anyone which, to my logic, implies that there wasn’t anyone around to do any noticing.

Thankfully, there was no more public nudity for rest of the journey.

Every story has a lesson. So kids, what have we learned today?

1) Traveling with Shlomo is always an adventure.

2) The things you hate now will become the things you desire when something worse than the thing you hated in the first place shows up.

3) The sudden appearance of naked people engenders silence.

4) Crazy people love bus rides.

And……..

5) Do not plan to honeymoon in Omaha.

Stay tuned for the continuing saga of “The Meandering Jew.”