In Transit
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Last night, I sat on a city bus headed to a going away party for a newly-engaged and soon-to-be overseas friend. I had settled in for the short ride to the selected bar of choice when, sitting diagonal to me, an older man struck up a conversation. He sat alone, wearing a Bears stocking cap, navy blue jacket, and grey trousers. Most people, myself included, would likely have brushed him off or shied away from him, especially since he couldn’t hear very well over the din of the bus. But I’m glad I didn’t.
Without hesitation he shared unique snippets of life in Chicago in the 50’s and 60’s, asserted that women could drive just as well as men and that they were doing a fine job learning, and issued his support of segregation’s end with the inclusion of blacks on city buses and throughout the neighborhoods as a move in the right direction.
He spoke to me of many things from the unusual traffic and the bus route to his vision and blood pressure to growing up on the lakefront. He told me he went to Lane Tech and a month short of graduation became a carpenter to help his family pay the bills. He proudly said he’d never missed a day of work in 45 years and when his boss retired they offered him the company.
He explained to me how his sons took his driver’s license away from him, which is why he now takes the bus. With a glow, he said again and again how much he loved them and how good his boys are; now both grown with children of their own. As he told me this, I inwardly hoped that wherever they are, they know how much their father loves them.
And he told me about his wife, who has passed on. He praised her as a great woman, a great wife and partner, ‘the ole’ gal’, and told me how everything he owned was hers and put into her name. He grew quiet as he remembered in 53 years of marriage; they had only three arguments and all within the first month of marrying. He smiled as he asserted that arguing really doesn’t solve anything. And he went on to relay their first argument, wherein she went out the front door, only to return moments later and announce to him that he shouldn’t say another word and that they’d talk about it tomorrow. With a chuckle, he shook his head and said they never spoke of it again.
As my stop neared, I began to wonder how it’s possible to share the intimate details of your life in one half of one hour with a nameless, nodding girl on an eastbound bus. And I wondered if at a certain age we all will bear witness to the world speeding away from us and want only to have a piece of us taken along before we, and all our memories with us, fade away.
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